CHICKENS!

Hello, Long Weekend! Hello, Minimal Morning Sickness! Hello, Renewed Creative Engery! Hello, Chickens! That's right, there are chickens. Okay, so the cuties pictured here don't live on my urban homestead, which is a total bummer. But they do live on Stacy and Brian's suburban homestead, which we visited last weekend (sidenote - Go Bears! We kept the Axe!). And these are their babies. Above is, I think, Panama Red.
This is Red and either Chicken Hawk, Chica or Cocoa, enjoying some free time out in the yard.
How cute are they? And only six months old. Hopefully there will be eggs soon, but Stacy and Brian might have to wait until the warmer weather this spring. When they start laying, they'll produce an egg every other day or so. A dozen fresh eggs a week. How yummy does that sound?
Red, roosting.
And this is the gorgeous coop that Brian built in their backyard. A month or so back he tore out their entire (beautiful) backyard, because Brian gets bored with things after a while. We saw the rough versions of the beds he's building in the garden now and I can already tell they're going to be even more spectacular. Damn him and his handy/arty-ness. Why can't my brain function like this? And since it can't, how do you think I can bribe him to come down and do something like this for us in LA?

THE Attack of the Killer Zucchini

What happens when you can't see under the zucchini plants? These two behemoths "went to the mattresses" to avoid detection and picking. While cleaning-up the garden and re-staking the tomatoes, I discovered them hiding under the massive leaves of my two zucchini plants.

Yes, I only planted 2 zucchini and now have so much of the yummy veggie that I had to place a call to all my friends to find new recipes that freeze well and task good.

So if you also find yourself with far too many zucchini plants and not enough friends to give them away to, let me suggest one of the following recipes. Properly stored, you can enjoy the fruits of your labors well into winter (and for those of us who do not live in sunny CA, that's a real treat!).


PINEAPPLE ZUCCHINI BREAD

3 eggs
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 8oz can crushed pineapple,drained
3 cups flour,unsifted 2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp.baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon 1 cup chopped nuts
1 cup raisins,optional

1. Beat eggs, add oil, sugar and vanilla; beat mixture until light and foamy.
2. Stir in zucchini and pineapple.
3. Combine flour, soda, salt baking powder, cinnamon, nuts and raisins.
4. Stir gently into zucchini mixture.
5. Pour batter into a greaed and floured 9x5 loaf pan.
6. Bake 350( for 1 hour, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pans.

CHERRY ZUCCHINI BREAD

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water
2 cups flour
2 tsp.baking powder
1 tsp.cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2/3 cup shredded unpeeled zucchini 2/3 cups dried tart cherries
1 Tbsp. grated lemon peel

1. Put eggs in large mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer on med.speed 3 to 4 minutes or until eggs are thick and lemon colored.
2. Add sugar, oil, lemon juice and water, mix well.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
4. Add flour mixture to egg mixture; mix well.
5. Stir in zucchini, cherries and lemon peel.
6. Grease and flour bottom of 8-/2 x 4-1/2" loaf pan.
7. Pour batter into prepared pan.
8. Bake in preheated 350( oven 55 to 65 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
9. Let cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes.
10. Remove from pan. Let cool completely.
11. Wrap in plastic and store in refrigerator or Freeze.


ZUCCHINI QUICHE

4 small zucchini
1 cup & 1 Tablespoon bisquick
8 Tablespoons grated parm. cheese
2 Tablespoons milk
2 Tablespoons oil{liquid}
1 dash pepper
1/2 cup onion,chopped
4 eggs,slightly beaten
1/4teaspoon garlic powder {I use more}
2 tablespoons parsley flakes

Mix together all ingredients.
Pour into greased 9 x 13 x 2" pan.
Bake 350( for 1/2 hour or until light brown.

Here is one for Zucchini Casserole this is a new one for me too. A friend just gave this one to me,she said it is really good.

