gardening in the boroughs of nyc

I'm a New Member!

2012-02-03T15:24:00.002-05:00

A few minutes ago, my cousin Kathy sent me a link on Facebook and said, "You should totally have bees next! Make your own honey!" Little did she know that I've been dreaming about raising honey bees for some time now. Kathy and I are peas from the same pod, we both love gardening and homesteading, it's no wonder we are cousins. Whenever either of us hear about cool gardening related events around the city, we both notify each other to attend. I can not believe that I have not stumbled upon The Horticultural Society of New York until she mentioned it. I looked at their current offerings of lectures and workshops and they are having a whole series of DIY Homegrown workshops from making your own hand salves and lip balms, to hydroponic gardening with Boswyck Farms (where I intern already) to a talk about cultivating mushrooms. OMG, everything sounds so interesting, all topics are things I've always wanted to learn. I immediately signed up for a year membership, which gives you benefits such as discounts and invitations to upcoming events, films, exhibitions. There are different levels of membership, and what's so amazing is that the membership funds and donations goes towards their current programs.

For example, from their website they say, $65: buys ladybugs and magnifying glasses for two New York City public school 3rd grade classes.
$100: provides tools to maintain a public library reading garden in a community with few green spaces.
$250: supports the cost of building a bi-lingual teaching library at the GreenHouse on Rikers Island.
$500: funds a 200-gallon rainwater harvesting cistern that can water an urban garden for an entire planting season.
$1,000: purchases the materials for four vegetable gardening workshops at a seniors’ center, a residence for formerly homeless individuals or families, a rooftop garden for people with mental illnesses or a hospice for a terminally ill adults.

The day after the beekeeping lecture, on February 17th, The Horticultural Society of New York opens it's new exhibition, The Art of the Heirloom. The exhibit "showcases 23 original works commissioned by the Hudson Valley Seed Library for their annual Art Pack collection." They have beautiful artwork on their seed packets and they are setting up a pop up store where the seeds will be on sale. I definitely want to attend reception where the artists will be in attendance. For more information about the exhibit, check out Hudson Valley Seed Library website.

62F, What?

2012-02-02T04:22:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I went to the farmer's market in Union Square and was so amazed that it was 62F degrees out. Like 62F on February 1st! I don't remember the last time, if ever, it was this warm in NYC in the month of February. Hello, is it winter? Or did we skip winter and go straight to spring. This weather is too weird for me. It's confusing for people and plants. I have bulbs coming up already, I saw leaves growing on the irises and daffodils in my garden, it's too early!! Because the weather was so warm, the Farmer's Market was brimming with activity. One of the cool things I saw was this vendor selling microgreens. I don't know why I've never started a tray of greens like this before, it's so easy, you just sprinkle seeds over a flat of soil. It's literally just lettuce seedlings that are cut and eaten. Super cool idea!

The main reason I went to the Farmer's Market was to pick up my quarts of Ronnybrook Farm milk. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that I love to support eating locally and knowing where your food comes from. I especially love to support anything that is produced right here in the state of New York. Ronnybrook, located in Ancramdale, NY, is a 3rd generation family run farm that practices organic and sustainable farming. They allow their cows access to pasture everyday, they are "free range" cows. Also, the farm never uses artificial growth hormones on the cows and the milk is non-homogenized, so that the milk looks like the creamy milk it should be, not that watery looking stuff you buy at the supermarket. Ronnybrook is also committed to recycling, the milk comes in these glass bottles. To encourage recycling, when you purchase the milk, they charge you $1.50 for a bottle deposit. After you consume the milk, you can bring the bottle back to them and they in turn gives back your deposit of $1.50. The milk is bottled right on the farm, and so it cuts out the processing middle man. Therefore when you purchase the bottled milk, the profits go right back to the farm. Another reason to buy local, to keep the local farms in business. I don't bring my bottles back though to get my deposit, I love the design of the bottles, so I re-use them to store juice or sometimes I use the bottles as flower vases. When I got to the farmer's market, they had run out of the Chocolate milk that I love, so I ended up with 2 Quarts of low fat milk. I'll buy some U-bet chocolate syrup to make my own. U-bet is a local chocolate syrup made in Brooklyn. Ooh, maybe I'll make some egg creams. Delicious!

