Buhl, Idaho
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden, Places we eat, Road Trips on February 16, 2012
Buhl, Idaho sits on the rim of the Snake River Canyon, planted in the volcanic soil that covers the surrounding farmland. Cloverleaf Creamery sits in the middle of Buhl, churning the best ice cream in the state. In a recent blog post, while loving the ice cream, I dissed Buhl. I am sorry, I now would like to recommend a visit to Buhl. After reading the comments, I decided to broaden my outlook on Buhl. This is our first adventure of many more to come. I would love a guide, a recommendation, a local historian, more perspective… Contact me if you are in the Buhl area and want to show me something.
Buhl is not a small rest stop town off I 84. To get there you have to get off the interstate and penetrate rural Idaho. My favorite way is US Route 30 (The Thousand Springs Scenic Byway). Katie and I take this road down the Snake River Canyon into the Hagerman Valley and straight to Miracle Hot Springs many times a year.
In 2010 Katie and I spent Thanksgiving in one of the geodesic domes eating pumpkin pie lying on the geothermal floor while outside it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It was amazing how warm a canvas tent can stay with a heated floor. If you stood up however; everything above your thighs froze, it’s best to stay lying down in extreme cold. The desire to soak ones bones in a geothermal pool has been attracting people to this spot forever. It is as popular as ever, expect a crowd, and make reservations for private tubs.
To insure a fresh perspective, we decided not enter Buhl from Route 30. Instead, we took some strange back roads that I am unsure of now. Immediately we were surprised by a sign: ‘First Ascent Fish Farm: Fish, Shrimp, Oysters.’ somewhere between Wendell and Buhl. I thought, “somebody’s growing fresh water shrimp! I have got to see this.” We followed signs through Twin Falls County turning right, left, right, right… We passed old farm houses, some agricultural fields, trophy houses on big lots with horses (horse people) and pasture.
Finally, we pulled into a cool little aquatic farm. Steaming hot water bubbled up from the ground and spilled down the hillside, directed by ditches, towards the Snake River. These farmers had built concrete tanks terraced down the hill. Water cascaded from one tank to the next. There was so much hot water flowing from the ground, I imagine them running out of concrete as they worked their way down the hill so they just started making little perfectly round ponds in the earth. In the middle of a dead cold Idaho winter these crystal clear ponds were surrounded by bright green grass. The steaming ponds and tanks where absolutely full of gold and gray tilapia eagerly waiting for food to fall on the surface of the water. The only shrimp I saw was frozen from Ecuador stored in a chest freezer.
Turns out they truck the fish to Seattle and bring back shrimp and oysters. We bought three tilapia for $5. From there we headed straight for Cloverleaf Creamery. Once again outstanding ice cream, we are coming back for a tour. Once in town we hit US Route 30 for Miracle.
As we passed corn stump after brown corn stump I thought about life being as complex as the farming methods used on the rim of the Snake. I think the industrial model of agriculture has taught us a lot; I am thankful, just don’t think it’s a good idea any more. It’s time the farmers of Twin Falls County look beyond corporate sponsored farming. The factory dairy industry, commodity farming and the mega meat market has nearly destroyed rural America and made most of us fat. The “Round-up” agriculture practiced by the majority of farmers in the area is something you’ll never convince me is a good idea no matter how many monocultures you grow be it beans, corn, potatoes, wheat, milk or meat…
Farmer Marty
Two Lovers in Search of Good Cake
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on February 13, 2012
Love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is here again! We heard on NPR this morning that the average American spends a ridiculous amount of cash on Valentine’s Day gifts, something like $150. Really? Instead of making it a consumer holiday, why not show your love by cooking dinner together, complete with a fancy dessert?
Another article I read (for expectant parents) said that the way to make a relationship last is to do little favors for your partner, be it housework, cooking, or even bringing them a cup of tea. So, show your love and bake them a cake! (Dessert has worked pretty well so far on Marty. Check out our other desserts under the recipes section, for more options.)
