22 December 2010
all wrapped up
In the world of growing young things, it's been a while. I really meant to update this like a week ago, and took lots of pictures in anticipation of multiple posts. Let's re-cap:
The two pea seeds grew. Beautifully. Then a kitten (no names...) bit off the head and left all the leaves scattered around for show. The pea seed grew another head of leaves. Then a kitten bit off the head and pulled out the white round seed itself. Then the seed grew no more. The other one, however, is still making it. I surrounded the container with foil to protect it from aforementioned kittens, and to give it some more reflected light. The green onion shoots are getting long.
Before the second beheading happened, this strangeness happened:
Curious indeed. Through some online forum research (forums for soil...) I found out that mushroom spores can be present in organic potting soil, and in the right conditions (overwatering leads to a lot of moisture build up) the spores burst and mushrooms pop up. They're not really edible, but they're not poisonous, and they don't do anything to the plant other than take over the soil. I had to re-pot the peas, and sterilized the container, used different soil and watered less. No more mushrooms have been seen. The green onions had them as well, but there are so many seeds that it would be really hard to separate the roots from the soil without killing them all. Watering less seems to have quelled the mushrooms in that container.
Saturday morning pancakes before Kevin flew home.
Fresh and local clementines...
Do I post too many pictures of these guys?
The beginnings of a cauliflower and caramelized onion tart. This was my first homemade pastry crust that actually turned out well!
My fogged up window! Alas, not due to the typical reason. The apartment was really warm from roasting veggies and simmering soup (even with a window cracked open), and the temperature outside was relatively cold, along with relentless rain.
Golden beets... they're totally white. Super easy to peel.
With my candy thermometer back in Los Angeles with me, I had the tool needed to make yogurt successfully. So I tried again, and this time I held the milk at 180 degrees Fahrenheit for ten minutes before letting it cool to the incubation temperature of 110. I read comments on The Kitchn in various yogurt-making articles that indicated this to be the key to getting thick yogurt. Lo and behold, the next morning when I took the pot out of the turned-off oven... this is what I had! Thick enough to leave spoon marks. Also, the savings were quite remarkable this time: a gallon of organic milk at Trader Joes in Silver Lake costs $5.99. Unlike before, it was thick enough to not need straining, and since the whey was completely incorporated in the yogurt and there was no liquid loss, so I got four 32 oz. containers of yogurt out of a gallon jug of milk. That's $1.50 a carton, compared to $3.99 on the shelf! Granted, it does cost more of your time: about 30-45 minutes of stirring the milk so it doesn't scorch the bottom of the pot (which I did sitting on a chair reading a magazine) and then checking the thermometer occasionally over another 30-45 minutes in order to get the milk to 110 degrees and putting into the turned-off oven. But I have more time than I have money... so it works for me.
This is in my parent's kitchen, where the marvels of modern technology overwhelm me each time I visit. A dishwasher, a digitally-controlled oven, burners that are under glass and controlled by electricity... fascinating. The excess of marble counter tops is a bit unbelievable as well, as I'm used to approximately 3" x 1" of space to work with. Anyway, I like this picture because it shows the Bell jars I've been using recently. That is one of my four jars of yogurt, and the other is TJ's muesli. I really like keeping dry goods (and liquids) in glass containers... it looks so beautiful and reminds me each time I use them how lucky we are to eat every day.
Check out this awesome mural being constructed near my apartment building. Before, it was this lovely children's mural of people and music notes and trees, but it was vandalized and spray painted, so some lovely guerrilla soul painted it black and is starting over. Each week a different part shows up. At first it was just the cat and the tank. What'll be next? So badass.
In between the working, the cooking, the boyfriend, the kittens, the office holiday parties, and the dinner with a new friend (!)... I was offered a new job! Then, in preparation for leaving for twelve days, I had to pack, clean, use up all my veggies into freezable dishes (see above), return library books, brave Target, and arrange pet sitting, all while living in and travelling around a drenched city. Oh, and my passenger side windshield arm on my car stopped working sometime during the rainstorm. The rain also affected my poor container seedlings, which received a beating... I hope I haven't lost anything. I covered them with a tarp by day two. I hope by the time I get back they'll have sprung back up.
I'll write about the job soon. I'm home in (dry!) Phoenix for the next eight days with not much to do, so there should be some time.
