Food

February 3, 2010

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This Week’s Inspiration

Yesterday I posed the question, What is inspiring your edible garden this year? I think it is only fair that I join in and divulge my current inspirations for the 2010 growing season.

I saw this book, Terrine by StÃƒÂ©phane Reynaud the other day but couldn’t justify the purchase. The next day I treated myself to a visit to a used bookstore I like for cookbooks and bam, there it was at a fraction of the cost. How’s that for timing?

Let’s pause for a moment to enjoy the endpaper. Very nice.

This recipe for Basil Coulis is what has me thinking about my garden for 2010. Basil. Lots and lots of fresh basil. Several different varieties of basil in all sorts of colours, shapes, and flavours. I can never have enough of it and even though we freeze it and dry it, nothing compares to the real deal fresh off the plant. Let’s hope for a summer that is dryer and hotter than last year’s, which was a total disaster for basil lover’s across Eastern North America.

Basil Coulis is really just basil in oil with lemon, but let’s call it coulis and be fancy.

This recipe seems like a lot of work for what is essentially cooked veggies in a jar, but sure, let’s pretend I’m gonna make this. It does look awfully pretty in that jar. Bonus points if all of the ingredients come from my garden. My broccoli kicked ass last year, although I can’t really claim all of the credit. What sucked for basil was great for cool weather-loving brassicas.

I also bought this book yesterday, Cook + Book: Memories and Recipes by Alain Coumont.

cook+book2.jpg

First I’m going to make my own sourdough starter using the recipe in this book, and then I am gonna make my own bread and use it to make this tartine. The key ingredient: fresh herbs. Again with the fresh herbs. Growing herbs isn’t anything different from any other year. I always grow enough to feed an army. And still it’s not enough. However, I didn’t grow herbs indoors this winter because we went away for a month and now I’m craving the smell, sight, and taste of them.

I’m ready. Unfortunately the weather isn’t. There’s still snow on the ground and while I could probably head over to the community plot and find a leaf or two of parsley underneath the snow or start some small basil plants on the windowsill, the fact is that we’re not going to be enjoying those big fragrant bushes just yet. Patience.

p.s. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway for my new book, “Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces.”

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January 27, 2010

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Foodcycles

Back in August 2009 my friend Laura asked me if I wanted to take a quick jaunt out to the burbs to take some pictures of the Foodcycles farm.

At the time we had just finished putting the finishing touches on the book design and it felt like I hadn’t left my computer in what seemed like forever, give or take a millennium. While I had no idea what Foodcycles was at the time, I agreed enthusiastically to a car ride and a summer evening outdoors communing with something other than my keyboard.

The trip turned out to be a really, really nice surprise and a refreshing, inspiring way to unwind from months of madness. Foodcycles is a working market garden that sits on an acre of land in a former airforce base, right smack in the middle of several busy intersections in North Toronto. Imagine looking out of one of the hi-rise buildings nearby onto a view of a working farm with rows and rows of greenery right alongside strip malls and commuter traffic. If only something like this had existed back when I was a university student doing the daily, miserable bus commute right past this park!

They’ve got a huge greenhouse on site, too, that also houses a beautifully built wormery for composting as well as several raised beds.

This is the wormery in progress.

Foodcycles was inspired by Growing Power, a city farm in Milwaukee that produces produce as well as fish, honey, compost, and more. They’ve come a long way in a year but as a not-for-profit they need help from the community to keep on going. This Thursday, Jan 28, 2010 (6:30-8:30 PM), Foodcycles is hosting a fundraising effort at Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St W) where they will be screening the film Dirt!

They have offered me 2 free tickets to the screening to giveaway here. If you’re in the Toronto area and would like to attend the screening simply post a comment here stating your interest. There’s only a day left so I’ll draw one person for both tickets tomorrow morning (Thursday).

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January 12, 2010

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Stevie, Not Wonder

My epic trip has come to an end and I’ve been back in the freezing north for a few days. Brrr…. It’s time now to begin processing the experience for myself as well as find a way to express on this site some of what I have learned and experienced.

Boy did I learn a lot. I may have spent a whole month away, but it never quite felt like I was taking a break. The trip was more comparable to enrolling in an intense immersive learning program. With my brain so filled with new experiences, thoughts and feelings, I lamented on Twitter yesterday, “Where to begin?”

Some of you responded, “With the beginning” but I am having a hard time deciding where that is. Which beginning? I’ve never been very good about pinpointing where a life experience begins and ends. Did it begin when I got on the plane and arrived in Barbados? Or perhaps the part that felt like the real beginning to the personal journey, flying into Dominica. Do I begin with a specific plant that intrigued me (they all did!) or try to express my overall impressions of the trip? Should I stay focused on the botanical portion of the trip or allow myself to veer off into non-botanical terrain and tell a larger story?