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What else can I make with Sourdough Starter?

2012-01-31T00:26:00.001-05:00

When Aimee over at Red Garden Clogs gave me sourdough starter, she was quick to warn me of one thing... The jars of starter multiply like crazy if you don't use them to make breads. Boy was she not kidding. At one point I had 4 containers of sourdough starter in my fridge, and I didn't want to throw out any of it. I've been obsessed with finding ways to use it. Until one day, I was getting ice out of my freezer when I saw a box of store bought frozen waffles, upon which a "ding" rang off in my head. I can use the sourdough starter to make a ton of waffles that I can just freeze or keep in the fridge for quick breakfasts. Awesome! I found a way to use up some sourdough starter!! These are so great, especially when I am in the rush to go to a client meeting or too lazy to cook breakfast. So this weekend, I made a large batch of Belgian waffles using the waffle maker that I got for Christmas. This is my new go to breakfast! Do you use sourdough? What do you like to make with it?

Trying Wintersowing Again

2012-01-30T00:56:00.000-05:00

Last year, I tried Winter sowing for the first time, and I loved it! I only did a few plants last year, broccoli and cauliflower. The broccoli and cauliflower plants didn't do well in the garden... it was plagued by bugs and mites, and never ended up growing any crowns, so I decided this year that I wasn't going to waste garden space on brassicas at all. Waste of my time in my opinion. But the seedlings from winter sowing were so strong, much more so than seeds started indoors. If you are a non-believer, just look at my seedlings comparison from last year. The brassica seedlings had thicker stems and were larger than the ones I started inside. Last year, I had volunteer tomato plants all over the garden. Dozens and dozens of them. Since there were dozens of volunteer tomato plants, I knew that winter sowing would work well for tomato seeds. I have been saving these plastic juice bottles to use as mini greenhouses to plant in. Here's a great explanation from Dave over at The Home Garden that explains how to winter sow, or check out the Wintersown.org website's article.

Here they are all sowed and outside near the house. I labeled each one using the plant tags that I made out of plastic milk cartons. This is soooo my kind of lazing gardening. Sow and let nature do it's job. Now all I have to do is wait until spring to see if this worked! Fingers crossed.

I'm a Liar.

2012-01-29T14:11:00.002-05:00

Three days ago, I wrote about how I was not going to buy seeds this season. Yeah right. (haha, nervous laugh) Then this morning, I got this email from Urban Farmer saying that they are offering Free Shipping until 2/1/12. #$%@#!!!! Apparently, all it takes is an offer for free shipping for me to cave in and buy more seeds. I am so pathetic! So I bought a packet of Utah Celery Seeds and heirloom Habanero seeds. I seriously need an intervention. For free shipping from Urban Farmer use the Promo code tom21 at checkout valid until Feb. 1, 2012. Note: when you enter the promo code hit the "go" button to see the shipping deducted from your cart. Happy Shopping!

I Lied, I Do Need Seeds!

2012-01-28T03:12:00.001-05:00

I took a look inside one of my seed boxes tonight. Gosh, what a hot mess! I need to organize this pronto! I thought I had all the seeds that I needed for this season, but I forgotten that I don't have any celery seeds. Last season, I grew Utah Celery from seeds given to me by Food Garden Kitchen, and I realized that I really loved growing celery. What I loved about the celery was that the taste was totally amazing and I used the entire thing, especially the leaves in soups. The celery was so flavorful, so much more so than celery you buy at the supermarket. It's also super fresh and fun to just clip a few stems off the plant and let it continue growing. Love that, it's like having a constant replenished supply of celery! Also, it seemed like no bugs liked celery at all, so it wasn't plagued by insect bites. I told myself that I won't buy any more seeds, but that doesn't mean I can't trade for some! Does anyone out there want to swap seeds with me?

Here is a list of what I'm looking for.
1. Celery
2. Any variety of cherry tomatoes, preferably heirloom variety
3. Pepper plants that do well in containers
4. Eggplants that do well in containers
I'm also open to try any new variety of seeds that I haven't tried before, so if you have something unique, I'm willing!

Here's a list of seeds that I have to offer.

