One of my favorite ways to eat arugula..

Tuesday night dinner: asparagus risotto with "squash and smash" arugula, basil, and cherry tomato salad.

I've managed to grow some pretty good-looking arugula this year..beginner's luck..and have had a pretty long-running crop. It's the beginning of August and two or three of the twelve or so plants I've got has begun to shoot up some seed pods, which isn't bad for arugula planted at the beginning of May. My leaves have been nice and green and apparently not very many bugs like the taste of arugula because the leaves are fairly spotless. I harvest them by picking the bigger leaves around the outside of the plant right into my salad spinner basket, which I then take in and rinse and spin and cook. In this photo you see lettuces near the bottom. Arugula upper right, then (going counterclockwise) kale, carrots, and then beet greens and swiss chard.


Here are my cherry tomatoes that are not yielding a lot, due to only 5 hours per day of direct sunlight on my shaded porch, but are giving it a go nonetheless.











To make "squash and smash" salad:
A couple of handfuls of arugula
A couple of handfuls of basil (Italian or spicy basil work best)
About a pint of cherry tomatoes (be colorful!)
Red wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Kalamata olives, preferably oil-cured but brine-cured are fine


Put the cherry tomatoes in a bowl and cover the bowl with a paper towel. Use one hand to reach in and pop or smash each cherry tomato while your other hand hold the paper towel to keep tomato seeds from squirting you in the eye or flying this way and that in the kitchen. :) Tear or cut up the olives into pieces and add them. Splash with some vinegar--start easy and later you can add more if it needs more tang. Salt and pepper things. Then drizzle olive oil over it. Mix around with a fork. (The juices from the tomatoes make a lovely vinaigrette with the other ingredients. And, by the way, regular tomatoes just won't work the same. It needs to be cherry tomatoes.) Just before serving, rip the arugula and basil into the tomato/ olive mixture and toss. Eat it all up. Leftovers will be very wilted.

Colachee. So good it's not even funny.

Tonight's dinner featured "Colachee," a succotash-like side dish made from corn, zucchini, tomatoes, onion, and green bell pepper. And that's a tamale I ate it with. Garnished with a slice of heirloom tomato.

I'm guessing my mom gave Colachee its name. And--let me pontificate--what's in a name, anyway? Colachee by any other name would taste as good, true? Ah, yes..although it may sound less inelegant.

Mom made and froze a large quantity of Colachee one summer when we lived in Idaho and must have had it's ingredients growing in the garden located on our 1/2 acre back lot. I remember as a kid being surprised that I really liked it. Recently the memory of it and the fact that I had some of its ingredients on hand made me want to figure out the recipe. Colachee has the distinct characteristic of tasting even better after it has sat in the fridge for a day or two. And it freezes very well. I recreate it here probably the way my mom originally made it..that is, without a real recipe. But these approximations will probably get you close. Adjust as you'd like.


Chop 1 green bell pepper, 1/2 to 3/4 of a large onion, 1 large tomato, and 1 large zucchini. Cut the ears off 1 corn cob. Saute all but the tomato in about 1/4 cup of butter. Cook for a while until veggies get a little tender, then add the tomatoes and cook them a while. Remove from heat and salt and pepper.

Here's a pretty heirloom tomato from the Farmer's Market that I added. I also used purple onions and a combination of purple bell peppers and Anaheim chile pepper. Don't do this. It definitely needs that green bell pepper taste. The purple onions were fine, though.

And here's dessert: plain yogurt with honeydew from the 99 Cent store and sweet plums from the Farmer's Market.

Last but not least, this meal's compostables, which were fed to the worms in my parking garage bin.

Eating the garden

Time to eat the fruits of my labors..and that of other Hispanic farm workers.

My dinner tonight consisted of pasta w/ swiss chard, garlic, and olive oil; heirloom tomato, purple bell pepper, and lemon basil salad, and beet, arugula, and goat cheese salad. And I sopped up the olive oil with a piece of crusty whole wheat bread.

The arugula, swiss chard, and lemon basil were grown by me in my little garden (pic of newly harvested swiss chard above and lemon basil sprig here). My beets and tomatoes aren't ready yet so beets and heirloom tomatoes are from the Farmer's market. And purple bell peppers were found at the 99 Cent store.

All of these are easy and favorites of mine.

