Category Archives: Garden

Eat your greens

We have lots of produce coming in from the garden right now, but in sheer bulk, greens, namely, Swiss chard and kale, take the day.

Dino kale (foreground) and White Russian kale

While I get stressed about refrigerator space every time Matthew returns from the garden with a huge bag or cooler-full of greens, they do make for some tasty, healthy eating.

What do I do with these greens?
This Garlicky Greens recipe from 101 Cookbooks is a great starting point for either kale or Swiss chard.  We cooked up a big batch and used it in multiple ways throughout the week — it makes a quick and easy side dish, or pile some cooked greens on top of a piece of toast or a bed of grain, then top with a fried egg for a main dish.

Soups are also a great way to use a bunch of greens.  We currently have a bunch of kale earmarked for this Kale and Black-Eyed Pea soup recipe.  And for something very easy (and tasty and nutritious), check out Emily’s One-Pot Quinoa and Greens.  (The coconut oil is key to this recipe.  Tomatoes also make a good addition to this dish.)

I also made a big batch of crispy kale/kale chips, this time using tips from the Steamy Kitchen for the best way to get a nice, crispy result.  Another hint: Putting too much kale on the tray will prevent the desired crispiness — for best results, do small batches.  Crispy kale is delicious simply salted, or with a drizzle of homemade catsup (okay, pretty much anything is delicious with our homemade catsup, but that’s another story).

Finally, when life gives you Swiss chard (and not spinach, which we’ve never had success growing in quantity), make Swiss Chard Spanakopita!  We followed the Swiss chard prep tips from this recipe*, and then just subbed the appropriate quantity of Swiss chard in our tried-and-true spanakopita recipe.

Swiss chard spanakopita -- mmm, mmm, good!

*Don’t discard the stems!  Unlike some greens (like kale), that do have rather inedible stems, Swiss chard stems are not only 100% edible, they are super delicious.  If the stems are large, you may want to chop them and prepare them separately to ensure adequate cooking.  For this recipe, we blanched the chopped stems for a bit longer than the leaves.

4th of July Weekend Fun

We kicked off the holiday weekend with a potluck attended by many of the Sustainable Back Yard tour hosts.  The Winstein’s, who live and raise goats  in Webster Groves, hosted the gathering.  We enjoyed lots of fabulous garden-fresh dishes, all of which happened to be vegetarian, even though it wasn’t specifically a vegetarian gathering.

Matthew giving tour of our garden for Sustainable Backyards 2011

After dinner, we toured their garden and goat milking shed.  Each goat can give more than a gallon of milk a day (!), and they make cheese with much of it.

We enjoyed a lazy day on Saturday: late breakfast with some friends at our place, afternoon chilling, then heading to the pool for an early evening swim.  We returned home for a simple, tasty dinner featuring vegetarian Field Roast sausage (which I’ve been wanting to try since reading about it over at Daily Garnish) before walking to a nearby park to see fireworks.

The show from our front row seats

Fireworks under the Arch are great (and we may get down to see them tonight), but nothing beats a fabulous neighborhood fireworks show in my book.  Of course, the easily walkable/bikeable part is a huge plus!

Sunday brought two firsts for me: pasta and pickles.  I’ve written before about our fabulous homemade pasta noodles, but Matthew has always done the bulk of the work there — I provided assistance and encouragement.  Yesterday, I busted out the rolling pin and worked out my arm muscles, with good results 🙂

Likewise, we make pickles most summers, but it’s something that Matthew grew up doing, so he is the head pickle chef.  Yesterday, I whipped up our first batch of refrigerator dills, which, it turns out, are ridiculously easy.  I’ll have to photo document the process next time and share our easy, delicious refrigerator dill pickle recipe.

With a bit of the weekend left, we’re planning to make spanakopita (subbing our Swiss chard for the spinach) and possibly check out fireworks tonight.  Happy 4th!

Two year birthday

Back at the beginning of the month (June 2nd, to be precise), HerGreenLife turned two.  (It totally slipped my mind, which I guess makes me a bad blog mama.)

Fittingly, this has been the best month ever in terms of blog readership — it’s always fun to see the numbers go up!

I look forward to continuing the main themes of the blog (green transportation, growing and preparing local food, and general green and health-related musings) into the coming year, while integrating the transition from a family of two to a family of three.

If you have any requests, questions, or topics you would like to see covered here, please let me know.

Thanks for reading and sharing the journey thus far 🙂  Here’s to another great year to come!

Rolling toward the finish

Biking to lunch at 37 weeks

I hit the 37 week mark on Friday and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  From here on out, I am within the window for a home birth 🙂  Despite general increasing discomfort for me, the more time baby spends growing inside, the better, but it’s nice to know that if baby decided to come today, we could go ahead as planned with the birth at home.  (If I had gone into labor prior to 37 weeks, that would have been automatic cause to head to the hospital.)

I spent a good portion of Friday and Saturday doing some serious nesting, though, as with the kitchen, my cleaning efforts on the apartment as a whole seem to degrade quickly.  Oh well.  In general, things are pretty well set for baby’s arrival.

On Sunday, I helped Matthew as he showcased our garden in the Sustainable Backyard Tour.  He did an amazing job, giving inspiring tours to the more than 50 people who visited our garden over the course of the afternoon.  More on the garden to come later.

Monumental fennel

Look what our garden made!

A gigantic fennel bulb!  It’s always fun to try something new in the garden.*  We tried fennel last year, but never got beyond a tiny little plant.  Not so this year!

We roasted the bulb, and we’re using the stalks and feathery bits in salads.  Roasted fennel is quite the treat!  While we were at it, we roasted some garden beets and turnips, too 🙂

Roasted Fennel
Preheat oven to 400° F.  Cut fennel bulb into quarters.  (Reserve stalks and feathery bits for something else.)  Brush both sides of fennel with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.  Roast for about 40 minutes — flip to other side at the half-way point.  Finished product should be tender, golden, and caramelized.

*Growing Fennel (advice from Matthew)
We started the fennel from seed (look for “Florence fennel” or “bulbing fennel”) back in mid-January using our grow lights.  We transplanted them to the garden in mid-March, when they were still quite tiny.

What Worked for Us

  • When transplanting (or if sowing seed directly), leave at least 12 inches between plants to encourage large bulb formation.
  • Keep plants well-weeded early on — mulching will help with this.
  • Keep watered, too — again, mulch helps here.
  • Pray to the weather gods 😉 The rainy, cool spring probably helped.
  • Click here if you want more details.