Archive for February, 2011
Build a home greenhouse for under $20, Part II.
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on February 25, 2011
Even though it’s 12 degrees outside, we’re moving right along with the springtime planting. Now, my kitchen is also full of soil! Here’s what my setup looks like. It requires a little rearranging of furniture, but allows me to germinate 18 flats at a time, even in my tiny kitchen. The shelf sits against a south facing window, has a heater under it that’s already part of the wall, and could be made even warmer by covering it with plastic.
We’re making progress with the Global Gardens farmers, too. Several of the home greenhouses (described in Build a home greenhouse for under $20, part I) are finished and have plants growing in them! Here’s what a finished one looked like, set up against the wall of a home. I was surprised how nice and roomy they turned out inside!
Putting the plastic on was also much easier than I expected. Even though I did it on a mildly windy day, it was fairly easy to just lay the frame flat on the ground, lay the plastic over it, and staple it tightly onto the frame. I used clear plastic tape to reinforce the plastic where I was putting the staples, as I expect these to see some wear and tear. I started in the top two corners and then pulled the plastic taut to the middle corners, then the bottom ones, and then went back and secured it with more staples on the middle part of the beams.
Voila, greenhouses for the masses. If you’ve tried this, please, send a photo and let us know how it worked!
–Katie
Alex Hartman’s Morel Cream Sauce
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on February 24, 2011
There’s nothing better than being invited to dinner. Especially when it’s Alex. A librarian by trade, but by candle light this man is a minor culinary genius. Alex is also a mushroom hunter and angler. We can always count on something from the forest when we eat with Alex. This evening we had lamb chops from his friend, Tim at Purple Sage in Middleton, served with Brussel sprouts, baked yam and (our favorite) morel cream sauce. Our dinner schedule is wide open! Dinner invites and recipe submisions (with pictures) always thoughtfully considered.
Here’s Alex’s recipe:
Hydrate morels in just enough hot water to cover for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat several tablespoons butter in a saute pan.
Add chopped shallot to pan. Saute until soft and golden.
Drain morels, reserving soaking liquid, and add to pan. Saute until
mushrooms begin to brown.
Add a few tablespoons of soaking liquid, and marsala (or another sweet
cooking wine) and simmer until liquid is reduced by two thirds.
Add cream. Simmer briefly. Add chopped fresh parsley or tarragon,
and salt to taste.
Optional – add a tsp or two of minced lemon zest.
Serve over steak, or with roast chicken, or on pasta with garbanzos,
asparagus tips, and parmesan.
Valentine’s Day!
Posted by castironidaho in Events, Handmade, Recipes on February 17, 2011
With all this excitement about early spring farming, we’ve been falling behind on the recipe posts! So I thought I’d tell you about our Valentine’s Day dinner. Like every other day, Marty and I decided to show our love for each other by cooking a meal together. We made venison with roasted winter vegetables and steamed beet greens, and a Shaker Lemon Pie. The venison, Marty seasoned with salt and pepper, pan-seared in our cast iron, and finished roasting in the oven. The beet greens we just steamed in a vegetable steamer for a few minutes. The other two recipes are on the following two posts, scroll down to see them.
I also made Marty a homemade Valentine. (And he brought me a flower!) He tends to like cute homemade things, and I have a new sewing machine and had been wanting to make something out of felted wool. I’ve been into sewing projects made from recycled materials lately, and had seen some cool photos and examples of felted wool projects made from recycled sweaters. I decided to give it a try. I googled how to felt wool, and found out that you basically just wash it in hot water in the washing machine, then dry it in the dryer. I used a couple of sweaters from the thrift store and a couple that I wanted to get rid of. The results were pretty mixed, some of them didn’t change much, which made me doubt whether they were actually made from wool.
Then, when you cut them up, you have a nice thick wooly fabric that doesn’t unravel the way it would if you just cut up a sweater. I just made a little zippered pouch with a heart on it, for Marty to keep his oversize business cards in. Not bad for my first attempt and it didn’t take long to make, so I might try some more little dittys like this in the future.