This recipe is perfect if you’re looking for something red, white and delicious. The recipe is from Marty’s mom and has been a favorite of mine through many a family event. We recently made a gigantic version of it for an event we catered, pictured above.
I am providing a white cake recipe here from the Joy of Cooking, although Marty’s mom usually uses a white cake mix. Though I don’t usually recommend mixes, in this case it’s probably fine, because the deliciousness of this cake is mostly in the topping.
Raspberry Valentine Cake
White Cake:
- 2 sticks butter (room temperature)
- 1 2/3 c sugar
Beat butter on high speed in a mixer until light and fluffy. Then add sugar.
In a separate bowl, combine:
- 3 ½ c sifted cake flour
- 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
In yet another bowl, combine:
- 1 c milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ½ tsp almond extract (optional)
Alternate adding flour mixture and milk mixture to butter in mixer bowl. Beat on low speed.
In another bowl, combine:
- 8 egg whites
- 3/8 tsp cream of tartar
Beat until soft peaks form, then add
- 1/3 c sugar
Beat until the peaks are stiff, then stir into batter with a spatula.
Bake at 375. Joy of Cooking recommends baking this in three, 8-inch round pans. Two rectangular or square pans would probably also work. In the photo above, we doubled the recipe and did just two layers in very large rectangular pans. Line your pans with wax or parchment paper, and grease with some butter on top of that. This helps the cake bake flat, rather than higher in the middle than on the edges.
You can also use a white cake mix, or 2 mixes for a larger, multilayer cake. Be sure to prepare it using the instructions with egg whites only so that the cake comes out very white. The real secret to this cake is in the topping, not the cake.
Frosting:
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 6 oz package of cream cheese
Whip until fluffy.
- 1 ½ cups whipped cream.
Whip in a separate bowl, then fold into cream cheese mixture. Frost cake.
Raspberry topping:
- 2 ten-ounce packages frozen raspberries (or 2 ½ cups fresh)
- 1 package Danish Raspberry Dessert (We used Junket brand.)
Mix Danish dessert using 1 ¾ cups liquid, using juice from frozen raspberries as part of the liquid. Add raspberries, let cool. Spread over cream cheese frosting on top of cake. Chill and serve.
Belly Update
Posted by castironidaho in Events on January 23, 2012
It’s official: Marty and I now have matching bellies! 30 weeks down, 10 to go! The Cast Iron Baby is still growing right along, moving and kicking a lot, and according to the midwife, positioned head-down and ready to be born at the end of March! I am still feeling excellent, though a bit more tired as I get bigger and move toward the end of pregnancy. But many of the common complaints of pregnant women I have not had, at least not yet, and I attribute this to good eating and diligent exercise. It was a little hard not to eat too much sugar over the holidays, but the baby is good motivation to do the things I should be doing anyway. The period of being really, really hungry all the time seems to have passed, and there’s less and less room in my belly for food. So, I’m eating smaller meals but trying to make sure I get all the proper nutrition for pregnancy. I recommend lots of meat, beans, and nuts for protein and iron. I usually try to eat lots of calcium at breakfast time, and have been buying calcium fortified juice. Juice is the one thing I always crave, and during the third trimester, babies’ bones grow a lot, so moms need extra calcium.
24 weeks, in San Diego!
Weight gain so far: 30 pounds! I definitely feel heavy. This is probably a little more than I should have gained, as the recommended amount is 25-35 pounds and I still have two months to go. My mom said she gained most of her weight in the second trimester, so I’m hoping that’s what’s going on with me, too.
My body has been surprisingly comfortable during pregnancy. I expected a lot of backaches, and lots of women seem to have trouble sleeping, among other discomforts. I think that exercise is really, really important to keep the pregnant body happy and comfortable. Since its winter and I have the time, I’ve been pretty diligent about attending yoga classes, swimming laps, or walking, most days. I definitely feel less energetic on days I don’t have time to exercise, and have been sleeping well and have had few backaches.
