Kale and Roasted Vegetable Soup

This is an excellent winter vegetable stew that is worth passing on! Dee-licious! For those who find vegetarian cooking not very flavorful...here's an exception. I substituted kabocha one time and pumpkin another time for the butternut squash with pretty good results. You might want to even add a couple of drops of honey on the pieces of squash during the roasting to increase the sweetness a little. What makes this soup flavorful is the roasting of the vegetables, so roast well. Don't be afraid of well-browned and even little blackened-looking corners, since that's the good stuff. Be sure not to add too much olive oil, as this will prevent good browning. Another thing, if you don't have an immersion blender, these babies are a must for people who make soup frequently! SO much easier than trying to put things in the blender and much easier to wash after using. My Braun immersion blender is one of my favorite-of-all-times kitchen tools. I put the roasted garlic, onions, and tomatoes in with the vegetable broth and pour some of the broth in the roasting pan to scrape out roasting juices into the soup pot and then use the immersion blender on everthing. I cut the leaves off the kale by holding the kale leaf, stem up, and running the knife down the stem where the leaves connect. Cut the stems up and throw them in to simmer for a while but don't add the leaves until the very end, so they'll stay nice and green.

Happy eating!

How does my garden grow? Well...

Here's a gardening update:

The basil was growing blissfully. And the mint was minty fresh. When one day, I began to notice some tiny holes in the leaves. Hm. As if something was munching on them a little bit. But not too bad. Literally overnight, the holes became gaping and the leaves looked positively chewed-on! Little black spots peppered the plant here and there. I began to google furiously to find out what bug was marring my herbs and what organic (human tummy safe) pesticide I could use to make sure it kept its little mandibles off my crop!

I tried a homemade organic pesticide made of hot pepper, ginger, garlic, and a good dash of cayenne pepper. (Put these in a pot and boil like a tea, then cool and spray onto plants.) This spray must have just made the plants a little spicier, maybe even tastier, because the bugs were not deterred. Chomping and more chomping occurred. Finally, the telltale black spots (turns out that's bug poo poo) helped reveal the identity of...

the greedy Cabbage Looper caterpillar!!

These little critters hatch from eggs laid by moths on the underneath side of the leaves. They start out so small you can't see them at first but eat so fast they double in size practically daily. They were the exact same green color as my plants and held absolutely still when they were eating so were very camoflaged. You need to examine the underside of your leaves to find them. When I tried to pluck one off a leaf, he reared up and swung his head and forelegs around surprisingly quick for a caterpillar and tried to grab onto my fingers as if to scare me off. Which he did. Then he kind of hung in the air like a stallion pawing, challenging me to just dare to try that again. Lively little guys these. Not your amiable slow moving little caterpillar.

Moving on from hot pepper garlic ginger spray, I came across diatomaceous earth next. This stuff is gleaned from the bottom of the ocean and is made from tiny plant matter whose atomic structure is in the shape of a diatom. Because of the diatom shape, this dust has sharp corners which cut a juicy bug's exoskeleton and basically cause it to bleed to death over a period of about 48 hours. I bought some of this and discovered it's rather labor-intensive to apply and also started to feel bad for the little caterpillars I began to see suffering and limping along due to coming in contact with it. Not the most humane way to kill something..akin to being killed by being slashed thousands of times with a razor blade. I began to mercy-kill the little things by plucking and smushing underfoot.

A more effective organic pesticide was identified..BT or Bacillus thuringiensis, a "bacteria that infects the gut of soft bodied caterpillars" and causes them to die 3-5 days after eating leaves that have been sprayed with it. Three to five days is the catch. Until they finally get sick and die, they can dessimate your plants in the meantime (as you can see from the picture below.) So keep plucking and smushing underfoot as your firstline method of pest control. And when you spray, BE SURE to spray the underneath side of leaves, where caterpillars eat. Best way to do this is to tilt the pot sideways to make the underside of the leaves more accessible while you spray from the side.

As you can see, the mint plant has made a full recovery after treatment with BT and is growing nicely. The basil is pretty much back to normal, too, with only a little bit of chewed-on-ness from some other bug I can't identify but who isn't eating a whole lot.

However, in the meantime, one of my pots of lemon basil has been all but wiped out by another kind of caterpillar which is brown and slower moving than the cabbage looper. I collected about five or six of them one night and put them in a jar with a lid so I could try to identify them when I had time. And..I haven't had time yet. But these caterpillars seemed to not be very affected by the BT since this pot was sprayed several times with BT....(?) Another weird thing..three other pots of lemon basil weren't touched by these brown caterpillars. So, the score so far is: Bugs 1, Winnow 1.

Urban Compost/ "You're doing WHAT with your garbage?"