1. Jaune Flamme Tomato - (heirloom saved seeds)
2. Persimmon Tomato - (heirloom saved seeds)
3. Rutgers Tomato - (heirloom saved seeds)
4. Yellow Pear Tomato - (heirloom saved seeds)
5. Cherokee Purple Tomato - (heirloom saved seeds)
6. Chioggia Beets - (Sustainable Seed Co. 2011)
7. Alfalfa Sprouts - (Botanical Interests 2011)
8. Cayenne Pepper - (Mike the Gardener 2011)
9. Sweet Banana Pepper - (Sustainable Seed Co. 2011)
10. Purple Plum Radish - (Sustainable Seed Co. 2011)
11. Chocolate Beauty Pepper - (Sustainable Seed Co. 2011)
12. Roma Tomato - (Gurneys 2010)
13. Chinese Mao Qwa squash or hairy gourd - (saved seeds)
14. Jalapeno Pepper - (saved seeds)
15. Buckwheat (cover crop) - (Johnny Seeds 2010)

If you want to do a swap send me an email here!
Thanks!

A Chocolate Craving

2012-01-27T22:13:00.000-05:00

I had a craving for chocolate tonight so I decided to whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies are my absolute favorite cookie. My go to cookie recipe is the one posted on Bo's Bowl called Neiman Marcus cookies. I omit the espresso and only use 1 cup of chips, 1 1/2 cups of chips is a bit sweet for my taste. Boy are they good! What I like about this cookie recipe is that the cookie when cooled is not really chewy, it's more of a hard cookie, which I like. It holds up well for dunking in coffee or milk. Try out the recipe! It's a good thing I have a party to attend tomorrow, I'm bringing these cookies with me. I can't imagine all of these being in my house, I would be tempted to eat too many!

New Seeds from a Great Company!

2012-01-26T18:32:00.001-05:00

So in my last post, I wrote about how I have been getting a deluge of seed catalogs in my mailbox and I swore to myself that I would not buy any new seeds for the 2012 season. That was the goal at least, until I received a customer appreciation email from Urban Farmer who sent me a $10 gift certificate to use on any of their products on their website. Who can turn down a free $10 and especially from a seed company that I love? I wrote about Urban Farmer's recycling efforts before here, and once sponsored a seed giveaway of their herb seeds here. Urban Farmer also has a safe seed pledge that guarantees that they do not sell any GMO seeds. You can read the seed pledge here on their site. They offer many seeds that are organic and many are also heirlooms. They are serious about their recycling efforts, in fact all of their seed packets are made from recycled magazines. Check out the seeds that I chose, I kinda love that Brooke Shields is on the cover of one of my seed packets. LOL. Maybe my plants will grow as pretty as she is!

So I ordered the following seeds, Lemon Grass, Oregano, Cherokee Purple Tomato, Parsley, Cherry Belle Radish and Sweet Pickle Peppers. I am really excited about the sweet pickle peppers, which is a heirloom plant. They grow short so I can probably grow these in pots! So cool! I hope to pickle these too! Since they gave me $10 as an appreciation for being a good customer, I only had to spend $2.60 plus $3.95 for shipping. I love this seed company for what they stand for and also love a good bargain!

And They Keep Coming

2012-01-25T21:06:00.003-05:00

My mailbox is being clogged by seed catalogs. Seed catalogs are fun to look through, but I don't like getting catalogs from random companies that I don't order from. I find it really annoying because I don't know these companies and how reliable they are. Those catalogs just end up getting recycled. I have to be good about ordering this year. I told myself that I won't be ordering any seeds or bulbs this year because... I went a little overboard last year and still have lots of seeds. I have to force myself to not order anything. I KNOW... that is going to be impossible. LOL.

And Then Came the Dragons

2012-01-23T18:00:00.001-05:00

Today marks the Lunar (Chinese) New Year, the year of the dragon! They say that the year of the dragon is the luckiest of all the zodiac years. It should be a year of good fortune. Traditionally, the family gets together for an end of the year dinner. A feast to bring in the new year. This year's dinner did not disappoint. We ate walnut shrimp, steak with gai lan, steamed flounder, tofu soup, crispy chicken and sweet and sour pork.

For dessert, my sister picked up this yummy fruit cake. It had a Boston cream filling topped with fresh fruit. It was delicious! Gong Hay Fat Choy to all! Bring on the dragon!