So, overall, being pregnant is still awesome! I don’t know what I’ll do when random people at the gym stop telling me how beautiful I look in my bikini. I’ve attended yoga classes at the YMCA for nearly 4 years and never chatted with anyone, but now everyone wants to know when I’m due and tell me their birth stories. All the teachers know my name and help me change some of the positions to accommodate my belly. It’s really sweet how concerned people are about the yet-to-be-born baby.
To get ready for the birth, Marty and I are attending the Confident Birthing childbirth class taught by Kyndal May. The class is designed for couples who are planning to have a natural, unmedicated birth, but also teaches you about your options in the case that complications make this impossible. Marty calls Kyndal “the orgasm lady,” because a lot of the first class was about orgasms. (Sorry, Kyndal. He still does take all your advice very seriously.) It turns out that the same hormones that enable women to have orgasms also enable us to birth a child, AND, things that might prevent orgasms can also prevent labor from progressing. So, for a birth, it makes sense to create an atmosphere that might be orgasm-friendly. We’ve learned this, and many other amazing facts about the female body. It’s a lot of information, and Kyndal is amazingly well-informed. As one graduate we know puts it, you practically graduate from this course with a Ph.D in childbirth. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that an out-of-hospital birth with a midwife is the way to go. So far, highly recommended.
28 weeks, in the Boise Foothills!
We’ve also been talking a lot about how weird it is that we need classes to learn how to birth babies and breastfeed them….haven’t women been doing this for millions of years? Unfortunately, with today’s pace of North American life we’ve lost a lot of that intergenerational knowledge. Gone are the extended families living in close vicinity, where moms learn from other moms. A good deal of my knowledge of what to do about a newborn comes from my Peace Corps days in Paraguay, where women were still birthing at home and breastfeeding all the time. Mothers of many of the women in the class didn’t have natural births or breastfeed their babies, so we are super grateful for both my mom and Marty’s mom, who did these things, and will probably be able to point us in the right direction once the baby is born.
Finally, thanks to everyone who hosted and attended our baby showers in Pennsylvania and Maryland over the holidays! Real thank you notes are on their way, as soon as I remember to buy some stamps. Maybe there will be a Boise celebration too, stay tuned!
(Didn’t know I was pregnant? See Eating for Two.)
–Katie
Girl Hunter, by Becca Stroebel
Posted by castironidaho in Hunting and Fishing on January 17, 2012
Another great commentary for all of our hunting, livestock-raising, and/or meat-eating readers. Boise Librarian! Becca Stroebel talks about getting her start as a female hunter and fisherwoman, and getting down and dirty with where the meat we eat comes from. For this interesting post and ongoing advice on what to read, head over to Becca’s blog, Librarian!
Gardening in the Right of Way, by Jeff Anderson
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on January 16, 2012
Another reader commented on our post about Front Yard Gardens. Jeff is the previously unknown owner of the garden on Bannock. He gives some great advice, we thought it was worth re-posting as a guest post! Here’s what he has to say. Thanks Jeff!
That garden on Bannock is mine. My name is Jeff Anderson and thanks for the compliments. I’m friends with 25th Street Katie and Tanner. I feel ‘ve had great success with right of way gardening. The plants love how sunny it is and they don’t seem to mind the extra heat from all the asphalt and concrete. It also frees up the backyard for the kids to play in, although berries and fruit trees are being squeezed in back there too. I’d agree with your friend the best part of gardening outside backyard has been meeting lots of neighbors – its been fun trading tips and giving away what ever is over producing. Everyone asks about theft but so far it hasn’t been to be that much of a problem.
