.04 acres and a monkey

I'm feeling some pressure to provide more homegrown nourishment for my family, simply because it is getting bigger. Our monkey is growing up, way fast. "I'm HUNGRY dadda, maybe we can have some more lunch!" I've been thinking of her energy conversion powers as a wonder of nature. It makes me think: we need to find a way to run the planet off of kids. Yeah, that's the ticket! And no, I'm not talking child-labor, I'm talking about somehow harnessing the energy bursts some describe as screaming, or maybe rigging little magnets on them and having them slide repeatedly down a copper-coil tube (okay that would be child-labor) Focus now: or how about that dream of turning this untapped source of audible energy to work for us parents, who are usually the focal point for receiving such a release. I'm gonna need to provide more calories in the future to keep up with the energy absorption/emission curve.

We have limited garden space, on the north side of the house and in a yard that is only 15 feet deep. It contains a thick, black, expansive clay, that when we first started working it, contained tons of glass and gravel, with the occasional rusty nail and old toy. Two months ago we performed our largest "amendment" to the yard, but this does not make up for the fact that it only receives direct light for an hour in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. We do what we can with a few wine barrels placed out front that have served various functions over the past few years (including a staging area for things to be transplanted). We have them out front, facing south, where they get good light from sun-up till about mid-afternoon. So today the monkey and I took action and built a small planter box, to help expand out acreage if you can call such small increments. We brought it out back and rewarded ourselves with some pretty cheesecake for a job well (no, more like halfway) done. We'll get to that cheesecake later.

We filled the box with soil, and then began transplanting some of the spinach we had purchased from Berkeley Hort. While we were at it, we transplanted the beets seen here into the sunniest spot in the back yard, with hopes of at least beet pasta come late spring. The spinach would fill most of the new box, but we needed something else. Maybe with a streak of color, hardy, and certainly edible. "Hey let's go look out," I turned around and there they were:



The "Pot of Gold" container chard from last spring. I had planted it amongst the tomatoes last year, trying to fill in areas wherever I could with various seeds to see what worked. Turns out that in my yard, container chard stays a tiny little thing when it gets shaded out by tomatoes. But it is also hardy, for when I finally had the gumption to rip out the dying tomatoes, it was still its tiny little self, all four inches high and in about 8 or 9 places. I left it there, and a few weeks later it was twice as big. Well, this is certainly worthy of attention, so I took them out of the ground before the previously mentioned amendment by putting them in a container and in the sunniest spot in the backyard. Now they are thriving, and starting to really crowd their container. They needed thinning and would be a nice compliment to the spinach. I placed two plants at either end of our new planter and gave it a little pat-down. Now for the hard part: getting it upstairs and outside the window for living on the roof in the most direct light available.

Now our view of the elementary school across the street includes some greens for braising and salads. It is a small purchase of space, but we're hoping the rewards are great. Last year our attempts in the garden yielded a few tasty things, namely some peas and tomatoes, but really it had plenty of room for improvement. This year I have made a pledge to use our little bit of space in a fashion more befitting of its capabilites. We need more variety, more fecundity, out of our little space. With more use of our sunny roof, perhaps we can achieve such things.

Back to fecundity. And that bigger family remark. We are about halfway toward harvesting our "potato" crop. As with all tubers and subterranean veggies, this one will depend on the moon and other environmental factors as to the exact date it first sees the light. We're just hoping the arrival will go as smoothly as ours in late Nov, 2003. As seen by the in-utero headshot of "Pablo" (as the monkey calls her sibling), our potato has eyes, nose, lips and chin. Just as they should. Let us do the rain dance and pray for good spring weather. So far it's promising to be a bumper crop!



Oh yeah, and that cheesecake thing. You see, the one pictured at top, that we pre-emptively rewarded ourselves with, had some chevre in it, comprising about a third of the cream cheese component. I've been dying to try some goaty-goodness in a cheesecake for at least a year now, so this was a focus for this version. It had the typical (these days) sweet potato for body, color, and flavor, but I did go out on a new crusty limb and used ginger-zing granola and animal crackers for the bottom. It was tasty, but a little too goaty. I'm thinking, in the future, keep the goat on the savory side of the cheese.