You're wondering what in the world made me decide to pursue composting with such fervor. How does an apartment dweller go about composting? Why do I rip the plastic window out of my junkmail, shred it, and keep it in a bag along with dryer lint and other odd shreds of paper? Why do I hoard (yes, I even fish them out of the trash) apple cores, carrot tops, banana peels, green pepper stems, and slimy vegies-in-transition from the crisper tray in the fridge? And what about asking the man at the cutting table at Home Depot if I can have a couple of buckets of his sawdust? What's behind this composting thing of mine?

Well, there are many benefits of compost: It keeps our landfills free of methane and acidic leachate. Methane can leak into pockets of soil, possibly contributing to explosions and acidic leachate can assist in making other soil toxins more mobile and thus more dangerous. When incorporated into soil, compost provides nutrients to a plant's growing area and increases the soil's drainage and ability to retain moisture. It can even promote resistance to pests and disease in plants. Compost has been shown to help prevent soil erosion, clean up contaminated soils, and prevent pollution. Compost takes that which is essentially refuse (rotting/ inedible food or lawn clippings, junk mail, paper waste, dead leves, etc.) and makes it into something beneficial to our ecosystem!

Oh! I'm environmentally-minded! Working for the health of the planet, doing my part to be "green." Well, yes. I think so. I like the idea of doing what's good for the earth, not being wasteful, and being resourceful. I think those things are important. But to be truthful..I suspect this is primarily a genetically-motivated behavior.

I think it's a gene. A gene probably inherited from my mother (I doubt it came from my left-brained accountant father). The mother who reupholsters couches she retrieves from the side of the road which wind up part of the living room furnishings. The same mother who used to "dump in the dumpster"--a term we children (ahem!) affectionately coined for a certain tendency to check dumpsters for things that really didn't need to be thrown away. (By the way, it was never embarassing for us to sit--or rather slink down--in the car while she did this.) Asking the produce stocker at the grocery store, did he have any vegetables that had passed their prime and were going to be thrown away that she could have to feed to her goats and rabbits (..or her children)? Cutting the mold off the cheese and using the still-good part, or cutting the mold off of any food item and using the still-good part. This mother has raised "bummer lambs" (who got sick and died despite her amateur veterinarian skills), goats who had goats and whose milk I did not like, dozens of rabbits, and one border collie who she intended to train to herd the bummer lambs. We butchered some of the goats and rabbits for their meat, although we kids didn't like eating our pet rabbits, but others (like the bummer lambs) I think my mom decided to raise for inexplicable reasons. I think my dad (who always shook his head in confusion but was patient nonetheless) asked her what the purpose for raising bummer lambs was and she used some type of non-sequitur explanation involving Pepper (the border collie) being a sheepherding dog and the fact that bummer lambs need to be raised by humans because their mothers rejected them. Did I mention the time she dug out a root cellar underneath our house in Colorado? Anyhow, you get my drift. Although when I was a kid, and especially when I was a teenager, I wanted desperately for her to stop all these things and just wanted her and us to be "normal," I guess I have eventually inherited an "unconventionality" gene from her that makes me think compost is...cool and fun.

Oh, and by the way, I also cut the mold off the cheese and use the still-good part.

So HOW does an apartment dweller compost? I'm about to tell you:

I wanted to start a porch composting bin. Got the idea for this from http://www.balconycompost.com/ only I made it a 25 gallon Rubbermaid container instead of a 5 gallon storage bucket. Punched holes in this using some scissors (holes in the bottom and the lid, too.) Then it's ready to fill up:















First, I put in some old nuts that were rancid and had been sitting in the pantry too long. And some popcorn seeds that didn't pop.


Some stale chips. And some rice that had gotten infested with weevils.




Kitchen scraps. These are trimmings, peelings, stems, food that's gone too yukky for human consumption, etc. (Here's a link that explains what types of food waste can be composted). Plastic containers like the baby spinach container you see make great collection buckets for compost until you're ready to empty them. Just find one that is airtight. Throw it out and replace with another one next time you buy something in an airtight plastic container.

Bottom layer should be browns and preferably have some bulk...these nuts are OK but it would be better if I had more of them.

Next the stale chips...

Next the rotting food scraps with the rice underneath (rice is a "brown.")

I added some dryer lint (very compostable and considered a "brown.")



Lastly, shredded junkmail, newspaper, torn up brown paper bags, torn up paper towel or toilet paper tubes...basically any paper that doesn't have a glossy finish. These are "browns."
Ok, so these sat on my porch for a while. I added more greens (about 7-8 more baby spinach containers full at a rate of almost 1 container per day) and a little more shredded paper. I tended to pull back the newspaper layer and add the greens to the green layer because I was trying to see if I could get the bin to heat up and start hot composting. (I believe I got the green layer too thick and should have added some brown layers in between.) Then I went on vacation for Thanksgiving for about six days. When I came back, the compost was putrid. Nasty nasty. TOO many greens! It did NOT smell like compost and it wasn't composting due to too much nitrogen (which comes from the greens) and not enough carbon (which comes from the browns) and it had probably become anaerobic. I rectified this by adding a lot of sawdust and a lot more shredded paper and continuing to stir and monitor the smell about daily when I added more of our greens every day. I now have a better balance on adding stuff to the bin and I make sure that for every bucket of greens I add, I also add a bucket of combination sawdust and shredded paper. Here's the way the compost looks right now and the good thing is, no more putrid and it smells like it's composting finally.