Also, not inorder to brag but more to give others a tip, the Horticulture society has a gardening contest each year. One category is called Community Improvement Projects. Right of ways, since they are ACHD property, fit in that category. I had to get a license agreement from ACHD to put in my raised beds, here is a link to that info…
http://www.achdidaho.org/Forms/Docs/License_Agreement_Guidelines.pdf
Anyways I’ve won that category twice in 2009 and 2011, each time collecting a really cool trophy paver and $300! The way the contest works is the garden/landscaping has to be new so that limits who can enter. I won twice because I expanded the original garden last year and entered the new part. The great thing is the contest favors the beginner. Anyways since lumber and soil is expensive this contest is a great way to offset the cost. 2nd and 3rd prize have $100 prizes I think. You get a botanical garden membership too! Here are the details from last year…
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e3bgo8cic1f1339c&llr=sqr6g5dab
You’ve got a great blog. Stop by some time next spring once I’m back out gardening.
-Jeff
A Visit to Upper Rogue Organics
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden, Road Trips on January 6, 2012
Every great once and a while, a farmer gets off the farm. About as far off the farm as I dare get is onto to someone else’s farm. So when Katie and I took off out of town, in early November, we headed straight for Upper Rogue Organics. Upper Rogue is a small 10 acre fruit and vegetable farm in Prospect, Oregon. The Navickas brothers, Eric and Ryan, have been market gardening for almost 20 years now. I met these two in 2002 at the Ashland, Oregon Farmer’s Market. Instantly we became friends, and over the years they have become my most admired mentors. I wanted to introduce Katie to the Eco Vikings and show her where I learned I wanted to be a farmer.
Eric and Ryan had grown up gardening and when Ashland decided to host a farmers’ market to the young Ryan Navickas it seemed a no-brainer. Grow veggies on an old empty lot and sell them at the market. Soon Ryan had recruited his older brother Eric and their farming careers began. This is around 1995, before Omnivore’s Dilemma, before… It became clear very early these guys had a talent for growing veggies and their family helped them purchase the 10 acre farm in Prospect, a mere 25 miles from Crater Lake. Amongst the beautiful mountain setting this place is perfect for market gardening thanks to the volcanic soil and temprate climate. There is also plenty to do and see for the outdoorsmen in the Upper Rogue area, including prime mushroom hunting. (Marty)
Marty and I set off on our much-anticipated fall vacation and babymoon. After a lovely morning visiting the breathtaking Crater Lake and hiking along the Upper Rogue River, we rolled up to Ryan and Eric’s farm. Sadly, though, nobody was home, and Farmer Marty had insisted on not bringing our tent, and not calling to tell them we were coming.….luckily for Marty, when we returned a few hours later, Eric and Ryan were there, and it turned out that they actually were the kind of friends where you could just show up at their doorstep with no call or anything. Along with Eric’s partner Amy, they felt like old friends, even to me. It may seem weird, but working in somebody else’s garden is totally relaxing for me, no decisions to make, nobody asking questions, and those weeds aren’t my problem!
The highlights of Upper Rogue Organics were their hand-built, straw-bale house, their outdoor kitchen where we enjoyed a number of home cooked meals including a soup of wild chanterelle mushrooms, and their “guest cottage,” a three-sided wooden structure which I suppose doubles as a wood shed, but includes a tiny woodburning stove that kept us toasty despite the chilly, rainy, night. It was probably the loveliest night of camping I’ve ever had, and have decided that I need one of these stoves. (Katie)
Being as I was tending my own farm in the peak of the season we showed up just in time for the last market of the Upper Rogue season. Fascinating thing about the Ashland Market, it’s on a Tuesday morning, has as many vegetable vendors as the Boise downtown market, half the crowd, farmers make twice as much. Anyway, Eric and Ryan do a lot of berries and starting next year will be selling the most divine strawberry-raspberry jam I’ve ever had the privilege of eating. Another thing they grow a lot of is garlic. A lot of what they grow changes over the years, they have a few cash crops like blue berries, garlic, napa cabbage, daikon radish and apples and the rest they grow to eat and sell a little.