Chard pasta: Boil any type of larger pasta (penne, linguine, etc.) to al dente and add the cut up stems of chard at the end of the cooking time. Right before turning off the heat, add the chard leaves and immediately pour into the colander. Drain and return to the cooking pot. Add about 1-2-3 cloves (to your liking) of minced garlic and drizzle w/ olive oil (again however much you like but generally just enough to lubricate everything.) Grind pepper and salt on top. Add some fresh grated Parmigian, Romano, Asiago or whatever tasty hard cheese you have on hand, if desired. Also good add-ins are a sprinkle of dried parsley and/or crushed red pepper flakes. Serve right away.

Tomato, pepper, and lemon basil: Chop tomatoes and pepper (yellow bell peppers are my favorite for this). Rip up basil leaves. Splash w/ red wine vinegar (go conservative at first and taste for the right amount of tang.) Add olive oil (keep about a 1:3 ratio for vinegar to olive oil). Grind salt and pepper on top and mix. Serve right away.

Beet, arugula, and goat cheese salad: Boil some beets. Cut into slices when cool. Rip up some arugula onto a plate. Cut some herbed goat cheese into slices or pieces (Chevre brand is good.) Chop a granny smith apple into bite size pieces. Arrange beet slices, apple, and pieces of goat cheese over arugula. Make an oil/vinegar dressing that is sweetened slightly with honey or sugar. I like to use this muscat orange vinegar from Trader Joe's w/ olive oil and honey. Make sure to put salt and pepper in the dressing and drizzle over the salad. Again, serve right away.

I was so proud of my swiss chard and arugula. They have grown so healthy looking..probably thanks to the vermicompost in the soil and compost tea (both homemade!) I've used to grow them. Grown completely organic, with no chemical fertilizers or pest control, and a lot of Farmer Winnow's obsessive-compulsive kind of love! Here are compostables from this meal waiting to become part of next year's garden:
And the worms are now eating it for their dinner! :) Ecology!

Wanna quick overview of vermicomposting?

Here it is...

Meanwhile, back at the Wriggly Wranch..

No deer or antelope to speak of this time around. This range/ranch is more of a plastic box with legs that houses eisenia fetida, or Red Wriggler worms. These very squirmy wormies are originally from South America and like to live in the relatively shallow top layer of earth, where they eat decaying organic matter. This fact makes them ideal for vermicomposting (you know, "verm" + "compost"), due to the fact that they are tolerant of living in small spaces like a plastic box with legs.

I got my Wriggly Wranch when I attended a Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Works- sponsored gardening workshop where eager but yet-ignorant citizens can learn about backyard and worm composting as well as fire- and water-wise gardening and grass recycling. If you attend, you can buy either a biostack or worm compost bin with worms at a subsidized price. Yes, the subsidized price still wasn't dirt (pardon the pun) cheap, but I consider the Wriggly Wranch and my worms worth the $65.00 I paid out.

I set up my little worm condo on my porch at the beginning of November 2008, when we were having some unseasonably warm weather. Setting up the bin involved wetting and fluffing a compacted brick of coconut coir (the shaved outer layer of coconut husk that covers the shell) inside the Wriggly Wranch and then burying the worms, along with some kitchen scraps, in it. Put the lid on and wait and the worms eat the coconut coir and the kitchen scraps and produce a poo poo (aka "worm casting") so full of plant nutrients that any old nasty seed tossed into it will sprout a healthy seedling in just a couple of days flat. The worms can eat almost half their weight in food per day when they're feeling their oats (..or green pepper stems, or mango peelings), quickly producing a finely textured compost in a fraction of the time it takes to compost in the traditional way.

Nevertheless, there are some hazards to avoid:

Hazard A: You need to learn how not to "overfeed" the bin. If you feed the worms the right amount, your bin will smell earthy but not stinky at all. The worms like to eat food scraps as soon as they begin to acquire bacteria. (Think of veggies that are starting to get slimy or droopy and brown-looking. This yukky stuff is just perfect to the worms.) Because they like decaying food and can consume it quickly, you'll only be left with stinking food scraps if the worms have too much to eat and can't get to all of the food yet. The worms, if not overfed, will eat the veggies before they can begin stinking and before they start growing mold. Thus, a very clean, stink free bin due to quick "turnover" (consumption, digestion, and excretion by the worms.) If you see mold begin to form in the bin, chances are you've overfed. Word to the worm-wise: be advised that if you put in some freshly trimmed green parsley stems..or fresh anything.., the worms may not eat them for about a week or more, until they start to wilt and go bad. In the picture to the right, you can see the food scraps and coconut coir. At this time, I had a small amount of worms and this amount of food turned out to be too much for them, which I learned when a white mold started to form on the surface of the coconut coir beneath which some of the food scraps were buried. In the left front corner, you see some pumpkin seed sprouts. These were pulled out of the coconut coir where they'd begun to sprout up.