And just what is the larger story? I don’t quite know yet. The trip was both what I expected and yet mostly filled with surprises.

Perhaps it is a cop out, but I’ve decided to begin randomly. I literally clicked on a folder of digital images and pulled up the first photo that brought up a memory. If I didn’t begin this way, I’d probably never begin and an entire month of travel would go the way of Cuba and so many other travel experiences I’ve had.

I took the above photos about a week or so into the Dominica portion of the trip. Travel around the island can be a bit gnarly. While the island isn’t particularly big, winding, thin and sometimes rough mountain roads increases the distance between places. In Dominica you are always going up or down but very rarely straight or flat. For this reason we decided to book a few nights in Calibishie, a small village on the northeast side of the island so we could do some walking and exploring at our own pace.

Dominica is not the place to go if you’re looking for a sandy beach vacation. We could see the ocean from the little cottage we rented above Roseau, on the west side of the island, but it was a 3 hour walk to the closest beach, which was rocky, not sandy. Staying in the northeast also gave us closer access to ocean swimming.

Our second day in Calabishie fell on a Sunday. Local buses don’t run on Sundays in Dominica and we don’t drive so we decided to try and walk through the village and see if we could make it to the closest sandy beach in that direction, or find somewhere to dip into the ocean if it got too hot. The people of Calabishie were very friendly and inquisitive, quick to find out who we were and chat. We stopped many times to take photos or get into conversations with locals.

The last stop we made before leaving the village was when the guy in this picture, Stevie (not Wonder) called out from his porch for us to take his picture. Turns out Stevie is a farmer and a gardener so I asked him to show me what he had growing around his house.

That’s dasheen (Colocasia esculenta) in the foreground, one of many ground provisions that were originally brought to the West Indies as food for slaves. As you can probably tell by the leaves, dasheen is related to taro. You’ll find it growing just about everywhere in Dominica. The young, unfurled leaves are harvested for a soup or stew called callaloo, and the roots (or corms) are typically served boiled.

That huge bush behind it is a hot seasoning pepper. It looked to be some type of habanero/scotch bonnet, but I was too chicken to taste it. I never saw a mature hot pepper plant in the Caribbean that was smaller than this bush. Some were larger still. I understand now why the scotch bonnet types require such a long growing season to get to the fruiting stage. The plants we grow here just don’t have a chance.

The third edible Stevie had growing was a small tangerine. It didn’t have any fruit yet, but the spines were a good inch and a half long, the largest (and scariest) I have seen on a citrus tree.

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November 30, 2009

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Let’s Learn About the Historical Origins of Herbs, Fruits and Vegetables

Have you ever heard of sea cabbage, a wild cousin of the domesticated brassicas? Did you know that edible bananas are a primitive plant thought to be related to some of the first trees of the primeval forest?

I didn’t either until this weekend when I was finishing up an article on unusual vegetables and decided to fact check some long-ago gleaned historical knowledge against books in my personal library. What began as a quick check turned into a much longer read.

The first book I pulled out is called The Origins of Fruit and Vegetables by Johnathan Roberts (in case you’re wondering mine cost $22US, not $472 YIKES). I think I’ve had this book in my possession since it was first published in 2001, and while I have flipped through the pages of historical prints and food-based artwork more than once, I’m not certain of just how much I have actually read. If you’re interested in plant history and ethnobotany, this book is a great place to start. It’s not exactly a definitive tome on the subject but it’s a beautiful book that provides just enough insight to draw you into searching out more. It also gives you something to talk about in mixed company. Now if only they’d make a gardener’s trivial pursuit for geeks like me.

Next week I am off on a month long journey to The Caribbean. As you can imagine I am extremely excited about food and plants. One of the plants I am most stoked about seeing up close and personal is the vanilla orchid. I have actually seen the vining plant growing in the greenhouse of a botanical garden, but I have never seen one growing outdoors and in bloom nor smelled the scent of its flowers. Or touched a green pod straight off the plant for that matter. Everything about the vanilla from its history to the process of growing and fermenting the beans fascinates me to no end. I found a book at a used bookstore last week that indulges everything one could want or need to know about vanilla. I plan to read it during the first part of my trip to get in the mood to see vanilla towards the end. Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance, written by Patricia Rain, the self-proclaimed Queen of Vanilla is indeed what I would call a definitive tome on the subject, covering everything including a sampling of interesting new ways to use vanilla in cooking. If the beans are affordable and customs allows me to bring some back, I plan to get a whole bunch as gifts for friends. I’d also like to try my hand at making homemade vanilla extract to give as gifts. I am after-all going to be visiting places known for both decent rum and vanilla production. I should be able to produce a quantity of excellent extract affordably. I think I’m going to need bigger luggage.