Back in 2002 when I worked on a farm 35 miles down the road in Trail, Oregon, I’d visit Eric and Ryan on all my days off. After working all day we would sit by the fire, eat campfire food like I have never tasted and talk about Wendell Berry’s book Unsettling of America or sing songs from the little red hymn book. We thought we could actually physically change the world with our hands and some tools. At Upper Rogue Organics things aren’t that much different than they were. I was glad I could show Katie the magic in the mountains and it seems it has rubbed off. If you’re ever at the Ashland Farmer’s Market look for Upper Rogue Organics, tell ’em Farmer Marty sent you and be careful the garlic is magic! (Marty)
How to Make Chocolate Truffles
Posted by castironidaho in Handmade, Recipes on December 27, 2011
Here’s what we’ve been cooking up for the holidays….chocolate truffles! We wanted some homemade, edible gifts for family and friends, and although there is a bit of a learning curve to figuring out how to make these, they worked out perfectly. For a moderate investment in time and money, we were able to deliver a lot of holiday gifts with a real “wow, for me?!” impact. In an age of rushed holidays and excessive mall spending, more than one recipient commented on the lack of edible homemade gifts these days.
We had so much fun making these that we’re thinking of taking orders for Valentine’s Day. Anybody interested?
I’d never made truffles before, so perused the internet and several cookbooks for recipes. As usual, most of the info we needed was in the Joy of Cooking. I’ll give you the basics and then the many variations that we tried.
First, you make the basic truffle filling. We did a trial run and decided on this:
- 1 cup heavy cream
- ½ stick butter
- 2 packages dark chocolate chips (we used Ghiardelli’s 60%, the best.)
Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium to low heat. Add the butter, cut in small pieces, and let it melt. Be careful not to overheat it. As soon as the butter is melted, add all of the chocolate and stir until the milk and chocolate combine, and the mixture becomes creamy. As soon as this magic happens, take it off the heat. This is much like making ganache.
At this point, we divided the chocolate into two or four different bowls, and added different flavorings to each one, see recipes below. Refrigerate for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until the chocolate is firm enough to easily roll into balls, not too sticky and not too hard. Joy suggests not using the freezer to expedite this process.
You could also add the flavoring when you heat the milk. This may make the flavors stronger, and you’d need less flavoring. We didn’t try this, we’re still experimenting.
We tried making ganache with dark, milk, and white chocolate. The dark was by far the easiest to work with. The white worked pretty well, although the balls were softer and therefore harder to coat, and the white chocolate burns the most easily, so be careful when heating it. The milk chocolate didn’t work very well at all. It turned more into caramel than ganache. These were messier, but we still coated some of them and they turned out more like chocolate coated caramels.
When the chocolate is firm enough, roll into balls. (If you refrigerate it too long, you’ll have to let it warm up a bit first.)
There are two ways to coat your truffles. The easy way is to roll the balls in crushed nuts or cocoa powder. The more difficult way is to coat them with chocolate.
To make the chocolate coating, we melted more chocolate chips. Joy of Cooking suggests doing this in a double boiler, which I didn’t have, so made my own out of two pots. For this to work, the filling and the coating need to be as close to the same temperature as possible. The filling should be at room temperature. Melt ¾ of your chocolate chips, remove from heat and put in a different, cool bowl. Then add the remaining chocolate chips, which will cool the mixture as they melt. If your coating is too hot, it will melt the filling. If the filling is too cold, the coating won’t stick.
I tried dipping the balls into the coating, which worked okay, but the Joy of Cooking method worked best. Partially dip each chocolate ball, then roll with a small amount of chocolate in the palm of your hand to coat the rest. Carefully move from your hand onto waxed paper to dry. If you want to decorate them, do it while the chocolate coating is still wet. You have to work pretty quickly.