When I turn it, I can feel heat in the center when I put my hand close to it. However, it's not heating up to the point where it's steaming. One reason could be that it's too small. Most sources say the pile needs to be 3 feet by 3 feet in order to start heating. However, I have heard that you can hot compost in smaller volume. I do have a lid (with holes in it) on this bin, which might help insulate it. On the other hand, it is December (as I'm finishing this post) and colder weather is another factor contributing to the pile not heating up enough.

I will post updates on how this method works as I continue to use it. I will also be posting on vermicomposting, using a NatureMill, and using a ceramic planter pot on the porch for composting.

So that's the skinny (so far) on my "urban composting" efforts!

Labor Day's Labors of Love

On Labor Day I planted some lemon basil seeds--some from a package and some I extracted from the dried blossoms of the lemon basil I bought at the Farmer's Market (so I may get two varieties growing.) This is the "how-to" video I used to educate myself on how to plant basil seeds. For the topsoil, I used a layer of compost made from my kitchen veggie trimmings + sawdust in my Nature Mill composter. Fast forward 2 weeks, and here is a photo of the little sprouts coming up out of the soil. My babies! Aren't they cute?

Also on Labor Day weekend, I planted some trailing herbs in hanging wall planters (trailing rosemary, oregano, and lemon thyme) and some potted herbs (chives, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, Italian basil, "spicy" basil, and mint.) For some color interspersed with the herbs, I put a yellow Gazania in one of my wall planters and an orange Gazania along with some trailing purple verbena in another wall planter. Actually the Gazania I put in with the verbena is from three cuttings off the mother orange Gazania I planted with a red Gerber daisy. Here's the weird setup I rigged up to get the cuttings to root before hanging it on the wall in full sun:

You can learn how to take cuttings from a plant to propagate another one online. Here is everything I planted on Labor Day weekend:

The next weekend I wanted to try my hand at doing some more cuttings so I did some basil cuttings and a couple of mint cuttings. Here they are:

If you know me, you know I have to do things the *exact, exact, right, proper* way so these cuttings were planted in a mix of sterlized sand (I sterlized it myself by wetting and baking in oven at 220 degrees for 1 hr.) and soilless potting mix in a plastic planter that was sterlized with a 10% bleach solution. As is often recommended, I dipped the ends of the cuttings in rooting hormone to promote root growth before sticking them in their holes and covering them up to root. If I sound like I have acquired just enough gardening knowledge to be dangerous, we can thank Google and the internet for that!

Here's my cute-slash-expensive little cactus garden I put together about a year ago. Only $115 for all the plants and materials! When I start thinking I'm a thrifty person, reality smacks me in the face with the fact that thrifty people don't plant $115 cactus bowls. The barrel cactus only blooms once a year in late summer for a little while. A neat thing I've learned about cacti is that if you've got a chunk (big or small) that falls off the cactus for one reason or another (overwatering will cause leaves to get waterlogged and fall off), you leave it where it lies or just tuck the end into the soil a little and in about six months or so, you'll find that it's rooted and is growing itself into a new plant. Isn't that just amazing? Nature is so joyous and fascinating! You just can't keep nature down!

Here's my palm with Baby's Tears growing in the base, my polka-dot plant, and my fern. They love their lives on the porch. Thank heavens for my large, un-LosAngeles-like porch to give me some greenery and dirt in my life!

But, wait! Tune in for the next post when I talk about...COMPOST IN THE CITY!

Summer Herb Salad/ In praise of Lemon Basil

This is a great herb salad recipe I just discovered and am addicted to. (Click on the title of the post to go to the website and get the recipe.) The tang from the herbs contrasts nicely with the sweetness of the corn and green beans and the avacado dressing is mild and just right. I'd recommend only using a 1/2 of an avacado for the dressing, though. Otherwise, it's tastes too guacamole-y.

I keep making this with lemon basil (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/48821/) that I've picked up at my local farmer's market. If you have never tried lemon basil, try to get your hands on some! Such a nice clean-sweet-zesty scent that causes you to compulsively and repeatedly sniff and sigh happily...this might be the original "people-nip"! I'm so smitten with this stuff that I'm going to try to collect seeds from the blossoms and grow some on my porch. (Or maybe I should do it the straightforward way and just buy a plant.) Anyway, the taste is just like the smell and description: lemon + basil. I also made a nice herb tea with it...just pour boiling water over the leaves. Another great use for lemon basil: tear up leaves with a chopped tomato (I used some yummy-flavored heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market) and add some chopped yellow bell pepper. Splash a little red wine vinegar and some olive oil on it (ratio about 1:3 or 1:4 vinegar to oil) and grind pepper and salt over it. Colorful/aesthetically pleasing and tastes really flavorful, too!!

