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Eden

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Posts posted by Eden

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    I'm jealous. My favas are no-where near ready, ditto the tomatos, but at least there's more than one tomato now - for a while I thought it was going to be an "only child" :laugh:

    I was reading that you're supposed to rotate your tomatoes to different beds every few years, but there's really no better place inside my yard to grow them except where they are now. Is this really necessary? My only other sunny option is the parking strip.

    we've been eating Blackberries by the bucketful! We've gotten a nice handful or two of raspberries as well & expect that by next year we'll be harvesting these in notable quantities as well. The Wineberry has lots of clusters, so I'm hopeful that they'll open soon.

    There are 4 count them four little berries on the black currant we just put in this year!

    We also harvested our first round of carrots. We decided to grow the little thumbellinas this year because we'd had no luck with regular carrots in the past, but these little round guys are doing great. I'm thinking of tossing in some radish seed, now that I know shallow rooted root veggies will work for me.

    What are other folks planning for their fall/winter crops? I'm not a big fan of the brassicas so I'm just not feeling inspried...

    best convection/microwave combo

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    I bought the Sharp Warm & Toasty combo oven/micro/toaster a few years back. It is the worst of all worlds!

    Toasting: never even prentended to work.

    Microwaving: functional, but a bit weak.

    Baking: just tolerable initially, now completely broken.

    If you see this in a store Run, do not walk, to some other product!

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    My radishes were all tops and no radish when I used organic veggie fertilizer on them. So I started just seeding and watering, no fertilizer, and they are great (French breakfast and cherry belle).

    I wonder if this is the problem with my carrots - we have crappy soil as a starting point (love that seattle glacial till!) so we've got a ton of steer manure over the top, but that might be encouraging the green fluffy bits up top while the roots just sit there...

    We can't eat peas fast enough to keep up with the snap peas around here, and the lettuce is totally out of hand! I ate my first wild strawberry yesterday :wub:

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    I read somewhere that celery was fantastically difficult to grow. Is this your first experience with growing celery?

    I read the same thing just this morning, but it was by a gardener form somewhere back east in a much warmer climate, so I assume that's the difference. It is indeed my first experience with them, but so far I'd say the things are hardy & easy to grow. :smile:

    My fava beans are still in floral mode too so I think it's just a long cool spring this year...

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    Oooh mamster's Cowboy Beans :wub: one of the only justifications for cilantro in my universe...

    Arugula's a great choice for your next pot, it grows quickly & easily. Plus when it bolts the flowers are SOOO yummy. (ditto Mache)

    hummingbird, I hope the rest of your garlic is doing OK! You have all my sympathy - something is eating the borage I planted :sad:

    I dug up & gave away two of the uber celery plants. If the celeric I got at the tilth sale takes off I'll probably send away at least one of the remaining two as well. They're certainly thriving, but I only use celery a stalk or so at a time for making Stock & the like, so I really don't need much. we got a 4 pack initially in the theory that they wouldn't all make it - hah! They not only did well initially but they overwintered & came back even bigger & stronger this year.

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    I got a 3 pack of zucchini and have planted the first one in the sunniest location available, but will the other two be all right in a partial sun location that has done OK by tomatos in past years? My only experience with Zukes is from watching my mom grow them in California in my youth...

    Both types of purslane are popping miniscule little leaves out of their pots. (I decided to keep them in pots rather than straight in the ground per warnings here...)

    the mache & arugula are getting away from me - I will have to plant far less for the next round! We're grazing on snap peas pretty constantly at this point, and it's probably time to plant the next round of those as well.

    I have about a million roses blooming right now & I think its time to start cooking with them. I have a fabulous recipe for rose pudding, but need to think of other uses as well. I really don't care much for the fussiness of eating small birds, but might have to adapt the quail in rose-petal sauce recipe for a larger bird...

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    Oof! The gardener & I spent the morning working in the yard; her digging new beds, & me planting watering etc. It was fine earlier on, but we got pretty warm as the day progressed.

    We put in a lovely Salmonberry, and built a trellised bed around the black currant, as well as finally getting the replacement huckleberry into the ground. Also planted a couple herbs I picked up at the Tilth sale & of course a ton of flowers to fill in the bare spots while we wait for the larger plants to establish...

    It's too hot for my taste but the plants are loving this weather - the second row of carrots we planted, and which i had given up on, are finally popping their ferny little heads up & there are flowers on the fava beans!

    How go other folks gardens?

    Growing Food....

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    Earthworms adore coffee grounds, and will consume them and provide you with lots of castings. The big drawback to coffee grounds is that they tend to acidify the soil or compost,

    We don't compost, but we still grab coffee grounds from a local cafe to feed the roses. Our roses seem to be caffeine addicts :smile:

    Dim Sum in Seattle

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Dining

    Posted

    Eden, if you're referring to the lunch I think you are (posted over on mouthfulsfood.com), then looking back on the post for that dim sum at O'Asian, it came to $35.00 including tax and tip and someone posted that there were leftovers taken home. This is still quite expensive for dim sum, but I've gone there with a smaller group and paid less--I believe it was in the neighborhood of 20.00 -25.00 per person.  Here's a link to their menu with prices.

