Grow Your Own

As you're probably aware, if you've read my posts this past week, I'm house-sitting a property just shy of an acre.

This involves care-taking a large yard with vegetable garden, young fruit trees, and chicken coop with 11 laying hens, 2 laying ducks, and one bossy black gander.

The advantage to my situation is having access to free-range organic eggs and young spring greens, which I've been incorporating into the meals I've been blogging about lately.















The additional benefit is the savings on my food bill. When you grow your own, or have access to a garden, as I do, your grocery bill is substantially less.

I think I spent around $40 at Whole Foods last weekend on fish, poultry and ground buffalo, organic apples, pears, a bunch of organic carrots, a pack of organic baby bell peppers, a loaf of sprouted Ezekiel bread and my favorite snack food, Boulder Canyon potato chips, plus a couple other small items.

It was May last year that I integrated into my posts information I heard Micheal Pollan, the food activist, share on local radio on the topic of eating a mostly plant-based diet, and when possible, plants you've grown.

I''ll reprint here three things he made a point of stressing on air:

1. Most of what we're eating today is not food.
2. Eat food, mostly plants, and not too much.
3. If you invest $60 in growing your own veggie garden, in the first year, you'll reap $200 worth of produce.

Embracing a backyard-to-table lifestyle means I'm most aware of point number three, that is the budgetary advantage to growing your own.

However, lots of people do not have a yard (I don't when I'm not care-taking others'). Yet the absence of one's very own backyard is no longer a barrier to planting, nurturing and harvesting organic vegetables.

For instance, community gardens rent small plots of earth where it's simply a matter of turning up, tilling the soil, planting, tending, watering, and harvesting your own. Check the American Community Gardening Association to locate a community garden in your neighborhood.

Or what about this: consider sharing your green thumb with a local farmer or vegetable gardener in exchange for fresh produce.

If you're in a big city, and thinking there's no way you'd ever have access to growing your own produce, check out the Urban Farming Program. Spear-headed by former singer and songwriter, Taja Sevelle, one of my favorites within the program is Edible Walls, a vertical farming project -- I mean how creative is that, growing produce in planters attached to the sides of buildings!

Maybe you don't have a backyard, but perhaps you do have a bit of front lawn and a flower bed. There's a local movement where I live called Boulder Community Roots which supports the conversion of lawns into vegetable gardens.

And if you live out in California, the latest trend is urban foraging. Maybe you won't get to till the earth, plant, nurture the crop as it grows, but foraging will give you the benefit of collecting surplus harvest from backyards, farms and businesses.

Check out these websites: NeighborhoodFruit and VeggieTrader and FallenFruit and consider implementing a similar program in your community.

Happy harvesting!

Rhubarb with DuckEgg Cornbread

Earlier this week I wrote about the unusual delights of green rhubarb as a savory compote to meats, poultry and fish.

With plenty of rhubarb in the garden, I stewed another batch of the fibrous green vegetable and wondered what I might do with it this time.

This month, in addition to care-taking a large yard with vegetable garden, and a dozen young fruit trees, I'm also feeding, watering and daily collecting eggs from 11 laying hens and 2 laying ducks.

The duck eggs are mounting in the fridge because I haven't eaten them, and the families who drop by to collect eggs prefer the chicken eggs over their richer cousins.

Perhaps you've eaten or cooked with duck eggs and noted that they have a strong flavor, bright orange-yellow yolks that are higher in fat than chicken eggs, and thick protein-rich whites.

We had two, Khaki Campbell ducks in our backyard when I was growing up. My mother loved that they ate the snails and grubs in her garden and she loved to use their eggs primarily for baking, in particular rich and buttery dried-fruit and nut cakes.

So standing in front of the open fridge today, looking at the duck eggs and the stewed rhubarb, it occurred to me that I could bake something with a couple of those eggs -- something that I could have eat with the stewed green rhubarb.

Rhubarb with DuckEgg Cornbread

Watch the slide show above and then follow my method steps to prepare this delicious dessert.

1) Wash two fresh duck eggs of any dirt and debris.
2) Pour 2 cups of cornmeal into a bowl; add 1 cup milk or buttermilk or half and half or whipping cream (depending on how rich you want your cornbread to be).
3) To sweeten the cornbread, I added 1 tablespoon of orange marmalade and 2 tablespoons of raspberry jam. I had open bottles in the fridge and decided the chunky jams would make for subtle, fruit sweeteners.
4) Melt 4 ounces of butter and pour over the above ingredients.
5) Add 1 tablespoon of baking powder to the bowl.
6) Break the duck eggs into the batter and stir well.
7) Line an iron skillet with oiled tin foil and then pour the cornbread batter into the skillet.
8) Put the cornbread into a 450-degree oven for 20 mins or until it's golden brown.

To Serve: Slice pieces of warm cornbread and place in bowls. Top with spoonfuls of stewed rhubarb and a dob of leftover fruit jam, which you might prefer to mix through the stewed rhubarb first. Pour half and half, whipping cream or spoon yogurt, sour cream or ice cream to the side of the cornbread.

Baby Turnip Greens & Lacinato Kale

While I have access to a veggie garden bursting with a selection of young tender greens, I'm making the most of it, daily preparing meals from the backyard bounty.

