Category Archives: Garden

Fennel pesto

In last week’s garden post, I mentioned Matthew’s biodiversity micro-grant award to grow celeriac and paw paws. However, he actually proposed growing three items, not two, with fennel being the third item.

Poor little fennel felt a bit left out after my omission, so today he’s getting his very own post.

If you’ve bought fennel at the grocery store, you probably got something that looked like this:

Fenouil
Fennel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mostly bulb, some stalk, and perhaps a spattering of feathery fronds.

Like a lot of supermarket produce, it looks rather different than the straight-from-the-garden version:

Our fennel (June 2011)

See all the featheriness on top?  The fronds do not keep nearly as well as the bulb, hence the missing top half on most grocery store fennel.

Though this year’s crop is nowhere near that size, we harvested a couple of bulbs for early eating (also making room for the remaining plants to grow larger).  After roasting the bulb, we were left with a lot of fronds, which, I’ll admit, sat in the fridge for quite a few days.

They were at the “use it or toss it to make room for other things” stage.  In Stacy’s recent post about CSA membership, the discussion turned to how to use everything that’s part of the weekly produce delivery.

I hate to waste food, so I chopped the fennel fronds and created a twist on the traditional basil pesto.   If you’re lucky enough to pick up a fresh, locally grown fennel bulb at the farmers’ market or receive one as part of a CSA box, you can make use of the flavorful fronds with this recipe.

Fennel pesto

Recipe by Melissa

Ingredients
1-2 c. chopped fennel fronds and stalks
3/4 c. olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1/4 t. salt
1/4 c. pistachios (I used roasted & salted)
Opt. 1 T. lemon juice, or to taste*

Directions
Add all ingredients to blender or food processor and process until desired smoothness.

Serving Suggestions

  • Stir into a grain, protein, veggie dish.  I combined cooked couscous, rice, and lentils with chopped raw carrots, summer squash, and kohl rabbi.  Mix in the fennel pesto, adjust salt as needed, and you have a quick, easy meal.
  • Add extra lemon juice (and perhaps a bit of water) to create a tasty salad dressing.  If you still have the fennel bulb, make a salad with a bed of greens, roasted fennel and/or thin slices of raw fennel,
    pistachios, and olives.
  • Use any way that you would use basil pesto, e.g., on top of pasta, as a pizza sauce, etc.
  • Spread onto bread for a simple appetizer or as a sandwich ingredient.

*I didn’t add lemon juice in my original recipe, but  it would be a nice addition.

Related post: Monumental fennel (with recipe for roasted fennel)

Since today is Bike to Work Day, here’s my post from BtW Day last year, when I was 32 weeks pregnant: Finally Bike Somewhere Day.

Early May garden tour

Matthew and his mom have been hard at work this spring, putting in time weeding and mulching now to [theoretically] reduce the workload later.  For mulch, Matthew purchased several bales of straw — transporting them to the garden two or three bales at a time on our bike rack — and Pam picked up more coffee bean sacks.

I must admit that I haven’t actually been to the garden in a couple of weeks, and things change quickly in a spring garden.  Fortunately, you can join me on a virtual garden tour.  (Unfortunately, you can’t taste the food virtually.)

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A few things of note:

  • Most of the garden-fresh produce we’ve been eating has come from plants that wintered-over, some inside and some outside the low tunnel — lettuce, kale, carrots, and Swiss chard.
  • After years of struggling to grow spinach, we have a bumper crop this year, and it is delicious!
  • The attempts to winterize the artichokes failed, so Matthew started new plants from seed this year.
  • Our tomato seedlings look WAY better than anything I saw for sale at the farmers’ market on Saturday.  Just sayin’.
  • Some of the potatoes are already blooming, and Matthew cut scapes off of some of the garlic last weekend.
  • A rascally rabbit got inside the fence and dined on tender young pea shoots, so we mat not have much in the way of a spring pea crop.

Also, more exciting garden-related news: Matthew found out yesterday that he is the recipient of a Slow Food St. Louis biodiversity micro-grant!  His application included plans to grow celeriac and paw paws, both items that Slow Food StL identified as being of interest to local chefs.

If there’s anything I’m missing, I’ll let Matthew add it in the comments.

How’s YOUR garden growing?

What’s goin’ on

It’s been a little quiet over here, which usually indicates that life has been a little crazy.  We’re all alive and well, or as well as can be with yet another cold virus, courtesy of Typhoid Gabriel.

Friday
In the spirit of getting the bad news out of the way first, I visited the dentist for a routine cleaning.  It was so much fun that I get to go back and see them in two weeks for “a bit of work.”  Unremarkable for many people, perhaps, but this is my First. Cavity. EVER.

The first cavity ever is the equivalent of the first A- or B+ ever, when you kiss your hopes of being the valedictorian of perfect teeth goodbye and start down the path to becoming a toothless old hag.

Saturday
We met with a realtor and made [a low-ball] offer on a house (an offer that we felt was actually reasonable based on average price per square foot, days on market, etc.).

