ElainaA

@KennethT - I am not that familiar with Asian greens. When I google rau ram and kailan both come up as "Chinese broccoli" or Chinese kale". Are they significantly different from each other? Are they also different from the broccoli x gailon crosses that are easily available?

Johnny's Selected Seeds - I don't know what you are looking for but they have a very wide selection.

I'd second the suggestions of shrimp. Marinated and on skewers, they take only minutes on the grill or under the broiler. You could accompany them with a rice or pasta based salad and good bread. Another thing we like in the summer is a marinated chicken and roast pepper dish that is served at room temperature. The peppers are roasted and the chicken (breasts) poached and sliced in advance, everything is arranged on a platter (I put the chicken on top of the peppers) , add some olives and a good vinaigrette. You can do a similar thing with steak. Everything can be done in advance - then refrigerate it. It is best served close to room temperature but should not sit out long for food safety - I give it about half an hour out of the fridge.

Kilner jars are so much prettier than the usual Ball jars! If you don't want them, make an offer or put them on Ebay! But don't try canning chicken (or any other low acid food) unless you have a pressure canner if you want to live! And watch out - canning is addictive.

Tortellini (purchased) with tomatoes, roasted garlic and tomato sauce. I made about 6 quarts of this sauce when I harvested tomatoes and garlic last fall and froze it. So nice to have when it is -5F.

I forgot to take a picture before we had this for breakfast. CI's cinnamon swirl bread.

Last night: risotto with artichokes, red peppers and prosciutto Tonight: Kielbasa with potatoes, onions and peppers with a salad with apples, dried cranberries, pecans, endive, spinach and romaine. It is currently - 4.9 F - This seemed like a good choice.

Keep us posted. Enjoy.

Besides the points that Martin makes, with which I agree, it is nice to have a mix of varieties. It is a lot cheaper to buy one packet of micro-green mix than to but one packet each of beets, radish, mizuna, arugula, etc. I actually have all the types of seeds i would need to make a mix in the seeds i have purchased for my spring planting. But I find it easier to spend a couple of extra dollars on a packet of mixed seeds. Mostly laziness but also once the packets are opened they always seem to leak. @DiggingDogFarm - Thanks for that link - I am not familiar with High Mowing Seeds. I've bookmarked the site for exploration.

I usually get my micro green seeds from Pine Tree Gardens in Maine (www.superseeds.com). They have several different mixes - I like the 'kitchen sink' mix. Pine Tree caters tot he home gardener - relatively small packets, inexpensive seed, nice selection. Johnny's Selected Seeds - also in Maine - carries them too , but the smallest amount you can buy is 1/4 pound. (Or you could get 25 lbs if you REALLT like them. ) Are there any issues shipping seeds from the US to Canada?

It's really simple - all you need are some seeds, a container ( I got a plastic one in the garden center of Walmart, intended I think, to go under a pot - all of $1.50, punched some holes in the bottom and put another shallow container under it to catch drainage) and some potting mix or seed starter. The do help relieve winter doldrums - and they taste good too. Edited to add: Enjoy!

Micro greens, not sprouts. I let them grow until they have 2 sets of real (not seed) leaves then snip them off to go on top of salads or in omelettes or garnish just about anything. This seed is a mix of beets, chard, radish, cress, cabbage, mustard and kohlrabi. The one I usually use (PineTree Gardens Kitchen Sink mix - a very apropos name if I ever heard one) also includes peas and mizuna but I somehow forgot it when I ordered my seeds this years. This one is from the local Agway. They are always rather tall and skinny (etiolated! a lovely word!) since they are planted so thickly but not this bad.Since they only grow for about 2 weeks you can get away with very close planting. Last night my husband constructed a surround of hardware cloth (I'd like to know the derivation of THAT term since it isn't anything like cloth) so now the container is back in the sun and hopefully kitten-proof. Incidentally, I have found that a planted container, preferably with the seeds just up, makes a great hostess gift. It works especially well for hosts that are both into food and gardening and are getting garden deprived by winter.

My winter garden - micro greens. They should be ready to use next week. This batch is not doing so well I have the choice of either putting them by a sunny window where i am unable to protect them from our new kitten walking on them and pulling them up to eat or putting them in a protected space where they get less sun. I have opted for the latter.

The closest Asian market is 40 miles away and the local groceries stock only very basic Asian ingredients - nevertheless I occasionally make an approximation of a meal based on Asian cuisine (or,probably, the Americanization of such). So last night dinner was a chicken and asparagus stir fry with sesame peanut noodles (no picture). I thought it needed something else so I made some pickled carrots and cucumbers (based on recipes from Barbara Tropp's China Moon) and wanted some dumplings. Alas, the only dumplings available locally were frozen and did not look promising. OK, I can manage this - except alas, alas - neither local grocery had any wonton wrappers. They both had a nice label under an empty shelf and I was assured that MAYBE they would get some in tomorrow. So what you see here is my first attempt at dumplings made from scratch. I used a recipe from Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking - one of the first cookbooks I ever bought. The wrappers are what she calls "hot water dough" - much easier to make and roll out than I expected. The filling was ground pork, scallions, cabbage (just a little because that is all I had) chili sauce with garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce. I followed her instructions for shallow frying - I wish I had steamed them as about half stuck to the pan. But they actually tasted quite good. Served with a dipping sauce of vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and ginger.