A friend commented on yesterday's post asking me if the green rhubarb I'd prepared from the garden tasted different from red rhubarb. My response was that it's a bit sweeter, or shall we say, less tart than the red variety.

You wouldn't expect the green rhubarb to be slightly sweeter than the red variety since it's natural to assume green is unripe and thus tart -- however, that's not the case with rhubarb.

Just as it's a mistake to assume green rhubarb is more tart than red, it's also erroneous to assume that baby turnips are unripe because they're not yet large and bulbous, and that baby kale will be lacking in flavor because the leaves are delicate.

As you'll note in the slide show above, baby turnips are about the size of radishes and their leaves are soft and smallish, as are the leaves of baby, purple lacinato kale.

What I've noticed eating spring greens from the garden, whether lettuce, spinach, kale, turnip greens, or snap pea greens, is that they're all slightly sweet, tender, and less fibrous than mature greens.

This time last week, I posted a dish made by local farmer, chef and bistro owner, Eric Skokan. Titled, Lamb with Baby Turnips and Pea Greens, I described the method Eric used to cook the dish, and then I also had the opportunity to sit down and eat the meal.

Eric had pan sauteed the baby turnips on high until they browned. He then added a handful of turnip greens and wilted them quickly. Applying this rapid cooking method meant the baby turnips were par-cooked, as were the greens.

I decided to cook the tiny turnips, their greens, and the baby lacinato kale I'd picked, longer than a rapid saute, since the toughness of the par-cooked turnips wasn't pleasant.

You can follow my method in the steps below or in the slide show above.

Baby Turnip Greens & Lacinato Kale
1) Wash a handful of baby lacinato kale leaves and the same of turnip greens.
2) Cut the baby turnips from the stalks, leaving maybe an inch of stalk in place. Cut each baby turnip either in half or quarters.
3) Trim the woody stalks from all the leaves. You might even peel the leaves off some of the tougher stalks.
4) Now chop half an onion into chunks, and a red bell pepper or a carrot.
5) Toss the onion, pepper and or carrot into a oil-lined skillet and saute over medium heat.
6) Toss the halved (or quartered) turnips into the skillet and stir.
7) Now add the kale and turnip greens and stir the veggies until the leaves begin to wilt.
8) Add a splash of water (maybe quarter of a cup) and put the lid on the skillet. Cook the vegetables on med to low for about 5-7 mins.
9) Test the turnips for tenderness; cook longer if they need it, and season to taste.

To Serve: At the top is a picture of the platted vegetables without meat. I decorated the edge of the plate with the turnips, and dotted rock salt over the middle pile of greens.

To the left is a version of the dish, with chunks of organic buffalo and rice meatloaf at the edge of the plate. I topped the meat with spoonfuls of a sweet tomato relish since it complimented the slight bitter-sweet flavor of the greens.

Savory Green Rhubarb with Goat Cheese

A savory, onion scent is wafting through the kitchen as I type. I have green rhubarb on the stove simmering with celery, ginger, apple and onion.

We think of rhubarb, which is available early spring, in conjunction with sweet summer fruits like strawberries. Yet because it is sour, it's well suited as a stewed savory side to meats, poultry and fish.

Prior to today, I'd not eaten rhubarb as a savory dish, but because a green variety of the celery-like vegetable is growing large at the bottom of the garden on the property I'm care-taking this month, I thought, why not!

Why not stew it with complimentary vegetables like celery and onion, plus some ginger and apple -- all of which seemed to me as though they'd be delicious with the tart-tasting stalks.

I was right! The vegetables I chose to stew with the rhubarb stalks created a tart though slightly sweet compote that didn't need seasoning.

However, because the consistency of the compote, after 10 minutes of cooking, was creamy, I felt some additional creaminess in the form of a spoonful of goats cheese, would add just the right note of flavor and texture to finish the stewed vegetables.

If you'd like to try your hand at preparing savory rhubarb, follow the slide show above and my method recipe below.

Savory Green Rhubarb with Goat Cheese
1) Wash a couple stalks of green or red rhubarb. Remove some of the outer fibrous strings, and cut the stalks into pieces.
2) Repeat this process with a couple of celery stalks.
3) Cut half an onion and half an apple into chunks.
4) Slice off a small piece of ginger root, peel, and chop into tiny bits.
5) Put all of the above ingredients into a saucepan with half a cup of water. Simmer on low for about 10 mins or until the vegetables have cooked to a soft, compote consistency.
6) Set aside and allow compote to cool.
7) Add about a tablespoon of either goat cheese or cream cheese or sour cream to the vegetable compote and stir till the cheese or cream has blended in.
8) Taste test. You might find it needs a little zing; if so add some lemon zest or salt and pepper.

To Serve: Spoon a portion of the rhubarb compote into a bowl and top with slices of roasted rosemary chicken, or a fillet of poached fish -- such as the mahi mahi I featured last week.

I topped my sliced, leftover roasted rosemary chicken pieces with toasted walnuts, and to the side, I spooned some tomato chutney (shown in the slide show above). Instead of chutney, you might prefer to add a spoonful of fresh tomato salsa.