It's a start!

A few days ago, we visited our soon to be home (hopefully) and did some outside work. Among pulling vines, pruning trees, and mowing grass, we planted some of our heirloom Brandywine organic tomatoes that we started from seed in Columbia on our balcony. Granted, these guys don't look like much right now, but hopefully they will grow tall and produce some nice greenish-red tomatoes that will taste great!

Here are some pics that were taken by Ash as I got my first lesson on tilling up the ground and the finished result.  I tilled one small strip that would accommodate six plants.  We'll try to keep you updated on these beauties!

Gnocchi and chard

We had a meal the other night that allowed me to try another vegetable! We had gnocchi with chard, pinto beans, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese.

To me, chard had a slightly sweeter taste than spinach, but that was white chard. I'm not sure if red or Swiss chard would have a different flavor.

The recipe called for canned diced tomatoes, but we used fresh and it tasted fantastic. I honestly think using canned tomatoes would be too juicy. With this we had spinach salad (really just spinach) drizzled with olive oil, and topped with vegan Parmesan cheese topping.

We accompanied this with some of Ian's Double Dog Dare Cabernet sauvignon, which admittedly isn't the best pairing, but we're not sommeliers here.  (And why is it that in this paragraph alone I've had to add three words to the dictionary and let it automatically capitalize two. C'mon spell check! Get your act together!)

 Anyway, the dish and the company were fab and I can't wait to have them both again.

The new report

Lots of new stuff to report. Ian's going to report his part, so here's mine.
I've been wanting to explore vegan baking. I'm fascinated with the alternative ingredients used in vegan baking, and how they produce such amazing flavors. So Ian treated me to The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. I like it because it's very straightforward, down-to-earth (doesn't use a lot of frou-frou ingredients), and explains the traditional baking ingredients and how vegan ingredients do the same thing.

I'm also very excited because we checked at Earth Fare, and the sweetners and flours used in the recipes are at really low prices. We even picked up some demarara to have in our coffee.

Because I'm fascinated with the raw eating lifestyle, Ian picked us up some Go Raw Spirulina Super Chips. Man are they good! The ones we got include banana, sesame seeds, coconut, dates, and spirulina. They taste of banana and sesame, but are just fantastic. If they tasted any better, I'd want to eat them in a bowl with soy milk for breakfast!

And because we're also (still? always?) counting calories, Ian also picked up EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners. Hands down, it is one of the best recipe books I've seen in a very long time. It has caloric information for each dish, and suggests sides and dessert options (with caloric info, too) for them as well! We've already picked out two recipes from this book that will incorporate vegetables that we've been wanting to try. The first will be skillet gnocchi with chard and white beans (page 83). We've had about every shape of pasta except gnocchi, so we were happy to find whole wheat gnocchi at Earth Fare. We also picked up white chard, which is a vegetable we've never tried. The other recipe is provençal-style edamame sauté (page 96). It also incorporates a vegetable we've never tried- fennel. I'll report back once we make the recipes.

We picked up two more things, but I'm waiting to see how they work before reporting on them to you.
In the meantime, I hope you're well. Get out and get your hands dirty. Life's too short not to play in the dirt.
xoxo
akc

Last night's dinner brought to you by epicurious

Thanks to my best foodie friend Jeremy, whom I miss desperately, we had potato and leek soup. [That's sort of Irish, right?] After discussing leeks over instant messenger, he sent me the URL for this recipe.

It was a good, lower calorie alternative because it didn't include any heavy cream. It tasted like a cross between French onion and potato soup. I felt it needed just a little something more, but I could never place just exactly what.
Ian really liked it, and was slightly disappointed that it didn't make enough for leftovers! I'd say we'll probably have this again next winter.

Wines and Evil Zen

This year I have officially acquired my taste for wine. It just hit me. It's weird because some wines used to taste awful, but now it seems that I am able to stomach them all. One wine I really enjoy is a cabernet sauvignon called Double Dog Dare.
It's quickly becoming my first favorite. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you can taste hints of this and hints of that. But what I can tell you is that it's not bitter and not too sweet. For $4.00 a bottle at Total Wine in Harbison, I can't go wrong!

In other news, we worked at Conway Acres, our small balcony garden.  We started some organic tomatoes and bell peppers from seeds which you can read more about on Ashlie's post before this one.  After a long back-breaking day, we turned in for the afternoon and then it hit me.  I need a man garden!

Now one would think a man's garden would need to include something of great strength to be considered a man garden.  What could I add to give this garden great strength?  We have had a small, rectanglular fountain for a while.  I wanted to incorporate this in my design.  The plants would need to be of a species that require moist conditions.  That being said, I knew exactly what I would build around the fountain.  After a quick trip  to Lowe's in Harbison, I quickly had the recipe for my garden otherwise known as the "Evil Zen Garden".

The fountain, centered in a flower box, creates the perfect setting for two carnivorous plants.  Your traditional Venus Fly Trap along with a Python Pitcher Plant were my choices.  The box said they needed to be kept moist and could withstand direct sunlight.  Great!  We also grabbed some Irish Moss to help keep the moisture packed in the dirt for the plants.  Outlining the plants and fountain is some small gravel that I picked up from outside the apartment.  I've gotta grab some more gravel today to finish building it up to the rim of the fountain.  Simple and easy to put together, which is another requirement for a man garden.  Who said all gardens had to be for women?

Our 2010 garden

Spring is finally (well, almost) here, and it was time to get our garden started. We live in an apartment, so our garden is our balcony. We have a small fountain, a small two person chair, two window flower boxes on the balcony rail, and several various sized pots.
Last year we did our flower rail boxes with that coconut hair, and filled them with creeping phlox. By the height of summer we discovered our plants were frying in the brutal "famously hot" Columbia heat because the coconut hair baskets didn't hold moisture. This year we have actual rectangular flower pots, so hopefully we won't have the same trouble as last year.
This year we also opted for different plants. In the center of each box, we've got African daisies that are white with a purple center.

We also went with three purple/white/yellow pansies on either side of the daisies.


As far as our vegetable and herb garden, we're also making big changes from last year. Last year we tried green beans and onions (too dry and too wet, respectively); we succeeded at growing herbs and tomatoes, though. This year, we're only growing things we use the most that are typically or likely to be at high cost this year (we will supplement everything else from the farmer's markets). So for herbs, by far we use thyme and rosemary the most. For vegetables, the tomato crop in Florida has been damaged by frost, and bell peppers sometimes can be $5/per at stores in the summer. We're growing "brandywine" tomatoes. It's an heirloom variety that I've never had. We're also growing "California wonder" bell peppers.
In all, we started 72 seed pods, most with 2 or more seeds. All our seeds are organic, but the seed pods weren't. We'll be using organic dirt and organic fertilizer. Depending on how our seed pods turn out, we'll definitely have excess. If you're in the Columbia area and would like a few pods, just let us know! We'll post pics as the garden progresses.

That's all for now!
xoxo
akc