You can and I have - when I remember. In fact I should get some of the excellent local cider to freeze before the mill closes for the year. Thanks for the reminder.

It seems that the meals posted here keep getting better and better - so beautiful and complex! Our last night's dinner was pretty simple - and good. Boneless pork chops with an apple juice glaze (it was supposed to be cider but the local cider mill only sells cider in gallons or half gallons and we never use it up before it threatens to explode) with mashed sweet potatoes with orange zest and a bit of maple syrup. Also a spinach salad with pears, dried cranberries, red onion and pecans. It is just about sugaring time here but a good sap run depends on cold nights and warmer days - and the night's have not been as cold as is normal. So possibly not a good year for syrup. My brother in law sugars so we usually get a good supply of both grade A and the darker, thicker grades which I prefer for cooking. Monday I made a corn and beef pastel which was very good but seriously un-photogenic - looking a bit too much like train wreck. The recipe was from a very old (1982!)clipping from Cuisine magazine. Cuisine was my first exposure to a 'foodie' magazine (although I don't think the term existed then) and I was so sad when it went out of business in, I believe, 1984. This recipe was from an article on casseroles - I have made almost all of the recipes at various times - several I come back to over and over.

@blue_dolphin Thanks for the link. I am not a customer of RG since I grow and dry several kinds of beans myself,enough for the two of us, however I'm going to have to try several of those recipes.

Last night: potato and ham gratin (from Julia Child's The Way to Cook) The recipe makes 18 - 24 servings (!) so I drastically reduced it to serve two dinners and two next day lunches. With salad and bread I made yesterday.

I made something very much like this a few nights ago (no picture) based on a recipe in the NY Times. For cheese I used fontina and Parmesan and added a mixture of shiitake and oyster mushrooms tossed in olive oil and roasted. Otherwise, just about what you did. I found it a bit single note - Did you season your sauce much? I think I'd add some sauteed onion or perhaps chopped tomato if I do it again. Your vegetables look lovely.

Pork tenderloin with pears sauteed in white wine, roasted potatoes and garlic and red cabbage with apples (Yes, I was inspired by the thread here however I used a recipe from Epicurious that I have had for years.)

Thank you liuzhou - that is a lovely article. Somewhat similar - When she was living in Austria, my daughter picked up - and still cooks from - Die Oper Kocht - a collection of recipes and discussion of food by current opera stars. Unfortunately I do not think that it has ever been translated into English. Some of the recipes are quite good - I enjoyed Anna Netrebko's borscht and Jonas Kaufmann's pasta with butternut squash. (All the tenors made pasta.) The pictures here are funny: http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2010/08/opera-singers-with-knives-die-oper-kocht.html

A good friend and gardening (and cooking ) mentor has been urging me to order from FedCo. She has a small farm and sells at a farmer's market while I grow just for my husband and myself. My impression was that FedCo dealt in larger amounts of seed. Is that true? Is there a reason you prefer them to Johnny's or Pinetree? And why are so many good seed companies in Maine?

Pizza night - The dough was spread with pesto (garlic scape pesto from my freezer), topped with mozzarella, artichoke hearts, ham and sliced tomatoes. And a sprinkle of oregano. This one had tomato sauce (left over from a lamb,eggplant and tomato casserole a few days ago), sausage, peppers, onions, mozzarella and parmesan. My pizzas are rather free-form.

Hi Shelby - I've always had very good luck with everything from Johnny's. They have great selections and I figure that anything they can grow in Maine will grow here. I also really like the fact that it is an employee-owned company not part of a huge conglomerate. I probably order more from Pinetree Garden Seeds - another small (in this case family owned) company and also in Maine. Pinetree packages seeds in small amounts (and at small prices) which is great for me since I like small-ish amounts of lots of varieties. I envy you your homegrown melons and corn. I've never had any luck with melons - I suspect the growing season here is too short - and I decided years ago that corn would take up too much space in my not very big garden. And my husband drives by a corn stand every day on his way home..

This is how I get through winter. There is one more order to arrive. Two of the varieties I am excited about (yes, I get excited about seeds) - paleo spinach and chocolate sprinkles tomato - are back ordered by Territorial. Hopefully they will show up. I don't start tomatoes (inside) until late March so there is lots of time. One of my experiments this year is gunsho - a variety of choi sum. It is taking the place of the broccolini that I grew last year - the broccolini was delicious but it came up, made heads and then bolted in what seemed like two minutes. As ever, I was thoroughly seduced by the seed catalogs and ordered more varieties of everything than I should have. Do I really need 13 different shapes and colors of lettuce? And the same number of tomato varieties? Well, yes. I also started a pot of microgreens today - they should be ready to eat in 2-3 weeks. Has anyone else started garden planning yet? What are you growing this year?