ZUCCHINI CASSEROLE

3 cups cornbread stuffing
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup sour cream
2 small zucchini, shredded
2 yellow squash, shredded
1/4 cup carrots ,shredded
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup{reg. or 98% free}

Stir stuffing and butter in large bowl.
Reserve 1/2 cup of stuffing mixture
Spoon remaining into a 2 quart shallow baking dish.
Stir soup, sour cream, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots and cheese into a med. bowl.
Spread the mixture over the stuffing mixture and sprinkle with the reserve stuffing mixture.
Bake at 350( for 40 minutes or until hot.

You can also use the zucchinis like an eggplant Make a parmigana instead of eggplant use the zucchini in its place or try making lasagna with it too.

And One last tasty choice:

CHOCO-ZUCCHINI CUPCAKES:

BATTER:
2 cups shredded zucchini (8 oz)
3 eggs OR 3/4 cup egg substitute
2 cup granulated sugar OR 1.5 cups Splenda
3/4 cups cooking oil OR 3/4 cups applesauce
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup milk chocolate pieces (optional)

FROSTING:
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup softened butter
1 Tbsp. milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar

PREPARATION:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line 24 2.5 inch muffin cups with paper bake-cups or lightly coat with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Stir together zucchini, eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla.
3. Add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and chocolate chips (if using)
4. Stir to combine
5. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling each cup half full.
6. Bake about 25 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cool in pan on wire wrack for 5 minutes, remove cups from pan and cool completely

Frosting Prep:

1. Beat 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/3 cup softened butter, 1 Tbsp milk and 1/2 tsp. vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth.
2. Gradually add 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar, beating until combined.
3. If necessary, stir in 1 to 2 teaspoons additional milk until desired consistency

I eliminated the chocolate chips and did not frost the cupcakes and they still were wonderful. They're great with coffee, as a desert with vanilla ice cream, or in the morning as a snack. If you use the alternatives of egg substitute, applesauce, and Splenda they're also low calorie and low points.

They freeze well too!

Patchwork Farms - A CSA-Style Enterprise in Marin

Stacy and Brian are starting a new endeavor up in Marin, a CSA-like project called Patchwork Farms that sounds absolutely fantastic.

The idea is simple - people in the greater Ross Valley area can sign up to barter and trade their abundance of fruits and veggies with other neighbors in the area. All the information is available on their website (linked above).

If you're up in Marin, sign up today!

Community Gardening

You guys might think that Noah and I are fairly serious urban gardeners. But we're nothing compared to my parents and Stacy and Brian. Not only do both couples have their own (large) home gardens, but they share a community garden plot as well.
Located at the Robson-Harrington House, a public park in San Anselmo, there are about thirty individual plots that can be used for a nominal fee by any resident of San Anselmo. The waiting list is long, but my dad and Brian got their first plot a few years back and last year upgraded to a larger, sunnier spot. These top two pics are from our family friend Caterina's garden. Beautiful blooms!
The plot houses a variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers and trees. The guys do the main gardening, and lemme tell you, they get quite a haul.
You can see tomato trellises mixed in with roses and California poppies. It's really stunning.
This above picture shows some of the many, many tomato cages (I think there are over forty plants) as well as what I think is the climbing fence for pole beans and cucumbers and stuff.
San Anselmo has a great micro-climate. They can get fog in the mornings and hit the 90s by mid-day. You can grow anything from the tropical flowers above to most produce, berries and fruit trees like figs, apricots and apples. I am trying to convince the fam to start growing grapes for wine. I know it's only a matter of time before they give in.
This Tiki was salvaged by my dad from the plot of a former gardener. Nice looking guy to keep you company while you work.
These strawberry plants survived multiple transplants, from the original garden to the new garden to a sunnier spot in the new garden.
And when you just wanna kick back and read a book amidst all the beauty, well they've got that covered, too.
Man, just looking at these pictures is making me jealous. Can't wait to see how everything's growing when we head up for Stacy's 30th birthday in July.

