me_not_you’s Neighborhood

Tell us about a time when you were brave. 
Submitted by Hops.

At roughly 3am on December 23rd, my doctor came into my hospital room and told James and I that Morgan was not coming and that we needed to have a c-section. I cried, I tried to think of another solution and then I finally decided that it was what needed to happen. So I mentally prepared myself and I let them begin the process to the biggest surgery I've ever had. After an epidural, much throwing up, internal stitches, staples and the strangest sensation of my life, at 4:22am - Morgan Sue was delivered.

Would you go on vacation by yourself, and if so where would you go?
Submitted by Sean & Stefan.

I could never go on a vacation by myself. I would miss James and Morgan way too much. I would love someday to take a vacation with both of them to California or Florida. Just to see the ocean and have a lasting family memory. James always talks about his trip with his family to California and how much it meant to him. I want Morgan to have a memory like that.

Remember how I complained about how the CSA just gave us a box of greens with no guidance at all?  Well, it turns out that we DID get a flyer with information on which veggie was which and what to do with them.  D'oh.

Anyway, the big leafy green thing turned out to be some form of arugula.  Now, I've only ever seen arugula in its curly form, but that's what the flyer said, so I'm believing it.  We also got pac choi, tatsoi, mizuna, mixed field greens (the Cow Food), radishes and dill.

So!  I'm a little panicky about how we're going to eat all of this.  I tried to find any sort of hope that greens can be preserved...but there wasn't much.  I have some leads and ideas (which I will post about later if they come to fruition) but for the purposes of this post...this is what i did with the arugula.

I found a recipe for arugula pesto and decided that i had nothing to lose.  Plus, it indicated that it can be thrown into the freezer for up to six months.  Score!

Arugula Pesto

2 cups arugula
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of walnuts
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese

I don't have a food processor.  I think I had a roommate with one at some point.  I thought to myself "Well, I could buy a whole new appliance for the already crowded kitchen, or I can figure something else out."  Which is how I came to make pesto in the blender.

Oh, man, was the blender unhappy with me.  I made the pesto in two batches to make it easier on the poor, confused appliance.  It's never seen greens before.  I tried to chop the walnuts before throwing 'em in, but they were still probably a source of frustration for the wee little blades. 

After lots of pressing go, stop, stick spoon in to mix things up, repeat...it finally began to look like pesto.  I tasted it and ZOW does it ever have a bite!  The garlic provides quite a punch and the arugula adds quite a zing to it as well.  I kept it spinning around until it was perfectly mushy.

Then I extracted it from the blender and put it in a ziploc bag.  I sucked all of the air out with a straw and then put it into another ziploc bag (don't want freezer burn!).  Ta-dah!  One CSA pile of greens, handled.  I put some on a cracker and tried it.  Yeeeeeeeeeeee HAH is it potent.  I think I'll enjoy putting it on sandwiches.

It looks like I'll be posting about my garden roughly once a month.  That'll keep me from saying "OMG you guise!  I has a bean and a tomatoe!!!" every time somthing interesting happens.  Well, lots of interesting things have happened.  If you click on the "gardening" tab on the left of my Vox page, you'll see how my garden grows.

First off, I think my corn is in fine shape.  Ever hear the old saying "knee-high by the fourth of July"?  That means that your sweet corn should be about...well, knee-high by the Fourth of July.  I don't think I'll have a problem at all, seeing as it's still about 10 days from the fourth and the corn is up to my waist.

The peppers also look good.  I'm not sure if I'm happy about this or not - but they're all surviving.  :)  I kind of figured that some of them would die off, but all 14 plants are looking good.  Many have little flowers from whence I expect peppers to pop at any time.  There is one Banana Pepper that is quite the prodigy - it's already about 4 inches long.

The tomatoes are also growing like champs.  I am not using cages this year - I'm just staking them up with thick branches and tying them on with old nylons.  Finally, a use for my off-white nylons.  I bought them for an Alice in Wonderland costume and hadn't worn them since.  Anyway, the tomatoes are big and bushy and look great, surrounded by very happy marigolds.  The tomatoes have some flowers so perhaps I'll be seeing some Roma and Big Boys soon.