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White Wonder

2012-01-22T16:56:00.001-05:00

It snowed yesterday and blanketed the backyard and garden. It looks so white and pristine! We have had a very mild winter with very little snow and temperatures reaching up to 64F at times. Much different than last year's record snowfalls. When I see snow like this, it makes me really anxious for spring's arrival.

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Grow Your Own Organic Tea

2012-01-21T01:21:00.000-05:00

I have a few perennial herb plants that I grow indoors. And then it dawned on me one day that I should make a tea out of them. Here is my spearmint plant. I have been growing this plant for two years. In the summer, the potted plant goes out into the backyard. I am so tempted with planting one in the ground, people say they hate how it takes over the yard, but I would love it! I can't get enough mint, I love the stuff!

This is the pineapple sage plant. It sits on the kitchen counter by the window and does really well here. It's also 2 years old and grows really well indoors surprisingly. When you clip the stems off, it grows back really nicely. I love the smell of pineapple sage. It really does smell like pineapple, and tastes a bit like it too.

I clip the stems and hang them with magnetic clips on the fridge to dry out the leaves.

I finally filled a whole jar full of dried herb leaves. In this jar contains pineapple sage, spearmint, and lemon balm. I am so excited that I made my own organic tea!

I brewed the tea for the first time today. I added a little honey. It's a very light tea, and very refreshing. Yum, it's my new favorite drink! I would like to add more herbs to the mix, like chamomile or lavender. Do you have any suggestions? I can't wait to experiment! I wish my meyer lemon tree actually grew lemons, it would be a nice addition to this tea. If you grow herbs, try making your own tea! You will love it!

My Love... Trader Joe's

2012-01-18T01:40:00.000-05:00

A new Trader Joe's just opened up near my house and I could not be happier. I've written about my love of Trader Joe's before. It's my favorite grocery story....ever! My sister and her family were visiting me the other day and we decided to make a run there to pick up some goodies.

Not only does Trader Joe's have an amazing selection of food, they also have an amazing selection of plants. Especially orchids. Look how gorgeous this plant is! And it's only $12!!!!

There are so many orchids to choose from. I had to use all of my willpower to not take one home with me. I have killed 3 orchids last year, so I didn't take one home. I can't keep them alive at all.

I went a little overboard with the food shopping. Here is my stash!

So much yummy stuff! And most of it, I went for the organic stuff.

Of all the things I picked up, my three favorites are this peanut butter made with sea salt. I love sweet and salty things together, so this is pretty much amazing. This Himalayan pink sea salt, I've always wanted to try this type of salt because it's pink, but never could afford it. Anytime I've ever seen this type of salt elsewhere, it's always been super pricey. But Trader Joe's has great affordable prices, and they don't chintze on quality. That jar of Himalayan Pink Salt was only $2. Two bucks!! I also picked up some vanilla beans. I'm hoping to make some vanilla extract with this. I've read about it before, how you simply put the vanilla bean into some good vodka. I've always wanted to try it.

We were so hungry after we finished grocery shopping that we order a giant platter of sushi. I can't think of a better way to end the day!

Discarded Trees

2012-01-16T02:48:00.000-05:00

I love a real pine Christmas tree for the holidays. You just can't beat the smell of fresh pine. However, I've always felt bad about having a real tree though. Even though for the last couple of years, I've had a real Christmas tree, I've never felt happy about it. I've always felt guilty about a tree that is cut down just to be in my house for the holidays. On Friday, I was standing at the bus stop in the morning waiting for my bus into Manhattan and I saw a garbage truck come by and picked up the discarded pine trees on the side of the road. I couldn't help but feel super sad about it. It's kinda sad that the tree was cut to live in someone's house for a few weeks, and then left on the side of the road for a garbage truck to pick up.

I watched them crush the dead tree in the trash compactor part of the truck. The only thing that makes me feel slightly better is that the city turns most of the trees into mulch. Every year, the city holds a mulchfest, where you can drop off your Christmas trees to designated areas to have them mulched. The mulch is then used throughout the city parks, or you can also go there with a bag and collect free mulch for your garden. Also during the weeks from January 3 - 14th, the trees that are left on the curbside are also mulched. This tree is probably on it's way to get mulched somewhere. I'm glad that the trees get re-purposed for mulch rather than going to a landfill. You go NYC!

