At the end of a row of radishes I planted a variety that’s new for me this year: black radish. I had no idea what to expect. Would they really turn out black?
I never eat as many radishes as I plant. Many of them just keep growing until they are sprouting flowers. I usually just [...]
Entries from July 2008
Black Radish
July 31st, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
First Okra
July 30th, 2008 · 8 Comments · Uncategorized
In case there was any doubt that vegetables fresh out of the garden beat the pants off the store-bought kind, we harvested our first okra the other day and made a big batch of smothered okra. This is our go-to recipe for okra flavor and simplicity. I don’t know how you improve upon it: [...]
Food Prices: Is There Really Anything to Debate?
July 29th, 2008 · 7 Comments · Uncategorized
Got an e-mail from a PR type today wanting me to post something about a debate over on the Economist magazine’s website, the proposition being: “There is an upside for humanity in the rise of food prices.”
To which my initial response would have to be, YOU’RE BLEEPING KIDDING, RIGHT?
Only a group of over-fed economists [...]
Cajun Pickles
July 29th, 2008 · 7 Comments · Uncategorized
Sometimes you look at a recipe and instantly know something isn’t right.
Take this one for Cajun pickles from a certain book on pickling. At the top of the recipe it says the yield will be four quarts of pickles. But only a few lines lower down it calls for a gallon of water for [...]
Onion Harvest
July 28th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized
How do you know when your onions are ready to harvest?
The foliage falls to the ground and turns brown.
These are the onions we harvested last week. This is our first year growing onions, so I qualify only as an onion novice. We were hoping for bigger onions. The red ones were particularly small–only the [...]
Weekend Update
July 27th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
With hundreds of people nationwide made ill and millions of dollars worth of tomato crop ruined, you may be wondering how it happens that our federal government is unable to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak.
In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration still isn’t sure where the disease originated. After initially implicating [...]
Tags: food news
First Green Beans
July 26th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
I’ve been watching the beans swell in the bean patch and calculating when the time might be ripe for a harvest. The moment arrived yesterday with friends coming for dinner. I was amazed to see what a bounty my little plants had provided.
These are the Italian Romanette variety, a wide and flat bush bean [...]
Tags: beans·dinner·entertaining·garden·summer
Great Big Vegetable Challenge: The Book
July 25th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
A package arrived from Great Britain yesterday and look what was inside: the cooking adventures of our friends Charlotte and Freddie at The Great Big Vegetable Challenge blog, in three-dimensional book form.
It’s been great fun watching the blog unfold with A to Z recipes aimed at getting children to partake of the vegetable kingdom. [...]
Tags: blogging·books·kids·vegetables
Mustard Pickles
July 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
We have spared no effort in our relentless search for the world’s best pickles. Meaning, we pulled every book with a pickling recipe from our cookbook library and dove in.
This particular preparation for mustard pickles involves no fermentation or anything even resembling a fermentation, unless you count the soaking overnight in hot water. It [...]
Two-Stroke Madness
July 23rd, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
It’s 90 degrees, the polar ice caps are melting and gasoline is more than $4 a gallon. But apparently that’s not enough to stop the Landscapers from Hell.
And what is this man chasing with his giant leaf blower? Perhaps you can see the little trail of grass clippings blown up against the granite curb.
Does [...]
Tags: environment·summer
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
