It’s official. This was the hottest summer on record in the District of Columbia.
With meteorological summer having ended Aug. 31, our local weathermen tell us that we experienced a mean high temperature of 90.2 degrees and overall temperature of 81.3 degrees. The previous records were 89.3 and 80 degrees. So far, we’ve had 58 days of [...]
Entries Tagged as 'okra'
Foraged Garden Mash-Up
August 18th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Recipes, garden
Sometimes bits of one thing or another from the garden end up creating their own dish.
As I considered a handful of okra left over from a round of pickling yesterday I wondered what else we had in the garden that might work with it for dinner. A few minutes with a pair of kitchen scissors [...]
Okra Gone Wild
August 10th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Recipes, garden
It’s that time of year when we are racing to harvest our okra. It grows so fast in the heat and humidity here in the District of Columbia that we have to check our okra plants twice a day. You can practically hear the okra pods getting bigger.
But my purpose here is not to bend [...]
Tags: basil·coconut oil·eggplant·okra
Curried Okra-Eggplant Stew with Basil and Coconut Milk
July 23rd, 2010 · 1 Comment · Recipes, garden
The first okra is here!
If you couldn’t tell from the heat, the first okra from the garden is a sure sign that summer is in full swing. Okra loves the heat and humidity here in the District of Columbia, so we have to love okra right back. It is happy to make pods for us [...]
Kids Make Yams And Okra
November 20th, 2009 · No Comments · Ethnic, kids
Get ready to adjust your idea of what constitutes a yam. In Africa, a yam definitely is not the tuber we so frequently confuse with a supermarket sweet potato. Where real yams are concerned, you need to think bigger. A true yam (from a perennial vine in the Dioscoreaceae family) can grow up to eight feet [...]
Tags: African·food appreciation·greens·okra·yams
Saving Okra Seed
November 5th, 2009 · 5 Comments · garden
Saving okra seeds should be easy, right? You can’t hardly miss the seed pods. But the ones I saved from last year resulted in zero germination. What did I do wrong?
The only thing I can think of is I didn’t leave them on the plant long enough. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. [...]
Okra And Pepper Medley
October 14th, 2009 · No Comments · Recipes, garden
Regular readers will be heartbroken to learn that this is the end of our okra for the year. I know, I know. It hardly seems possible. It seems like we were just getting started on the endless possibilities of okra. But the sad truth is impossible to deny: the season is over. There will be [...]
Breakfast
September 28th, 2009 · No Comments · breakfast, garden
Eggs poached in curried okra stew.
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Shopping: none
Food gardening is more like jazz than a symphony. You always have to be ready to improvise, depending on what’s in season. This okra stew usually calls for zucchini and sweet potato leaves. But our champion okra plants have lapped the zucchini and we are out [...]
Fried Okra, Eggplant And Green Tomato
September 21st, 2009 · 4 Comments · Recipes, garden
I normally don’t require a recipe to fry my okra. But I took a cruise through my cookbook library to consider my options and ran across this intriguing entry from Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking. The so-called lowcountry refers to the area around Charleston, South Carolina, and its coastal plain. It boasts it’s own culture and [...]
Tags: eggplant·fry·green tomatoes·okra
Land Of Plenty
September 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Recipes, garden
I wonder if more Americans wouldn’t cook at home if they didn’t get the idea from our popular media that every meal had to rise to the level of restaurant food. The same ethic has been embraced by hundreds of food bloggers, each enticing us with recipes entirely different from what we saw yesterday–photos to drool over, [...]
Tags: okra
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