Next year, I'm considering getting a live potted pine tree for Christmas, and then I can plant it afterwards. Perhaps, maybe I will.

Moo Business Cards

2012-01-13T15:44:00.003-05:00

Lately, many people who I know, or new people I have been meeting have been asking me about gardening and what my blog web address is. I have business cards for my web design business, so I figured, why don't I go ahead and get business cards for blogging? I have Moo.com mini cards for work, and I love the quality of the cards. They are a UK based company, that now prints in the US. What I like about Moo's cards is that they allow you to have different designs on each card, so if you want to use different images, you can. You can upload your own photos or use your own designs, but I decided to pick out designs available on the site. How cute are these? I so love the bear gnome and carrot one. I also bought a card holder keychain to hold all my cards. Moo also uses 100% recycled stock for their paper. Now that's a company I can stand behind! If you are interested in making a purchase with Moo, send me a comment, and I'll send you a discount code for 15% off your first order. (Oh, and btw, Moo.com did not in any way compensate me for this review. I use and like the product and just want to spread the word.)

Red Boots for Gardening!

2012-01-11T22:05:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, I bought myself a gift, although, it's really for the garden. I splurged on a pair of Crocs rain boots that I intend to use in the garden. Aren't they cute?

In the past, I had purchased cheapy rain boots that didn't hold up to the amount of time I spent in the garden. They would wear out in no time, and break by the end of one gardening season. So this time around, I decided to get a fun color and to invest in a pair of Crocs rain boots. I bought these online, so I didn't get to try them on before purchasing them. When I received them in the mail, I was surprised that the material that the boots were made of were really stiff. It's made out of the same material as the Crocs clogs. I found them slightly hard to walk in at first, but after a little getting used to, they are more comfortable now. And I just love the red color! Very bright, and stylish! I bought a size 7, but the sizing seems a little bigger than a 7, since there was a lot of space inside the boot. I think I should have gotten a 6 1/2. Although, I decided to keep it, because I figured with the extra room, I could also wear warm wooly socks and also used these for the winter.

How about you? Did you splurge on any fun gardening gifts to yourself?

Chick Calendar

2012-01-08T04:30:00.002-05:00

I had dinner with my friend Gina the other night and she showed me the most awesome Christmas present that she got from her little sister Maria. She had to show me because she knew I would get a kick out of it. Maria is raising egg laying chickens in Upstate New York. And she made a calendar to give to both of her sisters. How awesome is this?

Each of the chickens had a little photo shoot. OMG, I sooo want one of these chickens and calendars! Don't you?

Pierogi Day!

2012-01-07T01:14:00.001-05:00

I'm going to keep the food blog posts rolling. T'is was the season of eating, and eating! Before Christmas, I was graciously invited to my friend Jen's family's annual Pierogi making day! Jen used to be my roommate many years ago, and when we lived together, every Christmas, she invited me to participate in her family's traditional pierogi day. It is my most favorite day ever! I love, love going to this fun family event!

This is a day where the entire family, uncles, aunts, cousins, would meet to make about 500 pierogis to be eaten on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, they don't eat meat, but they eat lots and lots of pierogis. This recipe has been passed down in their family from generation to generation. In the above photo is a picture of us making the dough and the below photo is the rolling out and cutting of the dough.

The pierogis are then filled with a potato cheese mixture.

And here are the pierogis assembled and getting ready to be cooked. They are so Good!!

After we make all the pierogis, we sit down for dinner, however, none of the pierogis are eaten. They wait until Christmas Eve to eat them! Can you imagine making these yummy pierogis and not eat one for a whole week! Hehehe. One of Jen's uncles flies in from Key West Florida to make it to Pierogi day, and this year, he brought with him lobsters he caught in Key West. Boy were they ever tasty!! Does your family have any holiday food traditions? Happy eating!!

Grandparent's birthday

2012-01-06T03:03:00.004-05:00

Since it's winter, there's not a lot of gardening going on, but there sure is a lot of eating happening! During the holidays, we had a lot to celebrate. Not just Christmas, but both my grandma and grandpa were celebrating a birthday. My parents wanted to celebrate with a traditional Chinese dinner!

