Sunday, January 3, 2010

Produce and Plants That will Produce

This weeks CSA box had a mostly familiar things like lettuce, cabbage, parsley, tomatoes, and black zapotes but also had a couple of "mystery" items, beets and "Asian Mix".  I haven't had beets since they were force-fed to me in the 2nd grade (in all meaning of the phrase!) school cafeteria and I don't know what is in Asian Mix.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with the beets, it's not something that's ever even crossed my mind to cook but alas, I'll have to play Iron Chef.  As for the mix, I suspect it will end up in a stir fry or something along those lines. 




I was reading Tinkering with Dinner and he mentioned the lettuce looks good to wrap things in.  I have to agree, the leaves are enormous but I was also thinking that maybe the cabbage could save the same purpose since we have two of them and have to get creative.  I don't like cooked cabbage.  I think it smells like a really stinky fart, I have thought this ever since I can remember.  My grandmother cooked cabbage in the house and made the whole place reek. 

There were other things in the box like dill and mushrooms but we traded them in for the parsley, the asian mix.  The extra cabagge was aslo for the extras box.  I just realized how greedy that was.  I guess the mushrooms make up for it :P

Now, to the thing dear to my heart....my vegetable garden.  It is full speed ahead in my porch!  The Square Foot Garden is sown and everything is sprouting.  The radish plants are big and we'll be eating radishes and bok choi in the next 2 or 3 weeks.  WOOT!  I'm so excited about this, really, I can't believe I'm actually doing it.  This is what I'm currently growing in the SFG and the rest of the containers: butterking lettuce, turnips. cherry belle radish, spinach, sweet onions, lettuce mix for cut and come again, toy choi (baby bok choi), scallions, butternut squash, carrots, cayenne pepper, three different peat pots with a hot pepper mix and I don't know what I planted so we'll see when they fruit, rosemary, Greek oregano, chives, dark opal and Genovese basil, thyme, Copenhagen Market cabbage, sweetie tomato and gartenperle tomato.  Phew!  I sure hope that harvest doesn't coincide with the same produce from the CSA box!

Here are some pictures of the plants.  For more check out my Flickr  Vegetable Garden Collection:



 

 
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1 comment:

  1. billjacJanuary 3, 2010 at 2:43 PM

    I think a lot of us have been traumatized by poorly cooked cabbage as kids, but it doesn't have to come out nasty. If you can get past the ingrained dislike, anyway.

    I've had good experiences pan frying cabbage. The browning brings out a lot of good flavor and I've never had it get stinky. I've heard steaming works well too.

    You've got plenty to work with so you can try test batches of small amounts to see if you like it. Bacon and cider vinegar (in small amounts) are particularly good pairings with fried cabbage.

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