TicTac

Lettuce supercropping summery outdoor dinner - house cured gravlax, fresh squid in young garlic oil-grilled, potato avocado salad and Korean carrot and celery slaw/pickley thing

A few thoughts on Ramps which I thought I might share... - Be cautious with ramp butter stored in the fridge, ramps tend to have a fair amount of water content and they will bleed their water into the butter dish and it will go off pretty fast if not watched/dealt with. - Stay away from your blender or any electric blades when it comes to ramps. The flavour profile you are able to achieve when using a mortar and pestle vs. a cutting edge (blade) is vastly superior. Try the leaves with some coarse sea salt, smashed up, with some either very good EVOO or butter added after said smashing. Big difference! - Ramp leaves change their flavour profile when cooked, ramp and new potato soup is fantastic stuff. Most of all, enjoy mother nature's spring treat!

Fantastic. I fondly remember my times in various parts of Italy (Firenze included!) Would love to see some pictures on your trips as well.

Spurred by @BKEats revelation that it was in fact soft shell crab season....I tracked down some live beauties yesterday...

I am so pooped, Ken - I'm not sure my thumb could gravitate to take the shot! Will post pics soon, once I recover 😛

Done! 5 hours later, all those little babies are in the ground. Still way behind @Shelby - but we will get there. Picked arugula for salad today and a bowl full of sorrel for sorrel sauce tonight (to go with grilled char and shrimp)

Oh I sure miss the citrus trees we had at my grandparents place in AZ....! Up here in Southern Ontario, temperature low's are predicted to remain above 10-12 degrees as of tomorrow evening, so I took my plants out into the sun today to start to get acclimated. Tomorrow they go into the ground! 14 Tomato plants (various heirloom varieties), aurora and poblano peppers, yellow and green zucchini, cucumbers, purple bunching onions, welsh onions, a Japanese eggplant (haven't grown that one before!) and various herbs to round things out. Oh, and my potato experiment will continue (dropped a couple into a Home Depot bucket last year and was able to get about 5lbs per bucket!). Snap peas, lettuce and arugula are already doing well in the ground. It will be a busy day.

@weinoo - Must be veg stock day, just tossed my ziplock freezer bag of trimmings into a pot. Few pieces of red cabbage in there turned the whole thing purple. Bet I could make a funky risotto and freak some people out! What type of pot is that? Love the thick walls...

You will have to excuse my plating skills, but with 3 kids under 8 y/o - my allowance to invest time in making things look good is, shall we say - limited! The key to this salad is simplicity and great ingredients. Shaved fennel (including fronds), crisp tart apple, and celery heart - equally important, the dressing; lemon/lime zest and juice, S&P, and very good EVOO. I always find this salad somehow tastes of oranges - which I often add too! (something to do with fennel and citrus/olive oil...) Perhaps because you started cooking after midnight!? 😛

Gnocchi in tomato gravy (not pictured, deploy imagination) - real star of the show was this fennel/apple/celery heart slaw...my 4 year old had 3 servings. Big hit!

You cook AND have to clean!? Someone is getting the short end of the stick! 😆

Looks good. Let's hear more about your method/recipe!

I too love garlic chives. While we might try to convince ourselves they count towards one of our daily required vegetable servings, they are merely a (delicious) herb. Though they are green and healthy, so, screw it, its a veg (assuming you eat loads of it!). I have a few nice patches in the gardens which keep us stocked throughout the year. Transplanted another clump from my MIL's garden (which I created in the first place!) the other day, along with some (awesome) Egyptian onions.

You sure about that? I am pretty DQ is soft serve 'garbage' (for lack of a better term - in case you have ever investigated ingredients in soft serve!).

Fantastic road trip. I have always wanted to try frozen custard, but I have yet to see it anywhere in Toronto, let alone Canada for that matter!

Looks great, Shelby. I have some Prize-Choy seeds which I did a few of last year, to mixed success (had a few huge plants that kept producing - I did not cut the entire plant but rather large leaves. Did you start yours indoors or straight from the ground? I put a few seeds in the ground but I think far too prematurely. Will have to revisit further.

When Mother Nature gives you ramps...you pickle them! (At least some bulbs - which I do not harvest many of for various reasons!) This jar was a simple pickle with some amazing dried Morita peppers and fresh bay leaves.

And then there is good ol dirt!!! 😎

I used to make my pickled red onions similarly to this recipe, though I did not add sugar. Then I met a Mexican chef who taught me the ways of his people! Salt - Lime - sometimes chili. That's it! Salt the hell out of the onions, let them sweat out the water for 30-60 minutes, quick rinse - put in a jar and add a 2-3 limes worth of Juice. Sometimes will add a fresh chili in there as well.

True potato pizza w ramps Edit: Did not realize that this one came out upside down, a new feat for me! Note: No Crayola markers were harmed in the making of this pizza. Kids proclaimed this to be "in the birthday dinner book" and "top 6" - nice to have a decent Gluten Free 'pizza' alternative!

An alternative (arguable even superior) is Rice Bran Oil - has become my go to cooking oil for all things medium-high heat and beyond. Shout-out goes to our very own @liuzhou for pointing me onto it years ago!

We have a chest freezer in the basement. In retrospect I wish I would have bought an upright, but this was many moons ago and it served its purpose. I have milk crates which stack on top of each other that we have inventoried both contents and location of. The bugger is keeping that list updated! Waiting for Ken's barcode or 'facial' recognition scanning system!

You would love this one client I was working with, Ken - they have node sensor technology for agricultural applications which automates the entire process based on the genetics of the plant being grown. Very cool stuff out there. And then there's old dirt farmers like me - KISS - just throw some compost and worm castings on for good measure when in doubt!

You are like the mad (in a good way) scientist of the indoor plant world, Ken! I love it!!!!!!! All of that is way above this dirt slinger's head!

A few things to note... Jo - you now have dozens of lettuce seeds waiting to be planted - consider yourself lucky! Ken - Looks like ol 'lime tree needs a new pot! Been playing with cloth pots for some indoor gardening...ahem....they work really nice! No plastic involved either, which is always a big BONUS! I re-potted my 2x36 seedling tray's into plastic cups now, which will be their last housing until they return to mother nature. That was quite a bit of work, but they are doing really well -