Here are some of the flavors we tried. I didn’t write down measurements, just tasted each one til it seemed good. The flavors to tend to get stronger as they sit.
A lot of the recipes we saw included alcoholic elements like rum or different liquors, but since we’re not drinking these days and wanted to limit expense, we skipped that in favor of several extracts available at Freddy’s for $2. If you already have a well-stocked liquor cabinet, the liquor option might be tasty. Rum, Limoncello, Kahlua, and Orange Liquor were some suggestions.
Raspberry Truffles
- Dark chocolate ganache
- Raspberry extract
- Chopped dried raspberries from City Gardens
- Dark chocolate coating
- Decorated with a dried raspberry
Mint truffles
- Dark chocolate ganache
- Peppermint extract
- Milk chocolate coating
- Decorated with crushed candy canes
Fig truffles
- Dark Chocolate ganache
- Chopped dried figs
- Milk chocolate coating
- Decorated with a dried fig piece
Orange truffles
- Dark chocolate ganache
- Orange extract
- Orange zest
- Rolled in crushed almonds
- Plain chocolate truffles
- Dark chocolate ganache
- Rolled in cocoa powder
Lemon Coconut Truffles (My favorite one)
- White chocolate ganache
- Unsweetened coconut flakes
- Coconut extract
- Lemon extract
- Lemon zest
- Coated in milk or dark chocolate
- Sprinkled with dried coconut
You could also roll balls in coconut flakes, but our white chocolate balls were a little too soft.
Almond Truffles
- White Chocolate Ganache
- Almond extract
- Coat in dark chocolate and sprinkle with crushed almonds.
Ancho pepper truffles (My other favorite one.)
- 1 dried ancho pepper
- 1 whole star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
- 3 cloves
Roast these in the oven until they smell fragrant. Grind finely in a coffee grinder. I got the spice mix recipe from this recipe and added it to our truffles.
Add to dark chocolate ganache a little at a time until you get the flavor you want.
Coat with milk or dark chocolate and sprinkle with cinnamon or a red pepper flake or two.
We used the remaining spice mix to coat a venison steak, yummy.
Maple truffles
- Milk or dark chocolate ganache
- Maple syrup
- Coat in milk or dark chocolate
Ginger truffles
- Milk or dark chocolate ganache
- Ground ginger and/or finely chopped crystallized ginger
- Coat in milk or dark chocolate
- Decorate with a small piece of crystallized ginger
– Katie
Front Yard Gardens, from our readers!
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on December 21, 2011
Wow, we got some good responses to our last post, including a posting over at Northwest Food News! Reader Casey O’Leary sent these photos of her front yard garden.
These are hops growing up the side of Casey’s house. Hops, obviously, are used in brewing beer, and Casey does brew her own. Other vine options for using vertical space beside a house or a fence include grapes, though they take a few years to get going, and pole beans, which last just one year. Hops are a perennial, so will return year after year. If you’re luck enough to live somewhere warm (sigh, Florida), my absolute favorite is passion fruit. It’s viney similar to grapes but grows faster and makes a gorgeous flower, and the juice from the fruit is wonderful. Casey also says that vines are nice for shading the sunny side of a house.
Here’s Casey’s front yard and pathway. She has a mix of flowers, herbs, and edibles. The best place for an herb garden is, of course, as close as possible to your kitchen, since they are best snipped fresh when you are ready to use them. Casey also makes these gorgeous garden walkways using recycled materials and is available to help you make one, or plan and install your own front yard garden. Casey and Marty used to be farming partners when they first started out, and Casey now runs Earthly Delights, a CSA farm and sustainable landscaping business. You can get info about both at her website, earthlydelightsfarm.com.
Thanks for the photos, Casey!
