Quote of the Day: Melissa Coleman

Fall arrived with its honey light and cool evenings, and the maple leaves brightened to match the reds and yellow of ripe apples. It was time to put away the bounty of the warm months for fortitude during the cold ones, as humans had done for centuries.

Melissa Coleman (This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone)

I don’t do a lot of canning, but I do love to ferment things. Over the coming weeks I’ll be making batches of fermented cucumber pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi and other fermented goodies.

These will help augment the root vegetables in the cellar and the bitter winter greens from under the hoop house in the garden throughout the winter. The full-sour dill pickles are probably my favorite fermented food, we gobble them up quickly, eating them at every meal if we have them.

What’s your favorite kind of pickled food?

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Cabbages

Back in Ohio, my soil was much to lean and dry to grow a decent cabbage.  This year, I finally have a few beautiful cabbages in the garden.  I can’t wait to harvest these lovelies to make a BIG batch of sauerkraut.


I have 6 of these green cabbages in the garden that could be harvested any day. The red ones still need another month or so. They’re lagging because of the big maple tree that’s planted a little too close to the potager.

Do you struggle to grow any certain vegetable?

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Friday Favorite: Cashew Butter

Peanut butter has never really been one of my favorite things. As a kid, I didn’t really like PB&J’s – crazy, I know. I did eat a fair amount of peanut butter in college, as it was a convenient snack item. Perhaps part of the reason I never liked it is because it has a tendency to give me indigestion. When I eat peanut butter I burp it up for the next couple hours – not pleasant! I’ve never tried other nut butters as they can be rather pricey.

Earlier this week I decided to try turning my favorite nut into butter – the cashew. I used soaked nuts, which I find easier to digest (see the Nourishing Traditions cookbook for information on soaking cashews). Since I only have a blender, I added a little coconut oil to the cashews and blended it into a lovely butter. I have to admit, this stuff is GREAT. So much better than peanut butter. I don’t think I’ll ever eat peanut butter again!

What’s your favorite kind of nut butter?

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Sets or Pearls

Very early this spring, I direct sowed some onion seed in the low tunnel. I added a label that said “bunching onions”. Since I had seed for red bunching onions, I wasn’t surprised when they came up with red stems. Then, they started to bulb a little, not exactly what I thought was going to happen.

Evidently, these were bulbing onions and not bunching onions. I don’t know if I planted the wrong packet of seed, or if the seed packet was mislabeled. It doesn’t really matter, I can use these onions as pearl onions or I could save them and use them as sets for next year. I don’t usually grow onions from sets because they have a tendency to flower and I don’t find that they store as well.

Of course pearl onions would be nice as well, I was thinking I might pickle them if I chose to use them in that way. Peeling all those onions will be a chore though, not something I’m looking forward to.

Would you save these and plant them or enjoy them as pearl onions?

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Rainbow is Right

I must say, there’s nothing quite like color in the vegetable garden. When I decided to launch the 5×5 Challenge, I quickly settled on the Rainbow Kitchen Collection from Renee’s Garden Seed. Seeing bright, colorful vegetables in the garden is an amazing sight.

This week I spotted the first yellow tomato in the 5×5 Garden. I must admit, the first one I spotted was quickly snagged from the vine and eaten. This photo is of the second one, which I have been wanting to eat, but decided I should wait until I got a photo.

The yellow summer squash are coming on as well, we’ve been enjoying them for breakfast.

When it comes to vegetables you can find them in a wide variety of colors. It really does add so much interest and beauty to a garden to have as many different colors as you can.

Which is your favorite color of vegetable?

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