And the reason all of these things spilled out of my mind, only to be put together in my dweeby little blog?

Kids.

israeli couscous with carotenoids, betacyanins, and xanthophylls topped with anthocyanins

The monkey was mixing up a batch of fruit salad. "What do you want in your salad dada?" Her method involves tossing in ALL of the fruits and veggies that she has into a large bowl, and giving them a thorough mixing. When this is complete she fishes out your requested items, plus a few that she thinks will pair well with them, and carefully arranges them on a plate for you. I believe her last plating involved peach, orange, cabbage and cauliflower as a bed, supporting the bell pepper and corn 2nd floor. I was inspired to duplicate her range of colors into a dish that had alot of local* ingredients. It made me think of using our carrots, butternut, beet, and yellow bell pepper that was hanging around the kitchen from the last trip to the farmers market. We also had local* mushrooms, celery and onions that I figured would go well with everything else as long as I tied it all together with some ginger, and maybe drizzled it with grenadine.

So, I roasted some butternut, steamed some beets, sliced some carrots and bell peppers, chopped onions, celery, mushrooms, garlic and ginger, picked a few strawberries and little bit of mint, and measured out a few tablespoons of grenadine. A few cups of israeli couscous topped it off.



I sauteed the onions/celery/mush/gar/gin combo in olive oil and combined it with the couscous and some water in our largish green caserole thingy. To this I layered the sliced carrots on one side and bell pepper on the other and then piled on the butternut and beet. I topped this all of with the strawberries and a healthy pouring of the grenadine. I poked some mint sprigs in a few places and put it in the oven at 350 for over an hour.


And because this meal was all about the fresh, colorful, and somewhat local* produce, we steamed some cabbage (yet more anthocyanins) and carrots (carotenoids........duh?) to serve up with it. Those crazy beets stained the couscous a nice burgundy (those betacyanins are the ultimate in staining, they will even turn your urine pink if you eat enough, so I hear...) and that cabbage, WOW! (although in honesty the cabbage was not that color when I put it in the pot. It was no trick, just plain ol' purple cabbage, steamed until quite tender). In fact now when I look at it, I think that we needed some more yellow stuff (xanthophylls) to offset that shocking bluish purple. I mean, do you eat bluish veggies THAT often?

This meal really made me reflect on how dull and boring most of the typical American diet is. I guess as a stay at home dad, who cooks, loves veggies, and doesn't eat much meat (less than twice a week lately, and that usually fish), I'm not exactly typical. I like that.


* Local for purposes here being produced in California, within about a three hour drive (say 150 mile radius from home) and purchased by us at the closest Farmer's Market or at our one of our neighborhood stores (all walking or biking distance). The onions, celery, garlic, bell pepper, carrots and beets are all organic and from the Farmer's Market. The grenadine was from Reedley pomegranates, juiced by hand with a ricer and then boiled with a cup of organic sugar (Whole Foods). The butternut was also from Reedley. The ginger is admittedly from Brazil (Berkeley Bowl), and is a leftover from my last attempt at making candied ginger. The mushrooms and couscous are from Whole Foods, the mushrooms produced locally (Monterey County), the couscous from unknown sources (I didn't pay much attention to the bin it came from as this too was a leftover ingredient from a past dish, I do believe it was organic). The olive oil (Greece, Kalamata actually) and the salt (France) were from the mediterranean by way of Trader Joe's. We had a locally produced olive oil that could have been used, but I can't yet justify using the $15 bottle of dipping/dressing oil for frying in a pan. I will look into getting a "cooking" oil from the local folks. The little strawberries and fresh mint are from our yard. You could say that this dish was a result inspired by the monkey's color scheme, local ingredients, what was in the cupboard, some oil-economics (olive), and the food we pass everyday going in and out of our door.

Putting it all down in this form and documenting where the meal came from goes out to my sister-in-law Sheryl. For being one of those folks who are brave enough to look at where your food REALLY comes from (and who having made it through the corn chapters in the Omnivore's Dilemna, now probably doesn't see that big grass the same anymore). Let me know when you get your hands on one of them Polyface chickens.