– Katie
NIMFY (Not in My Front Yard) Gardening
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on December 19, 2011
Farmer Marty always says that winter is the best time for gardening. Everything is perfect in your head, the possibilities are endless, and there’s not a bug or a weed to be found. So, let’s get thinking about the gorgeous home garden you are going to have next year. The most important thing that your garden will need is FULL SUN. No, really. If there’s a tree above your garden, you will need to cut it down. Or….find a sunnier spot, even if it’s in (GASP!) your FRONT yard.
My mama is a great gardener. I learned my first gardening skills from her, in the large backyard of the house I grew up in. After tending that lovely garden for many years, she and my dad moved to a different house with a much smaller yard, and my mom put in a much smaller backyard garden. But alas, nearby trees and a shed thwarted her efforts, and for several years, she had a very mediocre garden, due to her NIMFY attitude. Finally, about two years ago, I was home in Maryland for a visit and decided to spearhead a new and improved garden for my mom, not exactly in front but on the side of the house, visible from the road and on a slight hill. To level out the hill, we built raised beds and filled them with dead leaves and compost. If I remember right, we bought 4X4 pieces of lumber from Home Depot, and cut them to the lengths we needed. We basically made a 3 sided bed, with the hillside forming the 4th side, and the two shorter sides tapering off to meet the hill. There was a lot of grumbling from my dad, about “ruining the lawn.”
This is actually a perfect fall/winter project, because if you build your beds now and fill them with compost, leaves, manure, whatever, they have all winter to decompose, settle in, attract worms, and kill that ugly green grass underneath.
Since we built my mom’s garden, I’ve noticed more and more front yard gardens popping up around my neighborhood, and started photographing them for you, our dear readers. I LOVE the trend toward front yard edible gardens. I actually met my neighbor Alisha Scholer on account of her garden, since it required her to spend a lot of time in her front yard. She says she’s met a lot of neighbors this way. She has a few small raised beds and a lovely pole bean teepee, which overflow with bounty all summer long. Her garden is pictured at the top of this blog.
Others go so far as to remove their front lawns altogether, as my friends Tara Wolfson and Nathaniel Hoffman did, rather than build raised beds. You can remove the sod with a sod cutter, or start in the fall (or right now!) to sheet mulch with cardboard covered by a layer of leaves, manure, and compost. Their garden is HUGE. Here’s a photo.
Another garden that I loved in my neighborhood took advantage of the median strip between the sidewalk and the street. They grew quite a lot of food in raised beds, with low-maintenance rocks in between, and probably took advantage of the sunniest part of their yard. I don’t know who owned this garden (let me know if you do!), I think it was around 24th and Bannock or so. In the photo you can see how they covered one bed with bendable PVC and row cover for frost protection.
Another lovely raised-bed, front yard garden was constructed by my friend Katie Hartman. Raised beds have their advantages and disadvantages, with the main disadvantage, in my opinion, being expense. It takes a lot more soil to fill them than you will think. But often if you want just a little gardening, in a relatively neat and compact space, they can be a good option. Katie is starting a business to help folks install custom home gardens, see her sign to the right.
Boise is not, thank goodness, one of those urban metropolitan areas where you can hardly find a patch of dirt between the concrete to plant a seed. But for those who live in other places, I’ve always been amazed at the resourcefulness of some of the very urban gardeners I’ve met. Check out my friend Elizabeth’s balcony garden at her Maryland apartment, on her blog, The Bare Midriff.
Recently I visited the city of San Diego for a conference for work, and toured this urban garden, on a parking lot. So, all of the soil you see was brought in, and is only as deep as the raised beds. The gardener had his larger, deeper rooted plants like tomatoes and peppers, in pots, but the beds are sufficient for growing greens. He also had an awesome composting setup in back, to create soil right on site rather than having to bring it in. This was a for-profit urban farm, owned an operated by a Mexican immigrant. Most of his sales were in potted plant starts, and, lucky him, in San Diego’s climate you can grow practically anything.
Finally, I will leave you with this front-yard-madness photo that was emailed to me by a colleague some months back.