    That's the meal in question. I must have rounded up in my little brain, sorry.

    Nice to know you can get out for closer to $20 becaue I've been afraid to go back even though I loved some of the dishes...

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    The beds all needed thinning, so we had our first salad from the garden today!!! arugula, mache & baby lettuce. I am thinking of putting in second crops of each of them so I will continue to have more later in the season.

    We also cooked our first batch of chard up with keilbasa & pasta.

    The strawberries are sending out a ton of shooters (I'm thinking I may need to relocate some of the other plants in that bed!) and there are buds here & there (yay!)

    One of the raspberries has really started to take off, it's time to start teaching it restraint :biggrin: likewise the thornless blackberry seems to be recovering nicely after the destruction workers trampled it last Fall, and has lots of little buds peeking out.

    I was right, there is indeed a cardoon coming back. It looks strong & healthy & is shooting up right in the middle of my arugula - good thing I'm not a control-freak as a gardener. We're more "survival of the fittest" gardeners :laugh:

    I scored a ton of used bricks from some neighbors (yay!!!) and have mapped out new planting beds that I thought I was going to have to wait at least a couple of months on. We had talked about putting flowers in them when we first invisioned these beds a while back, but now I'm thinking maybe tomatos instead - or both :)

    I know some of y'all think it's a weed, but if you notice borage at any of the local nurseries please give a shout out. I want to put one next to each tomato plant. It's supposed to make the tomato plants happier...

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    Wasn't someone asking about where to get Isis Candy? I just saw it on the list of plants that will be at the Tilth sale this weekend.

    Tilth sale

    That was me & I brought a haul back from the Tilth Sale yesterday including 2 Isis Candy, a borage (it's supposed to be good to grow borage near your tomatos) sweet cicely, winter savory, rose cented geraniums (fabulous in Peach sorbet) salad burnet, sorell, lovage, celeriac, spinach etc...

    FYI the line looked like it went forever but I was through in 30 minutes, so don't be intimidated by it, just take a book or a friend & it's totally worth it. plus some of the plant vendors outside the tilth sale have cool stuff too. I grabbed an evergreen huckleberry from the NW Natives guy.

    Seattle area Indian food

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Dining

    Posted · Edited by Eden (log)

    After some raves from a friend I went to try out Preets this evening. We were underwhelmed.

    The Papri Chat was nice and the sauce on the Malai Kofta was good, (though the koftas were almost hard!) but the breads were deadly dull and most of the curries though plenty hot were not very well flavored (and extremely soupy)

    I had the thali plate which includes a gulab jamun for dessert and they brought that out on the plate with all the curries, so by the time I got to eat it it was tepid :angry: also my plate was black pottery with several large chips out of it - tacky & arguably unsanitary as well...

    Service was better than in most Indian restaurants, but that's not enough to make up for mediocre food...

    Dim Sum in Seattle

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Dining

    Posted

    O'Asian has free and easy parking in the garage underneath.  My friends and I have enjoyed our dim sum visits here, though not quite to the Yank Sing level!

    Just a warning: while I think O-Asian makes the best Turnip Cakes ever seen on this earth :wub: and thought the rest of the dishes were very good as well, the prices are truly astronomical for DimSum. I think we paid $40/person. Granted we ordered everything under the sun, but we always do that & I don't think I've ever paid more than $20/person in a regular DimSum joint (we paid $10/each at Jade garden today)

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    and just a thought (because of course you have to factor in what sells & grows well etc) but you might consider growing one or two things that not everyone else is growing on top of your main crops. I always gravitate to the stalls with something different & there's a good chance I'll grab my carrots from the same person who sells me cardoons or purple orache. Whenever I go to the U-district market I still buy a lot of my fruit from the folks who brought me gooseberries back when no-body else was selling gooseberries yet. :smile:

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    no no you wrote that all wrong it should be

    :wub:SNOW!!!!! :wub:

    OK maybe it's not good for the garden but it's very good for one's inner 5 year old, and a great excuse for hot cocoa with "a little something" in it :biggrin:

    Oh quick request, if anyone notices any Isis Candy tomato plants please give a shout out. They're an heirloom variety I picked up last year at the Fred Marche of all places. They're particularly sweet & flavorful and more importantly they did extremely well in my yard, and we all know that a tomoto that grows well in Seattle is something to be treasured and replanted year after year!

    So far I haven't seen them anywhere, but it's early days yet...

    Northwest Vegetable Gardening

    in Pacific Northwest & Alaska: Cooking & Baking

    Posted

    I went away for two weeks (missed the snow) and just got back to a garden riotously in bloom & desperately in need of weeding....

    one of the two arugulas is exploding as are the mache :biggrin:

    there are little tips of lettuce & what I think is carrot poking up

    there are 3 fava plants looking extremely hearty, and sweet peas out the wazoo

    all the raspberries are leafing happily (one of them is trying to escape it's bed...)

    ditto the thornless blackberry & the black currant

    the strawberries are flowering

    the blueberries have leaf buds

    the onilns/chives we scattered amng the roses are poking up

    the pear & cherry trees are both covered in blooms on every branch/graft

    and there are little baby fig buds on the fig tree!

    This summer is going to be fabulous!

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