The start of my urban garden

Veggie tofu stir-fry with peanut sauce

Stir-fried peppers, broccoli, onions, purple potatoes, and tofu. The sauce is peanut butter mixed with apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and chili sauce.

Making vegetable stock from scraps

Beans!

I received the heirloom beans I had ordered from Rancho Gordo in the mail today. Just looking at them is amazing. I can't wait to taste them. Clockwise from the left they are: Yellow Eye Beans (I had actually ordered Yellow Indian Women, but they sent me these instead. I'll just have to try those another time), Vaquero (a cousin to the Anasazi, also called the Orca Bean), and Moro Beans (really an exquisite modeled purple/mauve/gray color). I set some aside to plant, and the rest I'm going to eat.

A Poem I wrote when I was five

No matter who I try to be
I always end up being me

Recipe: Kidney beans, chard with bacon, and polenta

Trying to fit in one last, southern, winter meal before the spring really starts.

Beans: Soak beans overnight, saute some onion and garlic in oil, then add the beans with their soaking liquid and enough water to cover the beans by about 2 inches. Bring to a boil, then cover, turn down to a low simmer, and cook for about 2 hours. Season as desired.

Chard: Fry some bacon in a skillet, remove bacon, and reserve about a tablespoon of grease. Add chopped chard, a few tablespoons of stock or water, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar, some salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Cover and cook until chard cooks down, then remove lid until liquid cooks off (you may have to pour off some of the excess liquid), and add chopped bacon.

Serve with polenta and hot sauce.

Recipe: Lima beans with wild mushrooms and chard

This is modified from a recipe in Bon appetit. I changed it some and adapted it for the slow cooker.

Ingredients:
1 lbs large lima beans (soaked overnight)
1 1/2 lbs mushrooms (I bought a 1.5 oz package of wild mushrooms, some fresh baby bella, and already had some oyster mushrooms I had collected)
Olive oil
1 onion
8 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6 cups (lightly packed) Swiss Chard


Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft. Add to slow cooker along with soaked lima beans, pepper, thyme, and about 6 cups of water. Cook on high for about 3 hours.
If using dried mushrooms: rehydrate by soaking in hot water. Strain and add the liquid to the beans. If using fresh mushrooms: saute in butter and oil until soft.
Add the mushrooms to the beans and cook for about another hour (or until beans are very soft).
Add the chopped chard during the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Serve with some thick slices of bread. Enjoy!

Baby leaves!

red oak

hickory

beech

white oak

Recipe: Roasted vegetables and crockpot polenta

Polenta: Whisk 7 1/2 cups water with 1 1/2 cups cornmeal and a little salt in the slow-cooker. Cook on high for 1 hour, stir, and turn down to low for about 5 hours. You know the polenta is ready when a wooden spoon will stand upright:

When it is done add a half a cup of cheese (I used Parmesan), a half a stick of butter, and fresh ground pepper.

Roast vegetables: These are the vegetables I used, just because they were what I had on hand: carrots, onions, turnips, sweet potato (purple!), bell pepper, asparagus, and garlic. But really, you could use almost any vegetable that is in season. String beans are terrific, as are parsnips and fennel.

Cut the vegetables into chunks and coat lightly with olive oil (I do this by putting olive oil on my hands, and then using my hands to toss the veggies). I then added some fresh thyme, pepper, and coarse ground sea salt. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes or so at 325. You can up the temperature and shorten the time if you're in a hurry. In the morning, use the leftover veggies in an omelette, and slice and fry up the cold polenta:(this isn't an omolette, but you get the idea)

My latest school creation

I wrote a paper on the various taxonomic treatments of the highbush blueberries. The paper was only a midterm project in a class I'm already guaranteed an A in, but I got really into researching and ended up spending about 30 hours on it (at the expense of some of my other classes). It's pretty boring to read (even if you love blueberries), but I'm kind of proud of it.
So without further ado, The Taxonomy of the Highbush Blueberry.

Morning walk

I went out behind my apartment on a rather chilly (for Raleigh at least) spring morning. Here's some of the things I saw.

A snail on the catkins of a hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana)

redbud (Ceris canadensis) flowers

Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) fronds