Sunday
I spent Earth Day teaching my first ever Cycling Savvy course — despite my initial lack of enthusiasm toward working on the weekend, I had a blast.  It felt great to put everything that I learned in instructor training last year into use, and teaching others skills and helping build the confidence they need to ride their bicycles more seemed a fitting way to spend Earth Day.

Meanwhile, out at the garden, Matthew put in the tomato plants and then held his breath until Monday morning due to the somewhat unexpected frost advisory.  Fortunately the little plants escaped the evil Mr. Frost.

We also found out that the seller soundly rejected our offer on the house — according to his agent he “almost fainted” when he read it.  Ha!

To him we say, have fun continuing to sit on that property that you’ve been sitting on for over two years during which time the pipes burst due to lack of adequate heating one winter.

As for us, we now have our eyes on something that I ultimately think could work out even better (details to come once we have a bit more info, but I’m already putting the eggs WAY before the chicken).

Eating through last year’s crops

Spring has sprung, and while we’re already enjoying freshly harvested produce, we’re still eating through the tail end of our 2011 harvest.

The cruciferous plot

We finished the last of the onions at the end of March.  We dug the onions at the end of June, which means we had garden onions nine months out of the year — not bad!  We made it that long even though some of the stored onions went bad, despite our drying and storing efforts.

We already have some Egyptian onions coming in from the garden, but not enough for our everyday needs.  Going to the store to buy a bag of onions the other day felt strange.  I guess if we were hardcore locavores, we would do without onions right now.

The potatoes lasted a similar period of time from harvest to depletion — harvested in late July and finished in early April.  They made their final stand in a delicious potato salad Matthew’s mom made for our Easter gathering.

So what’s left?

Non-processed, root cellar-type items

  • Two HUGE sweet potatoes
  • A few assorted winter squash

Canned

  • A few jars of green beans
  • Tomatoes and tomato sauce
  • Catsup
  • The shelves are not as full as they were here!

Frozen

  • Six one-quart bags of cooked, pureed winter squash
  • Six bags of Swiss chard
  • Maybe some other stuff that I’m not thinking of right now.  We have a very official system for tracking this that I will show you someday.

Matt’s mom also discovered some frozen garden veggies with 2010 dates on them in her deep freeze, so we’re helping take care of those.

Though I often bemoan the amount of Matthew’s time that goes into the garden, and his lack of free weekends during a majority of the year, we DO get quite a bit of food from his efforts.  Since he’s unlikely to give up gardening any time soon, it’s good to focus on the delicious results as much as possible.

Rainbow on my plate

Weekends these days

So I was all prepared to write a post comparing recent weekends to past April weekends, complaining about how I don’t get to bike or do anything anymore but after last weekend, I can’t truthfully write such a post.

Matthew, in his infinite cleverness, discovered that we don’t actually have to disassemble the trailer to get it in and out of the basement.  If we partially flatten it and remove the hitch arm, we can then take it through the door sideways, with the wheels still in place.

While carrying a bicycle up the stairs, then hauling up the trailer, then attaching said trailer to my bike is not exactly easy while keeping tabs on a nine-month-old, this new discovery makes it a bit less of a production.

Last Friday morning, I loaded Sir into his chariot for our first solo bike outing.  On previous outings (here and here), Matthew pulled the trailer, so it was also my first time pulling the trailer with him in it.

(The hardest part was getting him into the darn baby supporter — there’s this piece that you have to pull over the baby’s head, and it’s very awkward.  They really need to tweak the design to make it more user-friendly.  I think I can modify it, but I haven’t had a chance to see if my idea will work yet.)

Anyway, we biked to the park for a short visit.  On the way home, while waiting to make our left turn onto Kingshighway, I got some kind of, “You’re not seriously going to [something unintelligible] on Kingshighway . . . ?”

Why, yes, I am going to operate my vehicle on this street, just like you’re going to operate your vehicle on this street, thank you very much.  I really need to remember to carry Cycling Savvy flyers with me and be ready to hand them out.

Later that day, we were back on the bike to check out some real estate.  I looped a cable through part of the frame of the trailer for locking up, and Sir grabbed it and seemed to be using it as an “oh shit handle” during our ride.  Sir, please, I’m not that crazy of a driver.

Our new Saturday routine involves sending Gabriel out to the garden with Matthew, which gives me some much-needed time to myself.  I spent last Saturday biking around gathering ingredients for Matthew’s birthday dinner.

Despite no baby on board, I hitched up the trailer, which allowed me to easily carry my final load of a 3+ liter tin of olive oil, a half gallon of soy milk, a half gallon of dairy milk, some bulk bin dry goods, a gallon of apple cider vinegar, and  few other odds and ends.  With just my milk crate, or even my milk crate and panniers, that load would have required some stops back at the apartment between stores.

After all the biking with the trailer, my Sunday morning ride, just me and Bub was a breeze.

While life IS very different these days, I reclaimed some of the joys of weekends past, and I hope to do more of it in the future.