The Wonders of Miracle-Gro

I'm all for all natural, organic, whatever.  I understand the potential impact on the ecomony, our lives, ... that "poisions" can have, I agree that local is always better, and I think we should all look to continue to find ways to do "one thing better" for the planet. 
In the last few years, my H and I have converted all of our light bulbs to compact flourescent (that's over 50 bulbs mind you!), unplugged all of the appliances we aren't using on a daily basis, adjusted our watering to NOT between 10-6, stepped up on the recycling, amoung many other things.  Though I still struggle with remembering the reusable bags and I don't think I'll ever compost, the one thing I can say for sure is, I'm not giving up my Miracle-Gro!  This stuff is awesome!  My geraniums look awesome, my vegetable area is growing and I feel like I can really see a garden starting.
I asked a friend who has a garden and is organic what she uses to make everything grow and flourish and she said Miracle-Gro!   Now if only I could find something to deter the bugs that worked so well.

Before Miracle-Gro 

After 1 week with Miracle-Gro

First Harvest

After building a garden, buying seeds, watching weather reports, trying out transplants, killing transplants, buying transplants, and more, we have our first harvest....RADISHES...

Right out of the garden (on the left)  Cleaned and ready to eat (on the right)

For some this may look like a small harvest.  But his is in ONE SQUARE FOOT of garden.  My plan is not to have rows and rows of one vegetable, but to have variety.  Just enough of each so we can enjoy them without hating them.  For someone who use to call herself a "brown thumb" because I killed everyint, I'm pretty happy about these. 

Even better, is they were great!  I hate grocery store radishes - bitter and harsh, but these are sweet and have a nice little bite.  T & I have been enjoying them all weekend.

The Mystery Ingredient

With the hub bub of work, we sometimes forget to slow down, enjoy life, and try something new.  My job this year is so busy, I struggle to do what I enjoy most... cook.  So trying something out of the box or new is bascially unheard of.  I love feeding my family with good, wholesome food but life doesn't always give me that oppurtunity. 
One way that I do try new recipes is by being a tester for Company X (sorry, won't disclose).  Soporadically I recieve emails asking me to try out a recipe and give feedback. I assume the intent is they then publish these in their rmagazine (only clue you'll get) sometime later in time with the feedback they've recieved.  These are fun because they are unplanned.  But, lately they've all been meat based and not conducive to being "in season" for my local area, something I've tried to be more conscience of. 
So I was ecstatic earlier this week when I recieved an email from our resident chef (at work) that there was an oppurtunity to try  mystery ingredient!  The first in a series he's starting.  Not only that, but they had measured out all of the ingredients for the recipe, all ready for you to pick up.  What an awesome add to an otherwise droning day?! (Is droning a word?).  So run dowstairs I did to pick up a bag. What was even more fun was I knew right away what the mystery ingredient was and I hadn't ever even considered you could cook it!
So, home that night and we had a great start to a meal... mystery ingredient and recipe, grilled tilapia (my new fav), and some Asian style rice. 
I know you are wondering what was the mystery ingredient and was it any good?

Asian Style Pea Greens

Chef Stephen's Mystery Ingredient Challenge #1
1/2 lb mystery ingredient
2 T rice vinegar
1T fish sauce
1/2 T coarse salt
1 T roasted seasame oil
1 small green pepper or Thai Chili, seeded and thinly sliced
1/3 c canola oil
1/2 shallot, thinly sliced
seasame seeds for garnish

1. Rinse, drain and gently pat dry mystery ing. & coarsely chop.  Place in serving bowl.
2. Combine  vinegar, fish sauce, salt, seasame oil, chili in small bowl.  Let flavors meld for 5 minutes and then toss with mystery ing.
3. Heat wok or skillet over high heat.  Add canola oil & swirl then add sliced shallots.  Lower heat anf fry until shallots are golden brown.  Stir so they don't burn.  Spoon some of the oil and all of the shallots over the mystery ing to wilt slightly. 
4. Spril with sesame seeds and serve.

My husband LOVED these!  This serves 4, and he ate two servings worth and wanted me to save the recipe.  I'm not sure where to buy pea greens, but I would guess this recipe would work for any hardy greens. 

Enjoy!

As the Garden Grows..

About a month ago, my husband and I finally took on the task of building the vegetabel garden we (mostly, I) have wanted for the last few years.  The good news, is we had already done all of hte legwork to determine how much of this or that we needed and the basic costs and locations for each of the items.  The bad news was I hadn't really thought about the plants or what we might grow. 
This is kind of my way of doing things.  I want something so I work toward getting it without considering all of the steps it might take.  Sometimes this leads me down a different path then where I originally thought I would go, sometimes this means it prabably takes twice as long as it should, and sometimes it acutally works.  Since my husband's "job" was the acutal building, we had worked out those details, the rest well, I'm guessing you can fgure out is taking twice as long as it probably should.
So, after a long week away from work, I arrived home to a slightly warmer weekend in early March and the process of building began.  In parallel I was also reading articles, ordering books and looking for seeds to start the actual gardening part. 
The good news is after purchasing everything, we were able to building the garden in a weekend (somehow I thought it would take longer than that).  Here are some pictures of the progress and how much the puppies helped.

Here are pictures of us building the frame for the raised garden out of cinderblocks.

Here is what the finished frame looks like.

Hunter keeping an eye on all of the supplies for us.

 

Adding all of the components: peat moss, shale and compost

Our convenient mixer (easier than with a shovel or hoe).

The completed base for the garden.  The grid is for square foot gardening.

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

WIth this 4' x 9' garden I will be growing 36 different types of crops.  Added to that all of the holes will have a combination of herbs and flowers to brighten the space up.  What is great about SFG is that you each square is designated for one plant so instead of growing a row of broccoli and getting 5-8 heads that mature at once, you only grow one or two in this process. 

So, as the month progressed, the seeds were ordered and planted indoors and out (we're experimenting)Hopefully at least 50% o fwhat we plant is fruiful.  This year is all about experimentation, what grows, what doesn't and my hope is to learn and do better next year.

Sun, Snow, Politics and Facebook

So, it's been awhile since I've posted. This would be a combination of nothing to say and no time to say it.  But, this weekend has caused me to start back up again.  It's been a weekend of very interesting juxtapositions.  Friday, was a beautiful day, though breezy, it was a great time for the nephews to come and fish.  Relatively warm with the promise of a real Texas spring jsut around the corner.   I've been busy working on our soon to be vegetable garden.  Will post about this soon... And this is always an exciting time for year for me.  Looking for those moments when you can truely enjoy nature and the bounty it offers.

Then came Saturday.. Blistering cold and blowing winds.  It caused a spiraling back into the winter gloomies. I mean.. I went to a lovely baby shower with a sweet friend, and then proceeded to come home, pull on the sweat pants, and laid down to sleep and hope the weekend would quickly pass.  It's March.. As I've always said I live in Dallas because it's warm and winter only lasts 3 months (Dec, Jan, & Feb).  This is March, come on!! 

Not only that, but it kept getting worse, waking up Sunday to 8" of snow.  This brings me to FB.  I'm getting tired of the super seriousness and lack of inventiveness on that site.  I make a joking comment about the Dallas weather as an example of the planet not heating up and get jumped on.. Seriously people, lighten up.

And the last of the happy topics... politics.  I'm not sure if I'm for or against the new health care bill, I'm just ready for a decision already.

Good thing it's suppose to warm up again on Tuesday.. I think my mood needs it.