go local - week 3

We had our local meal a little early this week because I am leaving tomorrow for New Orleans. Our meal was simple...and almost totally local. My mom and I went to the Tuesday Market down at Edward's Greenhouse this week. It was nice. There was only one produce vendor at this farmer's market, but it also included arts and crafts vendors, local wine producers, and live music. At the market I bought this beautiful rainbow chard.


Using the chard, leftover napa cabbage (from Farmer's Market last week) and my new vegetables from the garden we had a local stir fry. The vegetables from the garden include snap peas, the first five of my yellow pear tomatoes, the babiest of baby carrots, and some cilantro. The only thing that wasn't local about the dinner was the rice. The rice is from California...not shipped overseas at least. It was really good; not the most creative meal, but fresh and delicious.

xoxo~stephanie

go local - week two

I had quite a week with local eating! I found so many amazing things to add to my local diet. As a vegetarian (who doesn't really like eggs), I have really struggled trying to figure out how to get enough protein into my local diet. I decided to head over to the Boise Co-op, just to see what I could find. I am used to eating a lot of beans, lentils, nuts, tofu in order to get enough protein. I was feeling a little disenchanted until I started looking through their bulk food items and found great white beans, red lentils, split garbanzo beans and pink beans (they look like pinto beans, but they are pink!) all grown in Idaho. It didn't give a specific place of origin, and I am almost sure that they are from Northern Idaho, more than two hundred miles away, but I am counting them.


In other great news I found some beautiful produce at the farmer's market this week AND I finally got a basket for my bike, so now it is much easier to carry them home.The best part is that the basket detaches, so I can carry it through the farmer's market to carry around my produce. The picture you see above is some delicious napa cabbage, a huge head of romaine lettuce, and white garlic from the Boise Farmer's Market.


My main meal this week was a Rustic Cabbage Soup. I found a recipe on a really cool blog called 101 cookbooks. I forgot to take a picture, but you can check out the one on her website. Her blog has all kinds of amazing vegetarian recipes on it. I did some adjusting to the recipe to make it local, but these are the (all local) ingredients I used: white beans, potatoes, napa cabbage, garlic, onion (from my garden!), water, salt and pepper. I think it was some of the best soup I have ever made. Johnpaul liked it, but of course couldn't help adding that it would have been great with some sausage. I served it with a salad made with the lettuce from the farmer's market, baby peas from my garden, and onion greens from the onions I used in the soup. Delicious!

I also made some of my own yogurt this week. It is amazing how easy it was to make local yogurt. My mom found my an awesome yogurt maker at the thrift store a couple weeks ago. I have been really interested in making my own yogurt for quite a while now. My mama used to make homemade yogurt when I was little. This machine is just like the one she had, except hers was yellow. I used skim milk and nancy's yogurt (not local, but now I can use my own homemade) for the starter. It is so mild and delicious paired with fruit, especially those strawberries from the Berry Ranch.

xoxo~stephanie

Crater Lake and More

Last Wednesday, Ben and I went to Crater Lake for the first time ever. I thought I would post a few pictures cause it is an awesome place. I can't wait to go back!The first day the water was amazingly blue...
The second day it was less blue and more reflective. So awesome!
Our best self portrait yet!

My New fence.

A few photos from the garden at the beginning of June...Sorry it took me a few weeks to get them posted.

local eating challenge

little plants in one of the beds.

My friend Heather decided to start a local eating challenge. I am so excited about it. The premise is that each week you fix one meal made with entirely locally produced ingredients (other than oil and spices.) You can check it out (and join us if you like) at her blog living senses. I am totally excited to see what everyone comes up with. There are people from all over the United States taking part in the challenge and everyone is invited.

baby lettuce

Anyway. All of this has me thinking so much about my garden. I am tending to it and checking it everyday and I just can't wait for that time of year where pretty much everything we eat comes out of the garden. It just fits so well with this local eating challenge. I wanted to post a few pictures of the garden and where it is now.

onions

Each year I usually start all of my seeds inside in my little greenhouse before spring has officially sprung. I love doing that, but this year was just too crazy and I couldn't get it done. So, I admit it, my tomatoes were officially bought as starts from nurseries around the area. Most everything else I just sowed right into the ground and so far...so good. We will see if they produce in time, but for right now they are just growing and growing.

Potatoes..growing like mad!

xoxo ~ stephanie

72 and Sunny

Today, I thought I would share with you a few photos from my garden and my newest garden discovery.
My friend Joanie told me about these:



They come flat, and you fill them with water....like you would fill something inflatable with air (except it is much easier than blowing something up because of the large openings at the top).