Here are some of the dishes on the lazy Susan. Lobster, crispy chicken, chicken and eggplant, sweet and sour porkchops, steak and gai lan greens. Oohhhh, good stuff!

Crispy chicken with fried prawn chips. My absolute favorite!

It's a very special birthday celebration, I love my grandparents dearly and it was great to spend time with them on this special occasion. My grandfather is 99 and my grandmother is 86. Next year, we are planning a really special 100 year birthday celebration for Gong Gong, (Cantonese for grandpa, or your mother's dad). I can't wait!

Christmas Rewind

2012-01-04T02:45:00.000-05:00

I am so far behind with blogging because of the holidays. I had family over my house, so it consumed every ounce of free time. It was amazing and fun to see my sister's family who came in from Chicago. Every year, my dad, (the professional chef) cooks Christmas dinner, but this year, he wanted a break so my oldest sister and I took on the task of cooking the bulk of dinner. I made some sourdough bread for my family to try. I am really perfecting these now! This time, they came out fluffier, kneading the dough more did the trick. These came out amazing! And the family was so impressed with the taste!

My dad made 2 dishes, one was a Lobster Fettuccine. Here I am joking around with one of the lobsters, I'm pretending that I am going to eat it raw. Hahahaa

Here is the table with all the food! We did a Christmas ham, stuffed shells, stuffed mussels, and a sweet potato casserole. Yummy!

After Christmas dinner, we opened gifts. My favorite gift was this Belgian waffle maker. I've been wanting a waffle maker for some time now. The next morning, we made waffles for breakfast.

Ooooh, they came out so good!

Here's breakfast, topped with fresh blueberries and maple syrup. And a slice of the Christmas ham and some eggs. Absolutely delicious!

Hope everyone had an amazing holiday!

The Best Neighbors!

2011-12-25T03:57:00.000-05:00

When we moved into this house 3 years ago, our neighbors made us feel really welcomed. They came over and introduced themselves, and made us feel like if we needed help with anything, all we had to do is ask. It was great to know that the block that I live on has such community. So my first Christmas at this house, I gave each of my friendly neighbors a box of chocolates as a thank you for welcoming us to the neighborhood. The tradition has stuck and now every year, at Christmas time, I've been continuing to give them chocolate. The neighbors have reciprocated with giving us goodies back. This morning, I received home baked Italian cookies. Yum. And a cake from a local bakery.

I opened the bakery box and inside I saw the most amazing sight! An Eclair cake! Oh my wow! I've never heard of an Eclair cake before. Doesn't this look just incredible! I can't wait to eat this after our Christmas dinner! I'm already drooling! I definitely have the best neighbors! Merry Christmas everyone!!

Baking Sourdough Bread

2011-12-23T19:33:00.001-05:00

Making the sourdough bread from the sourdough starter that Aimee from RedGardenClogs gave me was a lot of fun. The starter that she gave me is "alive" so it was bubbling with activity.

This is the basic recipe for sourdough bread that Aimee recommended. http://pinchmysalt.com/2011/09/30/how-to-make-sourdough-bread/ Note: when you make this bread, you have to plan it in advance. You need two days to make this bread. Here is the dough all kneaded and ready to be made into loaves.

The results of the bread baked. The dough is enough for two small loaves. Out of the oven, the bread is delicious. The crusty outside is crunchy and delicious. I realized I didn't knead the dough enough, so mine came out pretty dense. I know now that it needs more air in the dough to make it fluffier on the inside. I sliced the bread the next day and toasted the slices, added a slab of butter and jam. Ooooooh, amazing! If you live in NYC area and would like some sourdough starter, I'll have some to give away. Just give me a holler!

Sourdough Starter & a Good Cause

2011-12-19T02:37:00.000-05:00

Last week, I met up with Aimee at RedGardenClogs, a fellow New Yorker and also a garden blogger. She had contacted me to inquire if I wanted some of her sourdough starter, in which my answer was, "absolutely". I've never been a big baker, but I love to make bread, so I definitely wanted to try this. I also LOVE sourdough bread, it's one of my favorites. I also offered her some of my Blue Lake pole bean seeds that I saved from plants in my garden, and she asked for some more Jaune Flamme heirloom tomato seeds. We set up a meeting time for a swap, my seeds for sourdough starter. Sa-weet! She also told me about a project that she is working on, to knit cat beds for the feral cats in her neighborhood. The cat beds help the cats stay warm in the winter, and they love to snuggle in them. She was seeking knitters to donate any extra wool yarn for the project. I am a novice knitter and have lots of yarn, but none were wool, so I went to The Naked Sheep, a yarn store near my house. Wool yarn she said helps keep the cats warm even in inclement bad weather. If you have an extra wool yarn that you would like to donate to the cause, let me know and I'll put you in touch with Aimee.

