Ramping Up

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Dave @ HappyAcres

As the days are slowly but surely getting longer, they are also getting busier here at HA.  I seem to be smack dab in the middle of full-blown seed starting mode! I’ve got one 200-cell plug flat full of seedlings that I started last week (lettuce, kohlrabi, arugula, chard, beet greens), and I started another one yesterday with cabbage, broccoli, radicchio and Asian greens.

plug flat with seedlings

I’ve got one flat of scallion seedlings started back on New Years Day, and some more onion seedlings that are ready to be transplanted. And I have 3 flats of salad greens that I am planting as needed to replace the greens as they are harvested in the greenhouse. I like to think of those seedlings as Junior Salads!

Deep Purple and White Spear scallion seedlings

I’ve plugged in the heating mat and using it to give some bottom heat for petunia seeds. In a few weeks the mat will be used for the tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings. I’ll be starting those seeds beginning the first week of March. After that it will be time to start herbs, and flowers.

salad seedlings ready to plant

And I’m also in full-blown planning mode here as well. Today my wife and I have a meeting with the Warrick County Master Gardeners at a large local church. The church and the MG’s are planning a food pantry garden, much like we did with our church garden last year, and they wanted us to share our experiences and give them some tips. I also need to do some planning for our own church garden. And we need to schedule a meeting with the folks for the new Impact Garden project. I think our own garden is pretty well planned, though I need to update my plot charts.

In my spare time, I’m taking a Purdue class on organic vegetable growing, part of my continuing eduction as a Master Gardener. It’s a good thing I like gardening, because it sounds to me like 2011 is already shaping up to be another busy year!

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My Lettuce Isn’t Perfect, And I’m OK About That

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Dave @ HappyAcres

We try our best to not let anything go to waste here at Happy Acres. My parents grew up during the Great Depression, when food was often hard to come by, and they taught me to not be wasteful. “Waste not, want not” they often told me, and I guess it made a lasting impact.

A lot of food does get wasted in the United States, way too much for my tastes. Though the data is some 15 years old, this 1997 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture addresses the problem of America’s food losses, and I believe it is worth reading for anyone interested in this topic.

The report estimates that in 1995 around 96 billion pounds of food were wasted or lost by consumers, retailers and food service operations. And please note, that is “billions” with a B! 5.4 billion pounds were wasted at the retail level, while a staggering 91 billion pounds were lost by consumers and the food service industry. All told, the 96.4 billion pounds lost were 27 percent of the food available to eat in the U.S. What a waste of food, not to mention the waste of water and energy resources that went into growing and transporting the food.

And the problem isn’t just in the U.S. either. In 2008 the Stockholm International Water Institute published a study titled “Saving Water: From Field to Fork – Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain”. It claims that 50 percent of the available food worldwide is wasted, causing a crisis of water, food and hunger.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers for this global problem, but I can do my best to make sure I’m not guilty of wasting food myself. We attack the problem here in our own household in several different ways.

For one thing, we rarely throw away any leftover food. We generally freeze any leftovers for later use. In fact, we often cook extra for that very purpose. Today we had leftover frozen soup for lunch, and it was a quick and easy way to get a meal on the table. Later today I am going to cook a big batch of black beans in the pressure cooker, and I know we will have a lot of those to freeze. I call that “planned leftovers”, and it’s a strategy that works well for us. In addition to not being wasteful, it also keeps us from having to spend so much time cooking and preparing meals.

freezer inventory

We also preserve as much as possible of the food we grow ourselves by dehydrating, freezing and canning. We keep an inventory of what’s in the freezer, so we know at a glance what is available. And we make a sweep on our freezers at least once a year to make sure nothing is hiding from us. All this helps to keep waste at a minimum. If we find something that is getting old, we try and use it while it’s still edible.

almost perfect Radichetta lettuce (click on photos to enlarge)