Apparently, the thing this young man missed most during his tour in Iraq was a grassy front lawn to walk on, so had his wife mail him soil and grass seed, so he could have some grass and some American soil in front of his tent. (Likely this is not legal, importing seeds and soil is usually restricted to prevent the spread of disease and insects.) But he got away with it, proving that the American front lawn is THIS culturally ingrained, but also proving that you can grow practically anything, anywhere. With enough inputs, that is. But if you’re going to go through the trouble, why not grow something you can eat, or at least some beautiful flowers? Even though you CAN grow a green lawn in a desert, apparently any desert, why? So many more interesting plants are waiting for you to discover.
Got a great front yard garden? Send us a photo!
– Katie
How to Make a Pie Crust
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on December 16, 2011
Finally, I bring you the pie crust recipe to go with our pumpkin pie recipe. The following photos are from my Thanksgiving pies, and I’d hoped to get this posted sooner, but fortunately we have more pie-eating holidays coming up. I find it so extremely satisfying to make a pie crust from scratch, even though it takes some time. You can buy pretty good premade ones, including locally made ones, available frozen at the coop. But if you want to try a basic, easy, pie crust recipe, this one is pretty tried and true.
Baking pies always reminds me of my grandmother, Lottie Painter. She and my grandfather were the proprietors of a small restaurant for years, where she baked some very popular pies. The restaurant had already been sold by the time I was a child, but I have wonderful memories of trying to learn to duplicate my grandmother’s pie crusts. To be fair, this wasn’t her original recipe. She used lard, which is a little harder to pull off, but delicious. But the technique is hers. In her later years, she too used pre-made crusts sometimes. When I was a graduate student in Florida, I used to drive down to her Gulf Coast condo to visit her, and she would often serve me a meal of entirely pie: a meat and potato filled pie for dinner, and apple pie for dessert. This is us in 2009.
The basic pie crust recipe I use is as follows. It’s much more about the technique than the recipe though, so check the photos.
- 4.5 c flour
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 ¾ c Crisco
- ½ c cold water
- 1 egg
- 1tbsp vinegar.
Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Add Crisco and mix until crumbly. I recommend using a pastry cutter, makes it much easier, but you can also use a fork or your hands. At this point, you can’t overmix and want the Crisco to be completely worked in.
Next, mix the water, eggs, and vinegar in a separate bowl. Make a well in the center of your flour/Crisco mixture and pour your wet ingredients in. At this point, it’s very easy to STIR TOO MUCH. So, carefully blend the dry into the wet, I usually use a fork. You want to get it to the consistency just where it will stick together, then make four relatively equal sized balls with your hands. There will be some scraps of flour left in the bottom, don’t worry about these and don’t try to force them to stick to the balls.
Wrap the balls in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least half an hour, until firm enough to roll out with a rolling pin. You can use the freezer if you’re in a hurry, but don’t let them freeze too hard. At this stage you can freeze them for later use, but they’re best used right away.
When they’re ready, you will roll them out on a clean, dry surface covered with flour. I like to start with a lot of flour underneath my ball of dough, because you can’t add more to the bottom later, and it tends to stick to your rolling out surface if you don’t use enough. First use your hands to flatten the ball into a pancake shape. Using a rolling pin, roll from the center toward the sides, and allow the dough to slowly stretch. Add more flour on top or on the rolling pin as needed.
Next, get a flat spatula and carefully loosen the crust from the rolling surface. Fold it in thirds. This makes it easy to get it into your pie shell, where you can unfold it again.
On this day I was making just a one-crust pie, so I crimped the edges with my fingers and then trimmed off the extra. (You can use this extra to patch a hole or crack if needed). For a two crust pie, fill the pie, place the second crust on top, then crimp them both together with your fingers or a fork. Some of our favorite pies are pumpkin, apple, and peach. What’s your favorite?
– Katie