04 December 2010
the seeds have sprouted
I'm becoming something of a homemaker. I make... my home! First, I moved into my own place. Then, I stumbled upon two kittens who are the joys and terrors of my life. I decided to start a worm bin outside on the patio in order to recycle fruit and veggie scraps (as well as my daily dose of coffee grinds). Then I found and signed up for a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group and every two weeks I receive a bounty of locally grown vegetables -- no more plastic wrapped Trader Joes trays of bell peppers for me. I began to make it a point to actually remember to bring canvas bags with me to the store to avoid paper bags, and I have been working to reduce my household waste in general. I re-use foil until it is torn up into bits, I wash and re-use plastic baggies over and over again, and if I find newspapers, I take them home and tear them up for the worms. A few months ago, I decided I wanted to try to grow my own food, right on my tiny patio of my urban studio apartment. The book that got me set up with my worm bins also helped me get started with my container garden. My mom helped me with the basics when I was visiting home at the beginning of November: two plastic containers, potting soil, seedlings (baby plants, to avoid the frustration of starting seeds), a little shovel and some gloves. I picked seedlings that grow well in Southern California's relatively balmy fall/winter season and that I like eating - broccoli, leeks, butter lettuce, garlic, chives, and parsley. I drove everything back to Los Angeles and a few days later, went to work transferring the seedlings from their plastic pots to their new container home.
Here's my wild and wonderful young garden:
Bottom left pot: butter lettuce and leeks. Bottom right pot: broccoli (at 12 noon), parsley (at 7 o'clock) and chives/garlic/herbs at 5. Back pot: to be determined...
It's been about three weeks since I planted my seedlings, and I'm letting nature take its course as I learn how to grow vegetables for the first time. I check on my plants when I leave for work, and I water them every few days, when the soil seems dry. The lettuce hasn't changed much. The leeks have this mane of strange, fine hair that has reduced in size. The parsley is growing well, and I'm not sure where the garlic is but the chives look healthy. (The chives and garlic came in one plastic pot together with a sketchy-looking marker that reads "Chives/Garlic/Herbs". Not sure what herbs...). I'm not going to worry if this doesn't produce a bountiful harvest over the next few months - I'm learning as I go. I'm just excited that I'm growing something, anything.
My basil plant, bought late this past summer at Trader Joes, is still alive! After my neighbor suggested letting it sit in a bowl of water for several hours in order to absorb the moisture it needs to stay healthy, I have been nurturing this little guy ever since. I transferred it into a terracotta pot my mom gave me from her garden, and now it looks very official.
There were already some pots on my patio when I moved in this summer. A couple were empty, and a few housed dying, bedraggled weeds. With my seedlings now planted and hopefully growing, I decided to take a chance with seeds - the plan being to start the seeds inside, grow them to seedling size and then transfer them outside into the various pots I am fortunate to have use of. At my favorite hardware store/nursery in Glendale, I picked up seed packets - spinach, green onions and peas. I noticed a strawberry plant and tomato plant outside in the nursery that I would love to grow, but I think it is best to wait until the weather warms up and I have some experience.
My Urban Homestead book has a small section on starting seeds, but what I thought would be a quick jaunt through the Internet for some additional advice ballooned into an overwhelming pool of often contradictory instructions. Put planted seed containers in light because somehow it makes them grow faster... darkness is fine until they sprout. Left open in a warm place in the house is fine... you must cover with plastic wrap -- no, foil -- to keep the temperature steady. Best to put on top of the refrigerator if possible. I took in all that I read and decided to just go for it.
Shortly after I took this photo, I decided that I'd rather use plastic to cover them - does foil even retain much moisture? - and just in case the karma-of-light-rays-hitting-the-soil-to-help-the-seeds-grow thing was true. I put each pot into a ziploc bag and let it sit on the back shelf area in my kitchen. Each day I took a look to see if anything had changed, although I knew it would take a minimum of five days for any of the seeds to sprout, and possibly up to a month. Each seed has a different germination period, and needs a unique amount of moisture and warmth to grow. Sometimes I'd check the soil and worry it was too dry, so I'd take out the container and put it in a bowl of water for a few hours to allow the soil to soak up some moisture. I put it back in the Ziploc bag before going to bed, hoping I hadn't messed with the constant temperature situation by opening up the Ziploc. You see how much could go wrong? The last time I grew anything from a seed I was in elementary school.