We’ve also learned that the food we grow and eat doesn’t have to look perfect in order to be tasty and healthy. Much food is wasted by consumers and retailers because of purely cosmetic reasons. We do our best to eat all of the “cosmetically challenged” food we can here. We had salad for lunch the other day, and some of the lettuce leaves had brown tips on them. In a grocery, the produce is trimmed and primped and those leaves would likely have been thrown away.

brown spots on lettuce

Here, those less than perfect leaves wound up in my salad bowl, and I happily ate them. After all, I had watched that lettuce grow from a seed to a nice sized plant, and I wasn’t willing to waste a single leaf of it!

perfectly delightful salad

And we do compost all of our kitchen scraps (except for meat), coffee grounds, tea bags, and paper. All of those things are too good to go to waste, and by composting we will later put them to good use to grow more food.

How about the rest of you? What tips and tricks do you all have for avoiding waste in your household? I’d love to learn more ways we can reduce our waste, and maybe you would too.

Posted in Food, Misc Rants | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Gardening Book Review: Oriental Vegetables

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook
By Joy Larkcom

232 pages

I bought this book last year when I was looking to expand my knowledge about growing and cooking with Oriental vegetables. I have found that there isn’t a whole lot of detailed information available in the Western world regarding these fascinating and great tasting vegetables. Most gardening books I have read will perhaps offer some scant details on Chinese cabbage and maybe Pak Choi, but that is about it. This book helped immensely to fill my knowledge gap, and it is now occupying a prime spot on my gardening bookshelf.

The English author’s love affair with Chinese vegetables began back in the 1970’s, when seeds were hard to find and information was just about as scarce. After growing them for years by trial and error she realized their potential for success with many gardeners. In 1985 she arranged for a tour of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan. There she talked with gardeners, growers, and market vendors in her quest to learn more. After her trip, she also did extensive research in North America to see what various Oriental communities in the West were growing.

Armed with this research plus personal knowledge gained from her own experience, she set out to write the book. It was first published in 1991, with a second edition out in 2007. The second edition is the one I bought.

In the book, she has concentrated more on Chinese and Japanese varieties, with particular emphasis to the Brassica family. She acknowledges that naming of the plants is a highly confusing issue, and provides some welcome clarity by listing the botanical names as well as commonly used names in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, and English languages.

The book is divided into three parts, with part one being an encyclopedia of plants. She purposely leaves out many vegetables that are fairly common in the West, such as eggplant, melons, okra, peppers, spinach, and tomatoes, in order to concentrate on the more unfamiliar ones. For the Oriental vegetables there are detailed instructions given on growing them, including climate requirements, spacing, harvesting and storage. Of particular interest to me was the information on what causes the brassicas to bolt, and the ways to avoid this common problem. Missing are any photographs, which would have been nice to have. The book is illustrated with black and white drawings by Elizabeth Douglass.

Part two is devoted to gardening techniques, with special emphasis given to methods and practices particularly helpful for the Oriental vegetables. Many of these vegetables lend themselves to intensive cropping, and a section is devoted to ways of improving and maintaining soil fertility and health. The author grows organically, with no use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or weed killers. There is a nice section on protected cropping that offers a primer on using greenhouses, poly tunnels, cold frames, cloches and row covers to extend the season for these crops.

Part three has recipes and cooking tips, while the appendices contain growing charts, a plant name cross reference, and a long list of international sources for seeds.

In summary, I found this book to be an invaluable reference book, and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about growing this fascinating group of vegetables. This book concentrates more on the growing of Oriental vegetables rather than on the cooking of them, and in doing so it nicely fills a void on the subject.

DISCLAIMER: I did not receive a copy of this book for reviewing, I am not related to the author, blah blah blah.

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January Breads

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Dave @ HappyAcres

We got off to a good start in January with our 2011 bread baking adventures. I’ve got a lot of recipes I want to try, and some new cookbooks to check out. The cold snowy weather helped too. When it’s really cold I’d much rather stay inside, get the oven going, and bake some bread!