The other awesome thing that happened on Valentine’s Day was that we got our first piece of fan mail! In the actual US Postal Service Mail! My old friend from high school, Kelley Hoffman, has been following our blog, and sent in this very special valentine in bumper sticker form:
Needless to say I loved the sticker and stuck it on the garden truck immediately. I suggest you follow it’s advice, on Valentine’s Day and every day! Thanks Kelley!
Additional fan mail for Cast Iron Idaho can be sent to 410 21st St., Boise, ID, 83702. I also got some e-fan mail recently from Paul VanSavage, a cousin of my mother’s, and fellow foodie, who I’ve never met! Thanks, Paul!
–Katie
Roasted Winter Vegetables
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on February 17, 2011
Roasted Winter Vegetables
This is a recipe I’ve been making for years. Chop up any combination of root vegetables, winter squash, etc. For Valentine’s Day, we used:
- potatoes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts.
Put in a big bowl. Make lots, this makes good leftovers. Next, make the sauce. This should cover about 3 cups of veggies, make more if you have more veggies.
- 3 T. soy sauce
- 1 T. vegetable oil
- 2 T. red wine vinegar
- 1 T. packed brown sugar
- 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
- 1/2 t. dried thyme
- 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 t. ground cloves
- 1/2 t. ground black pepper
- 2 t. grated fresh ginger root
- 1 large garlic clove, minced or pressed
- 1 fresh green chile, coarsely chopped
- On this day I added cilantro and lime juice, because I had them.
Toss with the veggies. Spread out on one or two cookie sheets and bake at 400 for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Shaker Lemon Pie
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on February 17, 2011
Shaker Lemon Pie
So as it turns out, we’re not done yet with the Meyer Lemons! Marty was intrigued by this recipe in the Joy of Cooking, and when I told him I would make him any dessert he wanted for Valentine’s Day, he picked this. Amazingly, the Boise Coop was offering Meyer Lemons produced in Idaho, from a farm in Hagerman. Idaho’s unique geothermal resources allow producers to heat greenhouses using naturally heated geothermal water, and in a few places where the conditions are right, and on a very small scale, produce crazy things like lemons that would otherwise never grow in our snowy northern state!
So, for just $5.99 a pound, we picked up a few:
There are a couple of interesting things about this pie. It uses the whole lemon, sliced in very thin slices. Also it’s the only lemon pie I’ve ever eaten with a top crust, rather than meringue or something. It was good, intensely lemony. Joy of Cooking says that the recipe is associated with the nineteenth century Shakers, but was popular among all Americans at that time. Here’s the recipe.
Crust:
Any crust recipe will do, or a bought crust, the Boise Coop sells lovely frozen ones. We tried the Deluxe Butter Flaky Pastry Dough recommended by Joy of Cooking. Whoa, buttery.
- 2 1/2 c flour
- 1 tsp. white sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 sticks butter (1/2 lb)
- 1/4 c vegetable shortening like Crisco
- 1/3 c plus 1 Tbsp. ice water (for a really buttery pastry crust, it’s important that everything be cold.)
Mix flour, sugar, salt in a large bowl. Cut butter into little pieces and combine with flour using a pastry blender, 2 knives, a fork, or your hands. Butter should be chopped into pea-sized pieces. Work fast and don’t let the butter get warm and melty. Add shortening and combine with pastry blender. Drizzle water over mixture and cut in with a firm rubber spatula. Once the balls of dough start sticking together, you’ve added enough water. I found the recipe to be a little dry and added a few more tablespoons of water. Divide dough in half, form into two flat disks. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling out.
Filling:
- 2 or 3 large lemons
- 2 cups sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 large eggs
- 4 Tbsp butter
- 3 Tbsp flour
Grate zest from lemons. Slice the remaining lemons paper-thin with a very sharp knife. Combine with sugar and salt in a glass or stainless steel bowl. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 2-24 hours. The longer the lemons macerate, the better. It should look like this:
Whisk eggs until frothy. Whisk in melted butter and flour. Stir lemon mixture into egg mixture and pour into prepared pie crust. Cover with top crust. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. Reduce temp to 350 and bake 20 to 30 minutes more, until done.