The onions are a bit of a mystery.  I had the little onion bulbs.  The instructions said that if I wanted green onions, I should plant them in bunches of 3-4 about 4 inches deep; and if I wanted cooking onions, I should plant them singly, about four inches apart, close enough to the surface so that the tops are almost showing.  Well, the green onions are tall and delicious (I yanked some up and had wimpy little 3-inch green onions with dinner!  Should have waited...), and I peeked at the progress of the cooking onions.  They look a little bigger, but not much.  How big will they get?  Also, the greens are super-tall and bending over, and don't appear to be getting much taller.  How do I know when they're ready to harvest?  For someone that loves onions as much as I do, I sure am clueless.

Carrots - thinning out the carrots has been a sad task.  I'm trying to keep them an inch apart at the very least...I don't want weird mutant carrots that can't grow properly because they're too close together.  I thinned one out today and gave it to C to eat.  (He wanted a carrot...I said "okay, here's one!").  It was about the length of a straight pin and about as thick.  He brushed off the dirt and delicately took a bite out of it.  "Does it taste like a carrot?" I asked.  He looked thoughtful.  "More like dirt than a carrot, but I can definitely tell it's supposed to be a carrot."  I guess we'll have to wait until the end of summer before it actually tastes like a carrot.  :)

Beans - very strange.  I was expecting them to climb, but they're just keeping to their little bushy forms and not making use of the interesting

tower I built for them.  They must be happy though, they are green and leafy and full of flowers.  One of the bean plants is heavy with beans.  (I'm going out there after writing this to pick 'em).  I think I wrote in my garden goals that "If all I have to show from this garden is one moldy bean, I'll consider this venture a success."  Well, it's definitely a success.  I've got many beans and they don't look moldy at all.

Pea Tower is looking fantastic!  Only three of the vines survived to produce peapods, but that's okay.  It's good to have moderation somewhere, right?  Anyway, peapods are popping out all over the place.  This afternoon each of us had a peapod right off the vine.  Everyone thought they were delicious.  I almost wept with happiness.  My vegetables are a hit!

I'm afraid that I won't mention the cucumbers other than to say that they are still there and I still have hope - although it's kind of waning.

The squashes look good, to my surprise.  I rigged up a couple of branches for them to climb on (sort of like a sawhorse, about 4 inches off the ground) and they seem pretty happy.  Big happy leaves, orange flowers.   Like the peppers, I'm surprised that they've all survived.  Three acorn squash, three butternut squash.  Living it up in my garden.

The sunflowers have taken the biggest hit.  Two of them fell prey to a rainstorm (they were too close to the edge of the roof, they just collapsed under the water)  and one of them had a broken stem.  Incredibly, the broken-stemmed one kind of wilted down to the ground and then kept growing upward, with its stem on the ground.  Sort of like a sideways S-shape.  It looks great, it's just about two feet off the ground instead of four.  The fourth sunflower is about 4 feet tall and looking good.

So, what have I harvested so far?  Three green onions: too early, but they tasted delicious; and four peapods: a big hit, they were fantastic.  Tonight I am planning on picking the ready-to-go peas and beans and incorporating them into a stir-fry.  I'm also going to use the Pac Choi from the CSA box. 

I guess I'm happy with how well the garden is going.  But I'm also scared to death.  Here's this garden, that I started, and it's producing vegetables.  Whether I like it or not!  It's an interesting thing to see how something I started is thriving, with my help and on its own.  The age old question 'what the hell am I going to do with all of these vegetables?" keeps coming to mind. 

Anybody want some peppers?  Squash?  :)

Finally, after months and months of waiting!  It's time for the first CSA box of the year.  Oh joy!  We called our friends, wanting to open it all together so that we could divvy things up and be merry.

Well, our friends couldn't make it.  So it was just P and myself.

I opened the box...

and found a lot of leafy greens.  A LOT of leafy greens...and not much else.  I suppose it's early on in the season and the colorful, familiar veggies aren't ready yet.  I'm not complaining.

P, on the other hand, said "What is this!  This is cow food!"  He took a leaf of one of the bundles, bit into it, and grimaced.  "That's awful," he said, taking a fork to a leftover piece of sheet cake.  We did eat a couple of radishes.   They were very good.

Okay, so I'm becoming more aware of my ignorance when it comes to different kinds of leafy greens.  I recognized exactly two out of the nine items in the box: the radishes and the dill.  Everything else...I'm hoping that one of you fine readers will see something you recognize and help a poor new CSAer out.