Garden Update

To make room for the cabbage and lettuce I had to pull out three leeks. Aren't they pretty? With their ombre' coloration they're quite trendy too! Hopefully we'll be able to use them with dinner tonight. Oliver suggested caramelizing them to use as toppings for Labor Day hot dogs!

The following photos show everything in our front yard garden as of Labor Day 2012. There are still tomato plants and pumpkin vines in the "side yard". I'm looking forward to adding arugula as soon as I find more space.

Late Summer Garden: Week Fourteen

It is the last week of August and our garden is looking a little rough. A few very dry weeks did a bit of damage to our tomatoes. Three out of the four plants are almost dead. But the fourth, an heirloom, is doing great. Over a dozen plump tomatoes are slowly ripening. The pumpkin vine has performed exactly like it's watermelon buddy. Which is to say: it's a giant healthy looking vine with plenty of flowers and no sign of fruit. Boo! The eggplants, peppers and leeks are great; they're definitely our garden stars. 

I think I'll spend next weekend ripping out the pumpkin and watermelon and filling the spaces with winter vegetables. Is it cabbage-time again already!? Yay!

Brunch, babies and a party in the park

This morning we invited a dozen friends over for brunch before our annual neighborhood summer festival. Oliver made biscuits and gravy as well as a big pot of grits. Friends brought quiches, frittatas, cinnamon bread, fruit salads - all kinds of delicious breakfast foods! We were also happy to have a handful of new friends at the party - babies! This summer was "that" summer for us: many of our local friends had kids. It's sort of nonstop... In a photo below you'll see a two month old, a three week old and friend pregnant with twins (and they're really just the tip of the ice burg). After breakfast everyone walked to Grant Park and spent several hours in the grass enjoying the festival. Our thanks to everyone for a super great day. XO - Cullen

CouchSurfing and more Thai food

My apologies for the lack of posts recently. In addition to winding down our daily blogging we've also been distracted by fun, summertime guests (but I'll get to that in a minute). Last weeks' meals were marked by the DELICIOUS Thai Chicken Satay and the TERRIBLY VERY BAD beans. I mention the beans so our readers know that when made incorrectly, our beloved and reliable beans can be downright GROSS. In this instance we were out of chicken stock and Oliver substituted water. The beans were also strangely gritty for some unknown reason. Ok, but how bad can these beans have been? Let me tell you:

1. Monday, lunch at work, eating at my desk and fairly hungry. I had three bites before deciding I would rather stay hungry then eat more.
2. Tuesday, lunch at work, I've come prepared to dress up the beans with sour cream (the real stuff, not Greek yogurt) and an entire bottle of hot sauce. I was able to mask the bland flavor but not the odd texture. I ate almost all of it but vowed to throw away the rest of the pot as soon as I got home.
3. On Wednesday I ate something else.

For your recipe reference - DO NOT SKIP THE CHICKEN STOCK!!! This is a photo of the box we usually buy (it's one of the few items we always buy at Kroger):

On the brightside, dinner tonight was PERFECTION! Green curry with: homegrown eggplants, peppers and basil; shrimp and bok choy from YDFM. This will also be lunch tomorrow (I've already packed it). We ate on the front porch where we also enjoyed the beautiful sunset and unusually mild summer weather.

The title of this post may have given away the nature of our fun, summertime guests: CouchSurfers! CouchSurfing is online network of international travelers in which you can register to be a host, traveler, local guide or all of the above. Oliver and I are currently listed as hosts. Over the weekend we had our first guests: two 24 year old architecture students from Paris. They were wonderful! Full of friendly and intellectual conversation, laid-back and go-with-flow, even helpful around the house. 

Weekend Highlights:
• Visiting Atlanta's most noteworthy, modern architectural buildings: Portman's Marriot Marquis, Meier's High Museum and Piano's addition to the Woodruff Arts Center.
• A trip to Decatur square with drinks and dinner at Leon's
• A visit to the Grant Park Farmer's market where we picked up a variety of tarts from the Little Tart Bake Shop and fresh bread from H&F.
• Oliver's southern meals: Breakfast - biscuits and sausage gravy, scrambled eggs with goat cheese and herbs. Lunch - BLT's. 

Celine and Sam - our thanks to you! We hope you enjoyed the weekend as much as we did. Good luck on the rest of your journey!

Sunday morning in the garden

By the time the Grant Park Farmers Market opens at 9:30 we've already been up for at least an hour. This morning we spent time in the garden. Our tomatoes are finally too tall for their stakes so we decided to cut them off at 10 ft. Pumpkin blossoms are appearing on the pumpkin vine. The leeks are getting fat. Green peppers are turning red and there are almost a dozen eggplants between two plants. While Oliver cooked bacon I ran down to the GPFM and picked up some goat cheese made Friday on a farm just 10 miles away. Breakfast was omelets with veggies from the garden, fresh goat cheese and a side of bacon. 

Dinner from the garden

Thursday night Oliver made dinner from ingredients we had on hand. An onion, garlic, olive oil and box of pasta from the pantry. Plus three tomatoes, a green bell pepper, a red chili pepper, basil, oregano, thyme and parsley all picked fresh from the garden. 