Serve with Mint Whipped Cream:
- 1 c whipping cream
- 1 Tbsp. crushed dried mint
Whisk until the cream whips and serve!
Build a home greenhouse for under $20
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on February 10, 2011
I’ve got to hand it to Farmer Marty, he has an awesome greenhouse setup. (see Get your Garden On, Step 1.) He’s been working on it all winter, and it’s amazing! (Stuff like building greenhouses, by the way, is what farmers do in the winter. Or at least, it’s what we’ve been doing. I get asked what I “do all winter” all the time. If you want to know, read on.)
So, Marty’s setup is awesome and very well suited to his small farm. For a lot of the rest of us though, this extensive or expensive of a setup isn’t possible or necessary. You might not own a home with a front porch that you can window in, and may not want a germination table rather than a dining table in your kitchen. If you have a home garden, sometimes it makes the most sense to buy seedlings (I recommend Edward’s Greenhouse and Canyon Bounty Farm, if you live in Boise), but if you’re frustrated that gardening is costing you more than actually buying your food, you can certainly save by starting some of your own seeds. If you just want to experiement a little, we recommend starting with Brassicas like cabbage and kale, or with lettuce, as these are easier to germinate and more forgiving to keep alive than tomatoes and peppers.
In my case, I have the capacity to start a few seeds in my kitchen window, but they need to be moved outside to a greenhouse with more light as soon as they germinate. The Global Gardens program owns a small hobby greenhouse:
It works great, but the problem is that it’s on the other side of town. I have to drive there, and haven’t had much success getting the farmers to drive there regularly to help me with plant care and watering. I really want to teach the seed propagation part of the process, but doing it at a community greenhouse wasn’t working. So Farmer Marty had the brilliant idea of building something we could set up right along any sunny, south-facing wall of the farmers’ rented homes. The frame that you see at the top of the page is the resulting design. Basically it will lean against a house wall and will be covered in greenhouse plastic to protect the plants. Plastic flaps will hang down on both sides and be secured with a 2×4 or something else heavy at the bottom. Plants will sit underneath, on the ground or on a shelf against the back wall.
Here’s how we did it:
Materials:
- 6 2X2 boards, 8 ft long, $0.77 each at Home Depot
- 10 L-shaped connectors for the corners, $0.60 each at the Depot
- Box of wood screws, I used 1 1/4 inch, $6
- Linseed oil (Our Home Depot only had a big jug for $25, but you could finish many more projects with that amount)
- Paintbrush, $0.90
- Greenhouse plastic (we get recycled stuff for free at a local greenhouse)
- Electric screwdriver
- Saw
- Staple gun and Staples (I forget how much a box of staples was…)
What to do:
Connect four outside boards into a square using connectors and screws. I predrilled the holes, it’s low quality wood and tends to crack. Measure the centers of two of the boards and attach another 2×2 crossbeam in the center. The last board will need to be cut to fit the perpendicular crossbeam of the center “window.” Marty has a nice saw but you could do this with about any saw, or have it done at Home Depot if you don’t have one. After making 4 of them and getting some practice, this part of the process only takes me about an hour and a half.
Next, paint the wood with linseed oil and let dry. This helps protect it from water damage.
Cut plastic to the size of your frame, allowing it to hang long enough over the ends to reach the ground.
Lean against a south facing wall with direct sun, and put plants inside!
One danger with this might be wind, since it’s not attached to your house. You might want to secure it or take it down in the event of a wind storm. Great for rented houses though, since there are no permanent attachments.
I’ll be distributing these to farmers this week and starting some seeds with them, so stay tuned for more photos and to see how it goes!
–Katie
See also: Build a home greenhouse for under $20, part 2, and $20 Greenhouse, part 3.