San Fransisco, Fourth of July

This is a late in being posted, but...

The first week of July, work sent me to the Bay Area for a 3-day training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I loved it. I got to get away and learn and eat (they feed you nonstop) and sleep in a quiet hotel. All the people that normally want my attention had to do without and leave me in peace for a while...glorious! A bonus was that the training ended the day before 4th of July (Friday) so I just extended my flight home until Sunday and hung out with the Lindsays, so I got a free family visit, paid for by the federal government!

Here are some street pictures and fireworks pictures. Below is a picture standing on Kristin and Mike's street. Unfortunately, the fireworks pictures were taken sans tripod so they're very "impressionistic."


Here are some domestic scenes at the Lindsays' then-furniture-less apartment. They had just arrived from Vermont a week before and were waiting on the moving van to deliver their worldly possessions.

In the absence of a couch, Mike had to recline on a blowup bed and Gretchen had to recline on..dad.

Here's the li'l gipper getting her hair done while watching "'Credibles," (The Incredibles) which I learned is her favorite movie and needs to be watched a couple of times a day!

The kiddo.




Took a fresh air walk to the community garden near their apartment.

Scenes from an evening walk we took to "The Crepevine" on Irvine for dinner. Kristin and Mike live in the Sunset district:


I'm a little naieve as a Southern Californian and didn't bring enough warm clothes (..I mean, it was July!) I ended up high-tailing it to the local thrift store with Kristin where we both bought some additional long sleeve shirts, jackets, and sweaters. Just to give this some perspective, I slept under about 4 nice warm quilts and we turned on the heat at night! It was so very windy and cold walking and walking to the wharf for fireworks that I was a little short on holiday gaiety. However, I must have benefitted from the body heat of the thousands of other San Franciscans at the wharf because I warmed up once we got a spot on the grass. The fireworks were great. We learned that fireworks will just tinge the sky with their color, but no pattern is visible when there's fog. We also ate a 4th of July dinner at a Brazilian restaurant in honor of Camila and in honor of the fact that we were starving and it was the first restaurant we ran across:)


NEXT DAY: Chinatown




Look close, there's Gretchen, Mike, and Kristin.

Window shopping.

The iconic trolley...you're supposed to take pictures of the trolleys if you're from out of town.









We bought some scarves on the street, ate some good Chinese food, and then went back to a jacket shop where Mike bought a jacket and Kristin talked me in to plopping down some cash ($219..that's CASH for a social worker..but it was 50% off) for a rock n roll motorcycle jacket. That's about when the little miss started to poop out, as you see pictured above. The ensuing crankiness signalled that the time was right to take a long drive down to Moss Beach so she could hopefully fall asleep in the car seat. Here's us searching for little crabs, sea urchins, and the like in the tidepools at low tide (around 7 p.m.):





Auntie Winnow made friends with and gained the trust of the seals by slowly inching towards them two baby steps at a time. See those trusting gazes? Only a third of them jumped in the water and swam away. The others felt very comfortable around me.





The happy family.




FRIDAY MORNING (moving backwards in time just to keep you on your toes and avoid moving around these darn pictures); Moss Beach at high tide:





A memo was circulated, notifying everyone to wear pink on this day.


We didn't take pictures of Mike, except for one faraway hiking picture (above) because he wouldn't comply with the rule to wear pink.

Again, it was freezing cold. But because making Gretchen laugh and squeal called for me and Kristin to carry her close to, and then run away from the surf (which got us a couple of times), we took off our shoes and rolled up our pants.

Here's the cutest picture of the bunch of mommy and little miss:

One of my favorite things about Gretchen is that she makes herself really clear by repeating everything she says about 3-4 times in her cute, squeaky voice. I.e. "Let's go down the hill now. Ok, let's go down the hill now. Go down the hill now." Maybe another time, just to make her point. Each time she intones as if she's saying it for the first time and it's a new idea. She's also really good at pronouncing my name, which most adults can't do. She liked to sit on my lap and help me eat my food. I hadn't seen her for some time so it was so fun to see how big she's gotten and how many words she's now got in her little vocabulary.

I'm glad Mike/Kristin/Gretchen and bun-in-the-oven now live so close to me and we can visit again soon! San Francisco couldn't be a more fabulous destination, too. Thank you, guys, for putting me up (they even borrowed a blowup bed and blankets for me) and showing me around town 'n beaches! Let's do it again soon!