The Perfect Strawberry

This is going to be the year that we actually succeed in growing strawberries, dammit. As evidence, I present the first strawberry of the year, in all its juicy, red perfection:

You know how nothing tastes better than something picked and eaten directly from your home garden? I think the fragile strawberry is the epitome of that concept. I'd been watching this lil' guy ripen for ten days or so. Every day I said, "Not quite yet...". Until yesterday. It was just before lunch and I walked out to check the garden and Mr. Strawberry was just sitting there, plump and shining, saying, "Eat me." And so I did. Warm from the sun, it was perfection.

I can't wait for more.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We're about six weeks into the spring/summer/fall garden and things are growing great. There were some lofty plans to take the space and build a huge raised bed, but time and bad backs got in the way. So we're going ahead with the usual container/wine barrel garden we've had for the past five or six years. And like every spring, we've added a few more containers.

What's growing? Tomatoes (13 and counting, we added a Northern Lights that we discovered at the HFM last weekend), Japanese eggplant, Persian cucumbers (the best for the hundreds of Greek salads we eat during the summer), serrano peppers, Charentrais melons, 4 kinds of beets, swiss chard, silverbeet spinach, spring onions, rainbow carrots, turnips, strawberries (with actually berries, for the first time ever!), 4 kinds of basil, rosemary, 2 kinds of thyme, lemon verbena, oregano, Bob Marley mint (it smells smokey when you rub it, another HFM find), tarragon, sage (the flowers are below) and lavender.
And that's just for now. We're bound to adopt a few more things over the course of the spring/summer. Including, hopefully, a fig tree. To go with the Meyer lemon tree I forgot to mention. As you can imagine, my other career option is farming.

The early mornings would be tough, though.

25 Things I Love About LA #4 - Tomatomania

Last weekend was the annual Tomatomania sale at the Tapia Brothers Farm Stand in Encino. It's the fourth year Noah and I have gone and we always end up buying more plants than we have room for in our backyard container garden. And yet, we've managed to find a way...
Above are our tomato choices, twelve in all, as well as some basil. We grabbed strawberry plants later, too. A quick list of our tomatoes, from memory - Siberia, Pineapple, Reisentraube, Enchanted, Indian Moon, Bi-Color Cherry, Matt's Gold Cherry, Black Krim, Black Truffle (a hybrid of the Black Trifele, which we grew with moderate success last year), Chocolate Stripe, Copia and Costoluto Genovese. Holy crap, I can't believe I remembered them all. Okay, Noah remembered that last one.
The tomatoes they sell are like 99% heirlooms, with some old standbys like Early Girls and Best Boys thrown in for the non-adventurous. Which always confuses me - if you're at a huge, well known heirloom tomato event with hundreds of tasty varieties, why the hell do you buy the ones you can get at Home Depot?

You can see how many flats they have filled with seedlings. The picture above is about 1/5 of the entire sale area. The only variety we really wanted and couldn't find this year was Northern Lights. It's a great yellow/orange beefsteak with red stripes that was a prolific plant for us a few years back.
The farm stand only hosts the event, but sells it's own fruits, flowers and plants and is a pretty cool place. They've expanded their chicken coop (above) and you get the pleasure of listening to the chickens cluck away while you shop. It's great fun and makes me yearn for my own urban chicken coop. I love this little farm that's only 20 minutes from the heart of Hollywood
But it's not just us lucky Angelenos that get to attend Tomatomania events. The company does a variety of events in California and back east in Lothian, MD and Litchfield, CT. Dates are below. And whether you get your tomatoes there or from your local nursery or on the internet from places like Seed Savers, it's time to start looking. SPRING IS HERE!

