Tag Archives: herbs

Garden Plans 2013

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Well, we have a winter storm watch/warning later this week with accumulating snow, awesome.  In spite of the lack of spring, we’ve finally gotten our full garden planned out.  We’re expanding a little on to our patio with the herbs and trying to grow some new veggies on both sides of the yard.  We cut out the summer squash and switched some for Butternut squash.  We’re also trying a couple different varieties of potatoes, the basic white and some cool blue potatoes, both of which will be in the large garbage cans like last year.  We’re going to give salad greens and swiss chard a try too.

garden layout 2013

It’s hard to believe some of my Facebook friends have already been out in their yards with full garden beds sprouting.  I’m definitely a little jealous about that.  We’ll keep doing what we can in the meantime, we start our tomatoes in doors this week and are ordering the remaining seeds we need this week.  We’re supposed to get up to 50 this weekend, cross your fingers for me that it sticks around this time!

Garden Ideas

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With Daylight Savings Time this week, we’ve had sunsets at 7p.m. all week!  It’s so amazing to leave work in the sun!  That being said, it’s also got me hankering to work in the garden despite the fact it’s still covered by about a foot of snow.  Since that’s not an option, I’ve started gathering ideas of thing to try.

First, I want to try growing potatoes in a garbage can another shot.  We had pretty decent results last time and I’m hoping that with a little more rain this year it will be even better.

On the new project list, what I’m most excited about is trying to do some gutter gardens.  I think this would be an easier way to manage herbs and grow some lettuces as well as maybe keep squirrels at bay.

With the space potentially freed up by moving the herbs, I want to take another stab at growing some beans and peas.  I thought this bicycle wheel idea was pretty cool for a climbing line.  This might also work if we end using some extra garbage cans for beans.

With all these exciting ideas, what we’ll really have to do first is prune up our raspberry bushes.  It’s a pretty tangled mess right now and harvesting the berries was a little challenging.  This video from The University of Maine’s is what we’re going to use as a guide.  I’d like to get out there and start cleaning it all up as soon as the snow melts enough to clear a path.

I’m going to have to psych myself up to go out there with the cold temps but, we’ll need to do it before things start warming up too much.  I’ll just have to keep telling myself it’ll be worth it come July!

Frozen Goods in Action

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Remember how I started freezing vegetables and made these fun little olive oil and herb ice cubes?  Well I’ve been digging in to them lately.  Earlier this week I used a couple of the olive oil and rosemary cubes to make pork chops.

olive oil cubes

They didn’t melt down as quickly as I thought they would, and went from bright oil yellow to almost white in the freezer.

oil cubes and pork chops

I was a little afraid I’d end up with burnt pieces of rosemary but as it melted down and got going it smelled so good!

pork chops and roasted veggies

Success!
On the flip side, I pulled some frozen asparagus out of our deep freeze to make as just an easy, weeknight side.

frozen asparagus

I was a little sad when I dropped them in the dish before the microwave.  The ends of the stalks were looking a little brown and the frozen solid clump was less than appealing.

sad asparagus

After I nuked them they still looked and smelled like asparagus but were a little limp and over cooked.  They tasted fine but wasn’t as exciting or tasty as the fresh we get in the spring.  I think it’ll make me that much more hopeful for ours to start sprouting this spring (fingers crossed).  I’m glad we’re making an effort to keep using what we’ve spent the time preserving. Even with the rocky asparagus experience, it makes me want to figure out better methods for the coming year.

Pinterest Recipe of the Month- Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart

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We’ve been starting to get more cherry tomatoes ripening up in the garden over the last couple of weeks, so I’ve been on the look out for a way to use up quite a few and to give us a break from eating them in pasta.  I came across this tart from Martha Stewart on Pinterest and thought I’d give it a shot since it seemed pretty straight forward.  Really, it wasn’t to hard to put together since it uses a store bought pastry dough.  Just a little more work than you’d want for a weeknight meal.

First thing was getting a pastry dough set up.  I defrosted it in the fridge overnight before laying it out and rolling it to a 12″ square.

My ‘square’ pastry dough was anything but.  I liked it though, makes it more rustic that way.

Next up was a sour cream and mustard mix that spread out pretty thin on the dough.  Then I folded over the edges to make a little bit of a raised crust.  I was able to square up my tart a little doing this.

I popped that into the fridge to set up a bit and got started on my leeks. 2 chopped up into fairly thin slices.

I sauteed them in butter for a bit until they were nice and soft.

Then I pulled the dough back out of the fridge and spread my leeks evenly over the tart.

Next I took my cherry tomatoes, halved them, and spread them over the tart.  Then popped the whole thing into the oven.

Look at that, nice and toasty!  The edges of the crust puffed up nicely and the tomatoes roasted up beautifully.

With the baking out of the way, I sprinkled the cheese and some fresh thyme over the whole thing.

We had the tart for lunch both days this weekend.  The tomatoes popped a little in your mouth and combination with the cheese was perfect.  It would be good for a savory brunch or side dish.  Instead of warming it up in the microwave on Sunday, I put the leftovers in the oven.  I think the crust would have gotten soggy in the microwave  I think next time I would try and make something like this when I knew I would be able to finish the whole thing.

Fresh Tomato Pasta

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First thing this morning when I logged on to Pinterest, I found this beauty and knew I wanted to make it ASAP.  However, I also knew we had our first hand full of cherry tomatoes and wanted to give them a place in our dinner, so I altered a few things to make it work for us.  Also, we’re out of bread right now (getting ready for vacay = no grocery shopping this weekend) so I subbed in some parmesan for the bread crumbs.  This photo was probably the hardest part of prepping dinner tonight.