A third book, one that I have gone to many times and have even posted about here is Herbal: The Essential Guide to Herbs for Living by Deni Bown. I bought my copy back in 2002 after much deliberation. At $58.00 the book is not exactly cheap but I promise you it is worth the dough if you are curious about the historical background and usage of the herbs you like to grow or are seeking inspiration to try a few exotics. The book does contain some growing information but is not meant as a gardening primer. I’d suggest Exotic Herbs by Carole Saville, or New Book of Herbs by Jekka McVicar if you’re looking for more definitive growing considerations for a wide variety of common and unusual herbs.

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October 19, 2009

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Extending the Harvest

This piece was originally published in The Globe & Mail over the weekend as a part of my series on kitchen gardening.

Regarding using burlap and burlap sacks: Just to be clear, do keep them away from the crowns of your plants since they can get awfully heavy when wet. In fact, they are best used over the winter to prevent the erosion of large, open patches of soil from which annuals have been removed. Even better still, place the dead plant matter (browns) and some kitchen scraps (greens) underneath the burlap and you’ll have fresh compost on the spot come spring.

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I love a fresh, crisp fall day. Many of us would agree that it would be the best season of the year if not for the fact that it is a stepping-stone to the inevitable: winter.

Who knows what this fall will bring given the wacky weather hijinx we’ve experienced this year. But let’s pretend for a moment that everything will go as planned and there won’t be snow sprinkled on the peppers tomorrow morning (please gods). We can’t control the weather or stave off the inevitable, but as gardeners there are a few methods we can employ to hold back the effects of seasonal change and keep the party going just a wee while longer.

You’re already one step ahead if your garden is a raised bed. They warm up slightly early in the spring and tend to stay warmer as the fall cools down. A thick layer of mulch such as straw, buckwheat hulls, or shredded newspaper keeps the soil and surface roots warm through nippy nights and breezy fall days. An actual blanket made of burlap gets the job done too, but can get awfully heavy when wet so be sure to cut big holes to keep it off the crowns of plants. An even better blanket still is black plastic. The dark colour attracts the sun’s rays and the plastic holds moisture through fluke fall droughts.

In lieu of cumbersome blankets, which can be difficult to maneuver in small spaces, or used alongside them, are an assortment of store-bought and homespun contraptions that can be fitted over individual plants or entire beds to trap warm air and create the effect of a miniature greenhouse. Hoop houses are toasty-warm tunnels made of metal or plastic hoops draped with a clear plastic tarp that let’s light in and keeps warm air from escaping. You can buy them ready made from garden suppliers such as Lee Valley or make your own inexpensively using bendable metal shaped into arcs or dollar-store hula-hoops cut in half. Push the arcs into the soil intermittently to support the length of the tunnel and cover with a big sheet of plastic. Secure the plastic in place by stapling to the sides of raised beds or with clips purchased at the hardware store.

Greenhouses made to cover individual plants are called cloches. Fancy glass cloches are nice to look at but expensive at about $30-40 a pop! Never mind, you can make as many as you like in a variety of sizes for free from plastic water bottles rescued from the recycling bin. Simply cut off the bottom and set the cloche over tender greens or frost-sensitive plants you’d like to keep in the garden just a little bit longer. Keeping the cap in place locks warmth inside, or you can remove it to water your plants and let heat escape on particularly sunny days.

Cold frames are the way to go if you’d like to get a shot at keeping particularly cold hardy greens such as mâche, kale, spinach, and arugula producing food straight through into the winter (and beyond). It’s really nothing more than a low-tech box with a hinged glass or plastic lid. The trick is to dig the box at least a few inches into well-draining soil and give it a south-facing position. Open the lid when it gets too hot, and insulate both the sides and top with newspapers, straw, and old burlap sacks when night temperatures drop below freezing. They’re not exactly practical when growing up on a roof or in pots but compact versions set on top of a planter box will ensure at least a few extra homegrown salads this fall.

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You Grow Girl™

Books by Gayla Trail

This Week’s Inspiration

Foodcycles

Stevie, Not Wonder

Let’s Learn About the Historical Origins of Herbs, Fruits and Vegetables

Extending the Harvest