So the whole point of these are to create a little extra insulated green house around your tomato plants or other plants. They make it so you can put your plants out 6 to 8 weeks earlier. Crazy huh? When your plants are babies, you fill the tubes half way up and let the top be kind of a roof over the plants head. Then you fill as they grow. I filled mine all the way up because it is so late in the season, that it won't freeze them, and I didn't want to cook the plants (as it was 72 out today).



So my yard has tons of stuff going on in it. Here's a slide show.

-M

April

Yesterday it hit 78.
Today it snowed.
Luckily the daffodils are strong!

spring break

I started my spring break out with Easter. My Grandma Doris was in Idaho visiting us for the weekend. We went to several nurseries and found some really fun plants. If you live in the area and haven't been to Boise's Edwards Nursery, you should really take the trip. It is awesome! We also explored some of Nampa's new quilting and fabric stores downtown. Grandma found some really awesome fabric.

On Easter Day we hung out at my mom's house and ate a lot of really delicious food. We had potatoes, beans, asparagus, bread, artichokes, fruit salad and yummy, yummy lemon meringue pie. After we ate dinner we played cards and had fun into the evening.

As you know, the next day I headed out for Tracey's house in Moscow. We had a lot of fun!

When I returned home and Johnpaul got off of work on Friday morning we headed

to Bend. We went to visit Johnpaul's parents for a couple of hours and then headed to my dad's house for dinner and a place to stay. We had a nice time chatting with all of them. The next morning we woke up early to meet Michelle at my Grandma Doris' house to put together her beautiful new greenhouse. This ended up being a very big project, only taking a break to attend my cousin Crystal's baby shower (she looks so cute!) and to visit my Grandparents Van Orsow. Here are some photos of the greenhouse project.

Here is Johnpaul and Michelle putting up the corner posts where we would eventually slide in the walls.

Look at this wicked awesome picture of Michelle and my grandpa's old electric drill. We really did use this at one point!
















Putting up the walls.









Finishing up....yes...it really is that dark out. We started at about 9:00 am and finished about 9:40 pm.

It was well worth it though, the greenhouse turned out beautiful and I got to spend a nice day with my fantastic husband, my wonderful sister and my delightful grandmother.






That night (at 10:00!) we headed over the mountain to Portland to visit Johnpaul's sister and her family. We got there after they were asleep and crawled into bed. The rest of the time spent in Portland was used to visit family and friends that we don't get to see often enough. One highlight for me was being able to see my friend Megan and her awesome family. We ate a delicious meal at her house and chatted about life.

We made it home Tuesday, just in time for us to each have a day of relaxing before we headed back to work.

xoxo, Stephanie

the garden

Jack is loving the sunshine as much as I do

It is finally my favorite time of year...the first day of spring was yesterday. Unfortunately, I spent it home with pink eye. Really bad pink eye. It is really disgusting. I am home again today. But, back to happy stuff. It is spring time. Spring time is great and the best part is that it leads to summer time, which is just as great.

Two garden beds with a really cool birdhouse made by Johnpaul's dad

Last week/weekend we worked and worked in the yard to get my garden space ready. I am so happy! We had to dig out the grass. The grass in our yard has been there since 1950. It is full of roots and rocks. It was a little work. Johnpaul is so amazing. He did most of it for me while I cooked dinner or was at school. We made two 12x4 beds. This is the first picture of them. They aren't ready yet!

Raking and rototilling up the garden

The next step was to rototill up the hard soil. Johnpaul used a rototiller that we borrowed from my wonderful Grandma Doris (she is the garden queen.) I raked and gathered big old roots and stones from the ground to be placed elsewhere. As you can see, it wasn't exactly warm here that day.

Look at how muddy it was! Johnpaul's feet were covered by the sloppy mud

Top Soil

Next we added soil and steer manure so our little vegetables would love where they are living. Then Johnpaul mixed it all up with the rototiller.

Square foot dividers for my square foot garden

In my garden this year I am going to grow one bed just like I always would, cramming as much in it as possible and seeing what I get out of it. I am going to try a new method in the other garden. It is called square foot gardening. I know it is actually not new, but it is new to me. You split your bed up into one foot squares and plant according to spacing and harvest time. So, a tomato plant when mature needs an entire square to itself, but in the early days you can use the outer parts of the box for lettuce or another quick, early harvest food. Do you see what I mean? I will be posting more about it as my garden grows.

Early Crop Seeds

I planted my early, cold weather crops on Saturday while Johnpaul was sleeping. The early ones in the ground are lettuce, peas, spinach, onions and carrots. I am so proud of myself because I think these are the earliest seeds that I have ever planted. Usually it is at least spring break before I get them in the ground.

xoxo - stephanie