Hazard B: Bugs. Little other creatures will also make a home of the bin (especially if you put the bin outdoors for any length of time.) Springtails, fungus gnats, mites, fruit flies, drain flies, and house flies all like the decaying organic matter in your bin and will happily abide/nest /eat there. Most of these bugs actually help the composting process and do not hurt the worms or the compost. However, if you are like me, you do NOT want house flies and fruit flies and flying things that escape the bin in your house. Don't fear. You can prevent them from getting in there or get rid of them if they do take up residence. When you "feed" the bin, it's important to bury the scraps in the "bedding" (which can be moistened coconut coir, shredded paper, shredded cardboard, etc. on top of or mixed in with the worm castings) to keep fruit flies and the like from laying their eggs on the decaying food.

As the weather began to dip below 50 degrees at night (which is sort of a minimum temperature for the worms), I brought my Wriggly Wranch inside and put it in a corner of my kitchen by the NatureMill and the trash can. Although the lid was on all the time, there was a thriving ecology of bugs that were living in the bin such as springtails, fungus gnats, mites, and drain flies. I learned that the teeny tiny fast-crawling hypoapsis mites eat fruit fly and fungus gnat larvae as well as decaying organic matter so I decided we should keep those around. Besides, the mites aren't interested in crawling outside the bin because there's no food for them outside. As far as the flying pests, it took about a month and a half of burying food cleanly and vacuuming up fruit flies flying around my kitchen, but I did eradicate the population. (Beneficial nematodes can also be introduced to the bin to eat fly larvae.) Always keep an airtight lid on your compost collection bucket, too, because the fruit flies will begin to lay eggs on that if you expose it to the air.

Hazard C: (And this isn't a big hazard.) Wandering worms. There are certain conditions that will cause the worms to crawl up the sides and up in the lid of the bin instead of staying in the dirt. Avoid too much moisture, not enough moisture, too much acidity, not enough bedding material, and overcrowding/overpopulation. (Worms may also temporarily crawl out of the dirt when the barometric pressure drops due to rainy weather, too.) I've never had a worm actually crawl through the aeration holes in the lid, even though some are small enough to do it, because they like to avoid light and dry conditions. You've got the ideal moisture level if you can squeeze a drop or two of water out of a handful of compost. Add more water or bedding material to get the balance right. Important to have enough bedding material because if the worms are living in a container that mostly consists of their poop, it can be toxic to them. So get a good percentage of bedding mixed with the castings. If you feed your worms lots of acidic food such as tomatoes or fruit, your bin might be too acidic. Try adding garden lime or eggshells to get the ph balance corrected. If your worms have been eating a lot, they'll tend to reproduce and crowd the place. They might be crawling out of the dirt just to get a little elbow room (although they don't really have elbows.)

Hazard D: Know what not to feed the worms. No citrus. It has too much acid and isn't good for them. No oils or salt, not even a little bit. And just so you're aware, the worms will avoid anything that is so disgustingly rotten and moldy that it looks like a science experiment. FYI white or blackish molds are safer than pink, yellow, green, or other colored molds. A little white or black mold is OK. The others are starting to make penicillin.

Here's a gleeful picture of the contents and inhabitants of my worm bin. This is a cucumber and some junk mail being eaten. The bin has been doing well since its inception and I'm thinking now that I'm going to turn the outdoor traditional compost bin into a worm bin as soon as the nighttime weather gets above 50 degrees outside. By the way..the worms like to ideally live in temperatures from 50 to 80 degrees, but can survive, although not thrive, at somewhat higher or lower temperatures.

WINNOW'S PICK! Currently, I feel that vermicomposting outshines the competitors (porch traditional compost bin and NatureMill) as the glittering ideal in composting methods! Its advantages include: 1) stink-free when done right 2) best compost (finely textured, most aerated, most plant nutrients) 3) can be located in a kitchen without offending humans 4) can be fairly bug-free when done right, 5) nice by-product compost tea, 6) quickest composting time (just as fast as the NatureMill without the smell).

Now if that's not enough to motivate you to get yourself some worms, I don't know what will. :)

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.