Fillmore, CA *NEW

April 4 Only Otto and Sons Nursery

Beverly Hills, CA

April 18 PartyPaperLife

Sonoma, CA

April 25 - 26 Cornerstone Place

Arcadia, CA

May 1 - 3 LA Garden Show

Lothian, MD *NEW

May 8 - 10 Greenstreet Gardens

Litchfield, CT

May 15 - 17 White Flower Farm

Winter Mini-Harvest

I picked these beauties today.

Doing a 3-5 day pickle for the beets. The tomato will ripen for a few more days before heading into a salad or something. But the meyer lemon is the one I'm most proud of - we transplanted our tree two years ago and it seemed like it was never going to fruit again. This little fella was the first one to ripen from the current crop (a whopping three lemons).

Any ideas on how best to treat it/eat it?

Persimmon Drying - Hachiya

We are drying persimmons this year from Gretchen and Chuck's Tree. We watched a TV show about it and got super inspired. Also we have been looking into it online for a while. Here is what we did,

1) Cut hachiya persimmons from tree when they are still hard, but have turned orange in color. Keep the T shape of the stem, for the hanging phase.

2) Peeled the persimmons

3) Attached strings around the T's

4) Hang them to dry.

5) 1st - Five days in the sun (take inside if it is very moist out or raining). We have had fog at night, so are bringing them in.

6) 2nd - 2 weeks or so, massage each persimmon for about 30 seconds. This helps bring out the natural sugars. If it feels like a water balloon about to pop, then skip massaging those ones for a day or so.

7) 3rd - 2 -6 weeks - Allow them to finish drying indoors

8) Should look like a crystalized shrunken version of itself in the end.

9) Eat and enjoy, be careful of any inside seeds when eating. I think there is one bigger one.

So, this is the first time we have tried this. We built a rack with wheels so we can put then in and out of our garage. Chuck and Gretchen are trying this too, but under the eves of the roof on the house. It will be interesting to see how this all come out in the end. It is an old Japanese tradition to dry persimmons this way. Cool thing to do with all that beautiful fruit that is so hard to eat all up once they go off.

Stacy and Brian

Transitioning the Garden

Lots of stuff going on in the garden right now. First off I walked out a few days ago and found the above guy growing. My first sunflower! I've been planting sunflower seeds for years to no avail. And just when I'm about to give up/run out of seeds I finally get one. Woop woop!

And there's also this melon:

He(?) (Do melons have genders?) just showed up out of nowhere when we first did our summer plantings back at the end of March. We had no idea what he was going to be, since melons look kind of like cucumbers and we eat/compost lots of them. Squash was an option, too. But apparently it's a melon. Anybody have a clue as to type? Guess we'll find out when we finally cut him open.

It's also time for the last of the summer tomatoes. Like this honkin' Marmande:


We had zero Marmandes for months, then we got three. But somebody (our back neighbor, we suspect) stole both of them just as they were hitting their peak of ripeness! You have not met two more bitter gardeners when Noah and I discovered that tragedy. This one is finally ready (the pic is about a week old, I picked an almost fully red tomato this evening, before it got stolen).

And the Riesentraubes! Oh, the Riesentraubes... how I love thee. You just keep giving and giving and I know you'll do so up through October and into November. Check these pretties out:

They're great for roasting whole with some eggplant (as I did with the eggplants from the Farmers Market on Sunday night) in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic.

But this weekend it was time to start buying and planting the fall/winter garden. It'll be our first non-summer garden and I'm kinda psyched. I picked out two kinds of Brussel sprouts, purple asparagus (which Jimmy the Plant Dude assured me are so awesome you can eat raw) and some scallions.

I still want to plant some spinach (gotta wait 'til it's a little more consistently cool during the days), lettuces, maybe a butternut squash. I put in some dumpling squashes about a month ago. Maybe I'll get kale and chard, if there's room. I've got a Black Krim tomato going that I planted about a month ago, he'll be our winter tomato. One of the awesome things about living in LA, you can get tomatoes nearly year round if you're strategic in your planting.

Any other suggestions?