Get Your Garden On! Step 1
Posted by castironidaho in Farm and Garden on February 9, 2011
Germination
Our high mountain desert can be a challenging climate for the spring garden. It also makes growing your own starts difficult.
Germination is the first stage in starting the early garden. Our drastic climate, in the Treasure Valley, where, during winter, nights get as low as 0 degrees germinating can be tricky. There are as many methods as farmers for germinating as early as possible. This is how I do it and my thinking behind what I do.
The key to germination is not light, but soil temperature. Even light dependent seeds won’t germinate if you can’t get the soil up to temperature. I used to set up a “grow room” with a 1000 watt halogen light, heater and silver emergency blanket walls. This method is way too energy intensive. I abandoned the “grow room” for a germination table and germination room. No artificial light. I heat the bottom of the table and thus heat soil. For frost tolerant plants air tempaeture isn’t as important as soil temp. The room doesn’t need to reach 70 degrees, just the dirt.
For the first three years of this new method I simply used a tile-surfaced kitchen table up against the interior south facing wall of my trailer. I have three huge windows that face south so I positioned my table up against this wall and put my flats on the table. I placed a space heater under the tile table top. For hot crops I would put up fabric walls around the table legs. Everything is seeded in order of it’s resistance to the cold. I start with alliums first, next brassicas then lettuce and so on.
As soon as the flats show signs of green they are moved from the germination table to the germination room. The germination room is a greenhouse built onto the south facing wall of my house. It happens that my front porch faces south so the germination room is a glass house built onto the front porch. This room is not directly heated. The only heat besides the blazing daylight is the passive heat of the house. On very cold nights I leave the window open between the grow room and the house letting the heat from the house heat the germination room. Mostly this just cools the house down.
This is why every seeding is done according to tolerance to the cold. Alliums are the hardiest of the spring crops and can handle being frozen after germination so they are done first and are barely protected from the outside temperature.
Two key things: 1. South facing means direct sun all day. No shade at any time. Nor is the sun dappled. No other amount of sun will suffice. If there is a tree in the way cut it down, it’s that important. This is why most people use an artificial light source 2. Neither plastic, nor glass, can insulate against temperature in the low 20’s. In the Treasure Valley you must “heat” your greenhouse to keep hot crops alive. There are tricks, but just having a greenhouse doesn’t mean you can grow Meyer lemons or even keep peppers alive in April.
My germination table is a box measured to fit exactly 24 flats. The box has 4 galvanized steel sinks to capture water and channel it into a container where I collect the water. This water is then fed to my worm box. The sinks are covered by removable frames with wire mesh centers. All the exterior wood is cedar treated with linseed oil. I still put a space heater under the box to heat the soil.
Things you can do to help keep plants alive during cold nights is to use a greenhouse inside a greenhouse or cover plants with floating row cover at night. The next dangerous thing is that during the sunny winter days the germination room can get very very hot. Again, I open the windows between the house and glass room circulate cooler air from the house into the room. Sometimes I leave the outside door open. Constant monitoring is required. Check dampness of flats by touching soil not just by looking. So far so good! –Farmer Marty
Baby Bok Choi with Garlic and Shrimp
Posted by castironidaho in Recipes on February 7, 2011
More from Jenn’s Chinese New Year Party! And more for all you shrimp lovers. This one made me SO EXCITED to grow bok choi this spring. It’s usually one of the first things we have ready. –Katie
Baby Bok Choy with Garlic and Shrimp
Ingredients:
4 oz. bok choy mui/baby bok choi (cleaned and rinsed)
1/8 teaspoon salt or to taste
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup peeled baby shrimps
3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
Method:
Heat up a wok with the cooking oil and saute the chopped garlic until light brown or aromatic. Add the baby shrimps and stir-fry until the shrimps are half-cooked. Add in a pinch of salt to the shrimp, and then follow by the baby bok choy. Quickly stir-fry the vegetables, dish out and serve hot. Do not overcook your vegetables. They should retain the vitality and crunchiness.