I made this Pain de Campagne using  Peter Reinhart’s formula from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The dough had an overnight ferment in the refrigerator, which resulted in a great flavor. I formed the dough into batards for the final rise. The slack, wet dough spread more sideways instead of going up, but other than that the bread was great. For a rustic country bread made mostly with unbleached flour, this recipe is a keeper.

Pain de Campagne (click on any photo to enlarge)

Another thing we tried for the first time was making some snack crackers using the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes (HBinFive) whole wheat Master dough. We rolled the dough out as thin as we could directly on parchment paper. For one batch we brushed on olive oil and sprinkled the dough with white and black sesame seeds. For another batch we brushed the dough with melted butter and then added cinnamon sugar. Both versions were pretty tasty, but my wife and I agreed the results weren’t really worth the effort. The thin, crunchy grissini she makes with this same dough is easier to make and tastier. That didn’t stop us from eating all the little crackers though!

whole wheat snack crackers

Another new recipe we tried was this Cracked Wheat bread from HBinFive. I love using cracked wheat in breads, and this dough had a full cup of it (about 14%). We made this into several breads. I managed to turn out a halfway decent looking epi loaf with it. I need more practice with my snipping and shaping, but I’m getting better at it.

Cracked Wheat epi

I also made a boule shape with the dough. The cracked wheat really makes for an interesting taste and texture, especially on the surface of the bread. This loaf had a nice open crumb and a great taste.

Cracked Wheat in boule shape

My wife couldn’t wait to make some grissini with this dough. Of all the doughs she has used for these crispy breadsticks, the Cracked Wheat is now our favorite. She rolls the dough out thin (about 1/8 of an inch), then cuts it into narrow strips using a pastry cutter.

making grissini

After cutting into strips, she brushes them with olive oil (sometimes flavored with garlic and herbs) and bakes them on a baking sheet until brown and crispy. There are never any leftovers when she makes these!

crispy grissini breadsticks

Our featured bread for January wasn’t really new to us. That’s the Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat bread, also from HBinFive. My wife made this last year when she was baking her way through the book. This time I made up a full batch of the sinfully decadent dough that is made with whole wheat and unbleached flours, eggs, cocoa, strong coffee and semisweet chocolate chips. This time I used some of the King Arthur Double-Dutch Dark Cocoa, and it resulted in a deep, dark colored dough.

Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat dough

I made most of this batch into muffins, some of which I took into the soup kitchen to share with the other volunteers. Made into muffins, they look a lot like chocolate cupcakes. But they are really little mini brioches, chocolatey but not too sweet. You’d never know they have whole wheat flour in them! I brushed the dough with some egg wash and sprinkled a little raw sugar on top before baking.

Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat muffins

I also made a loaf out of this batch. I had a little more than two pounds of dough (2.25 pounds), which was likely a tad too much for the 8.5″x4.5″ loaf pan, because the top cracked during baking. That didn’t affect the flavor any, and I’ll make this bread again, but put a little less dough in the pan.

Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat loaf

I hope you enjoyed a look into what breads we were baking in January. I’m not sure what we will bake in February, but I am sure we will have a lot of fun baking and eating them all!

Posted in Baking, Food | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Snow Daze

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It snowed again here yesterday. By the looks of things, we got maybe 2 inches of the stuff. We’ve had a lot of snow days this winter season. Not necessarily a lot of snow at one time, but a lot of ‘little’ snows. I am thankful we haven’t been buried by any blizzards like so many have been this winter.

For the first snow of the season, we rushed out, cameras in hand, snapping photos of anything and everything. But by the 9th or 10th snow, I’m a little less anxious to go out there. I mean, how many snow photos do I really need?

looks like it snowed...again

The snow is pretty, but I’ve seen enough. I have a lot of salad seedlings growing in the basement. Now all I need is a break in the weather to get some of them planted.

salad seedlings under lights

I guess you could say I’m ready for Snow Daze to turn into Salad Daze!

lettuce seedlings

I really don’t want to wish any of my life away, but I am definitely ready for spring!

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