 

While pasta was boiling and cooking, I started my cherry tomatoes on the stove in some olive oil.  I like cooking them in the oil over medium heat until they start to pop and the juices from the tomato mix into the olive oil.

While they were sizzling, I chopped up some parsley I’d just picked fresh from the backyard.  By then both the pasta and the tomatoes were done so I drained the pasta and added in the tomatoes

Then the parmesan

Last, the parsley.

I gave it a good mix and salt and peppered the dish.  I used garlic salt in place of the garlic powder called for.

Then I dished it up and added another sprinkle or two of cheese and called it a day.  So easy for a Monday night!  I think next time around I’ll add some fresh garlic to the pan with the tomatoes.  I didn’t think we were getting enough garlic flavor from the salt.  I think we could sub out the tomatoes for some chopped up zucchini or squash later on this summer too.  As easy as it is to put together, it’ll be served up pretty regularly around here.

Pinterest Recipe of the Month- Herbs Preserved in Olive Oil

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So someone knew exactly what my next step with my herbs was.  I saw this project on TheKitchn.com and knew I had to use it as a way to keep fresh herbs for later into fall.  It’s one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that’ moments.  I used thyme and rosemary since they were both in abundance.  They’re also on the suggested list for freezing this way.  Honestly, it took more time to prep the herbs to put into the ice cube trays more than anything else.  It was really easy.

Prep your herbs.  You can just run your fingers down thyme to strip the leaves from the stem.

Rosemary was a bit more work than that, plus it got a rough chop to make it easier to fit into ice cube trays.

Fill a little past half way with your herbs

Add your olive oil

Wait overnight

Pop them loose

And store for later

We also have plenty of mint in our herb garden.  It’s crawling all over like it owns the place.  So, to put a little bit of a twist on this, I added some fresh mint leaves to regular ice cubes.  I gave it a real rough chop (just to make it easy to fit) before filling a few trays and popping it in the freezer.

Test run in a glass of water has been pretty good.  I think it’ll be a nice addition to lemonade, ice tea or a few drinks just a little bit stronger:)

 

Also, here’s a shameless plug for following me on pinterest.  Lots of food plus some more fun stuff:)

Fresh Herbs

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To go with all the fresh raspberries, we’ve had  lots of fresh herbs in the kitchen.  We have rosemary, cilantro, thyme, parsley, basil and mint to pick from.  Basil is a little sad but I’m hoping it picks up.  Cilantro is starting to bolt on us (starting to flower and loose flavor) so I might try and plan a few more seeds to get another round in.

So far I’ve used fresh rosemary to marinate chicken breast (I promise, I cooked it, just to hungry to take a photo)

And thyme sprinkled over roasted potatoes.

I’ve got a few other ideas in the works on how to keep using them.  I want to dry some for sure but I also want to try a few other things, I’ll be sure to share them with you as I go.

Any of you have any fresh herbs in the kitchen lately?  How do you like to use them?

So Long April

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Hi All,
I hope you’re having a good start to your week!  I have a bit of catching up to do with you.

I went back to the farmer’s market and picked up more asparagus, morel mushrooms, radishes, rosemary and wisconsin cheddar cheese.  It was a good haul and the number of vendors easily doubled from the last time I was there.  I’m going to freeze more of the asparagus and keep some fresh for dinner tomorrow too.  I’m undecided with the rest of the haul.  Do I make another pasta dish with the mushrooms?  Radishes in a salad?  Or dipped in vodka and salt like I had at my photography class?  Do I eat the block of cheese all in one sitting or shred it over tacos or burgers.  Decisions, decisions….

All day Sunday the Hubs and I worked in the yard.  I’m talking 6-7 hours of work.  We planted almost all of the herb garden.  The final piece will be some mint plants and one more  rosemary to finish it out.

The container veggies are also all planted and ready to grow.  2 potatoes, 2 onions, and 2 carrots.  Don’t they look exciting right now?

We also transplanted our teeny, tiny tomato seedlings into some larger pots to get them better established before we put them in the larger garden.  They’re looking pretty spindly, I’m hoping their new homes will encourage them to pick up the pace a bit.

The largest chunk of our day was spent doing a combo of mowing, picking up sticks, picking up dog presents, weeding and re-seeding the lawn.  We’ve got a lot of watering to do over the next few weeks between the different gardens and lawn.  We’ll keep our eyes on things and hopefully we’ll get some herb sprouts soon and some strong tomato plants.

I’ll be back tomorrow to fill you in on what I did with the eggs I bought last week.  Time to start the sprinkler!

Garden Planning- New Herb Garden

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Besides destroying my kitchen with dirty pots and pans this weekend, we also got part of our garden planned.  Yeah!!!!

Right now this part of the ‘garden’ is reserved for dead plants that the people who owned the house before us planted that we didn’t take care of and, well, dog poo.  One of the realities of pet ownership.

This summer (fingers crossed) it will be full of blueberries, herbs, and asparagus (well, in a couple years not this summer).  We’re transplanting the blueberries from a spot by the garage where they haven’t been getting enough sun.  Hopefully the transplant will do it some good.

We used the grid to make everything to scale.  The size of each dot matches back to how much room the plants will end up needing.  I’m hoping to have the rest figured out this week so we can get seeds going:)