*Fancy Beer Friday will be posted tomorrow (Saturday)! Check back to read about Friday night at Redbrick Brewing Company and their soon to be released 17th Anniversary Ale.  

Summer Garden Update: Week Nine

Tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and pumpkin - oh my!

We picked five tomatoes on Tuesday and it looks like we'll have a few more in a day or two. 

Summer garden harvest

Tonight I picked two eggplants and three heirloom tomatoes. These are the same tomatoes that I photographed and posted on Saturday. Four consecutive days of thunderstorms and the subsequent soggy ground has caused these tomatoes to split their skins in a few places. No worries though, I'm sure they still taste fine. I've already roasted the eggplants and mashed them with tahini, lemon, cumin and garlic. That along with a piece of H&F bread (from the Grant Park Farmers Market) will be tomorrow's lunch. 

What's for lunch? Alton Brown's gazpacho

The big news about this meal is that I (Cullen) made it by myself while Oliver was not home! I'm three for three on cooking for myself this weekend. I've started easy (spinach salad with an egg) and have been working my way into meals with more ingredients and more steps. Last night I roasted eggplant and then mashed it with tahini, ground cumin & lemon. While today's gazpacho didn't require any cooking it did require much more knife work then I usually take on. And I learned how to peel a tomato! I recommend this recipe for any beginner cooks who love tomatoes (and/or salsa). Thanks to Alton Brown for another easy and great recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
• Tomato juice
• 1 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1 small jalapeno, seeded and minced
• 1 medium garlic clove, minced
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lime, juiced
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon toasted, ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, chiffonade

Directions

Fill a 6-quart pot halfway full of water, set over high heat and bring to a boil.

Make an X with a paring knife on the bottom of the tomatoes. Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for 15 seconds, remove and transfer to an ice bath and allow to cool until able to handle, approximately 1 minute. Remove and pat dry. Peel, core and seed the tomatoes. When seeding the tomatoes, place the seeds and pulp into a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl in order to catch the juice. Press as much of the juice through as possible and then add enough bottled tomato juice to bring the total to 1 cup.

Place the tomatoes and juice into a large mixing bowl. Add the cucumber, bell pepper, red onion, jalapeno, garlic clove, olive oil, lime juice, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire, cumin, salt and pepper and stir to combine. Transfer 1 1/2 cups of the mixture to a blender and puree for 15 to 20 seconds on high speed. Return the pureed mixture to the bowl and stir to combine. Cover and chill for 2 hours and up to overnight. Serve with chiffonade of basil.

Recipe copied from here. Click for original posting.

Pruning tomatoes

As usual our tomato vines have grown into a big, jumbled mess. Two of them are 7 foot tall tangles of branches, leaves, fruit and twine. It's containable - for now. But by the end of August we'll probably have given up trying to tame the wildness and will just let the plants spill onto the ground.


Pruning the tomato plants is not something I've given much thought. I only have a vague understanding as to why we pull off the "suckers". A conversation last night with Oliver's cousin has gotten me thinking about changing my ways. He explained that a well pruned tomato plant produces more fruit. As evidence he showed me a photo of his well trimmed tomato vine and then one of of the huge pile of gorgeous tomatoes he'd already picked. 


Motivated by what I learned I did some research on the internet this morning. The following video provided a great lesson about which suckers to pluck, why and what you can do with them (stick them in ground and they'll grow a new plant!!). It's probably too late to make difference for us this year; but I'll definitely apply this knowledge next summer. 



Our tomatoes as of mid-July 2012:

Summer Garden: Week Seven

We planted a handful of pumpkin seeds this week; they're all coming up nicely. Hopefully they'll do better then our watermelon. The watermelon vine goes on forever, has plenty of blooms but not one fruit. Our strawberries suffered a similar fate; in the end we didn't get even half a dozen berries. Fortunately strawberries and watermelon are the only plants we've had problems with this summer. Everything* else is going great.


*Two varieties of eggplants, four varieties of tomatoes (two heirloom, two hybrid), green peppers, hot peppers, leeks, basil, mint, thyme and parsley. 

Meals from the garden

The weather may be outrageously hot, but it's still a wonderful time of year to have a vegetable garden. For us Sunday marked the beginning of BLT (bacon, lettuce & tomato) season. To make this season opening, mouthwateringly delicious, sandwich we picked tomatos from two of our heirloom plants. The sourdough bread was fresh from the H&F booth at the Grant Park Farmers Market. Bacon and lettuce from YDFM. This sandwich was PERFECTION! I'm looking foward to more throughout the season. 

For this evening's dinner we picked our two giant eggplants. They were mixed them with pole beans, small potatoes, red peppers, curry paste and coconut milk for a super spicey curry. 

I'd write more - but our Peachtree Road Race costumes are beckoning. I've decided to add pockets to my toga and the draw string in Oliver's Uncle Sam pants need mending. One more day til the big race! YAY! Keep an eye out for us if you plan to be there too.