Today , the fifth day since planting, I hopped up onto the kitchen bench to take a look into the bags for any sign of life. I squealed when I saw not just one, but two bright green tendrils poking through the soil in the pea container. I honestly hadn't thought about what would happen when they sprouted. It seemed so far off. Where is the third seed's head? I hope it is on its way.
They're hard to see from this angle, but notice the two wiggly green lines -- bottom center/right, and almost directly across to the left.
Then, upon closer inspection of the green onions, I noticed a handful of tiny white-green shoots. The bark, rocks and other debris in the organic potting soil dwarfs the size of these tiny little things, but they are still there.
Nothing in the spinach container yet. It was the least moist of the three containers, so I am letting it soak in some water and keeping my hopes up. It has only been five days.
You can do it, little spinach!
So far, the Ziploc bag home keeps a warm temperature inside for the seeds, and the little bit of moisture in the bottom of the bag keeps it nice and humid. Opening up the bags for brief periods once in a while didn't seem to affect the initial sprouting, and the regular waterings definitely helped. I read one source that said after the initial watering when planting the seeds, you don't need to water again until they sprout. I'm not sure this is true. But then again, it's trial and error and every seed and situation is different. My actions seem to have been on the right foot, at least for now. I'm excited to see what happens next!
I made homemade yogurt for the first time ever when I went home a few weeks ago. With a temperature-controlled oven and a candy thermometer, I had great success turning a pot of milk into smooth yogurt overnight. I strained it in the fridge and made yogurt even thicker than Fage. Earlier this week, back in Los Angeles, I decided to try the same experiment but in my little 1950s kitchen and with no candy thermometer.
Perhaps I didn't hold the milk at 180 degrees for long enough, or perhaps I didn't reach it. Maybe the oven got too cold while incubating overnight, or perhaps the milk was too hot when I stirred in the 1/2 cup of commercial yogurt. In any case, I opened the turned-off oven and took out the pot to find - disappointment! - the curds and whey had separated, meaning globs of yogurt had formed, but they were floating in liquid. I strained it in order to get the yogurt all together, and after a day in the fridge it was certainly yogurt, but still wasn't smooth like it should be. Edible, though, it was (quite!), and a gallon of 1% milk turned into two quarts of 1% yogurt -- what I usually consume in one week -- with four cups of whey left over that I need to figure out how to make use of.
I am not deterred by this consistency issue; I will keep making it until I find a method that works for me and my finicky little stove. It's a little time consuming and not any cheaper to make it myself ($6 for a gallon of organic milk, $2.99 for a quart of organic yogurt), but it's so cool to do it on your own. I read a great article in the New Yorker about fermentation happening in a hippie enclave in the town of Asheville, North Carolina. I have yet to warm to pickles, but perhaps it's in the cards in the future.
With my CSA pick up offering leafy greens and root vegetables now that it's cooler (think carrots, parsnips, turnips, radishes, spinach, chard, winter squash), I've been finding new recipes to use them all up. Earlier this week I made chicken, potato and fennel soup, a butternut squash galette, and tonight I cooked up some turkey meatballs and pasta with tomato-mizuna sauce. (Mizuna is a leafy green that I don't really know what to do with...). I find my recipes at smitten kitchen, Orangette and the kitchn, as well as by reading variations of the same recipe and then adapting them into my own take. I don't buy veggies from the store anymore, so I work with what I get every two weeks. I can make it last until a few days before I go pick up another box, and it's a good challenge to work with veggies I wouldn't usually buy. I also love that I am supporting local Los Angeles farms. I dream of one day having an enclosed backyard to have a few chickens (for eggs), and finding a butcher where I can buy locally-raised chicken and turkey meat. Actually, a new butcher shop is opening up this month near my workplace, and they are sourcing locally grown meat. It looks badass and I'm excited to go in January.
I bought a small Christmas tree today, a real one, at the hardware store in Glendale. Kevin helped me string around some lights, and I love that it came with bows tied to a few branches. It's my first tree ever in my own place, and adds a lovely note of holiday cheer.
And here are the kittens, for good measure.
I feel very much like the archetypal woman nurturer - boyfriend, animals, plants, seeds, and even worms, all being taken care of under my 400 square foot roof.