I bought 4 skeins of wool yarn on my way to meeting Aimee. I really love this color combination.

Here are some photos Aimee sent me of the cat beds that she makes. She said they are "felted bed based on the Kitty Pi Pattern." Aren't these super cute? It's also a nicer, soft and warm place for them to sleep.

Here is a closeup of the sides. Aimee noted that it gets really thick with felting.

Here is the bottom of the bed.

Aimee said that this is where the feral cats used to sleep. There is a Ginger cat sleeping in one of the garden boxes. Aren't the cat beds so much better?

Here are 2 of the 9 or 10 kitties that are permanent residents in Aimee's Brooklyn neighborhood: "Enzo (orange) who has lost his right eye and General Sherman (gray + white tabb)y...he's missing his tail, poor guy."

Here are the cats using the cat beds Aimee made. If you click on the photo to inspect closer, you can see two cats, Enzo and his momma snuggling in the bed. Rusty & Oscar, the other cats come in to investigate and wonder where theirs are! Aimee are still knitting them, so soon, very soon. As you can tell, they sure like the beds.

Here is the sourdough starter that I met up with Aimee to get. So exciting! I'll be writing about my baking adventures soon!

And here's another surprise! Aimee also gave me some of her homemade spicy honey mustard! Talk about yummy! This is going to be amazing smothered on some toasted sourdough for a turkey or pastrami sandwich. I cannot wait!!

Holiday Blooms

2011-12-17T03:02:00.003-05:00

Last weekend, I was asked to work at the Flower Station, in Princeton, New Jersey. A florist that I worked at when I was in college. Now I go back from time to time as temporary help, I work there when they are busy for the holidays. I really enjoy going back and working there because they have an amazing stock of gorgeous flowers. It feels nice to be surrounded by beautiful blooms in the dead of winter.

In addition to flowers, they have a beautiful selection of pointsettia plants available for sale for the holidays.

This bouquet a customer purchased as a birthday gift for his wife. Wow, wouldn't you like a pretty bouquet like this? Love it!

After work, I went over to my friend Fabian's house for dinner and to see his Christmas decorations. He had these gorgeous parrots on his tree.

Isn't this tree stunning? (Click on the photo for a closer look.) This photo really doesn't do it justice, but the ornaments, lights, and bows that adorn the tree are just gorgeous. I want him to come over and decorate my house!

A Banana Plant Grows in Staten Island

2011-12-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

I've been home for over a week and a half now, and it's been quite busy since I've been back. Being away for 2 1/2 months was great, but getting back to the swing of things at home has been crazy! Mail to sort through, family and friends to see, clients to meet, and not to mention the upcoming holidays. It's been a whirlwind of activity. Even though we are well into winter, plants and gardening are still in the forefront of my mind. I got an email from a fellow Staten Island gardener Ralph, who I met at Revel Gardener's seed swap event back in September. At that event, I had mentioned to him that if he had other banana plants available in the future that I would be interested in getting one. In his email, he said he had a new banana plant transplant that he split from his original plant that he was ready to give to me. So excited!! Banana plants are tropical so they need to be indoors during the winter. (Another plant that I have added to the list of plants I must schlep inside! Yikes.) I hope that I can get this plant to fruit in 3 years! That would be so amazing! Thanks again Ralph for such an amazing gift!

My Last Day

2011-12-06T20:23:00.001-05:00

My flight on my last day in Utah, was a red eye, so I had all day to spend with the family. We decided to make gingerbread people cookies. We used the recipe found here. The recipe made about 24 cookies. http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/gingerbread_man_cookies/

We had so much fun decorating the cookies. We made our own royal icing to decorate with. We did not use egg whites because we were scared of salmonella poisoning. So we just mixed water with powered sugar to make the icing. Make sure it's pretty thick and not runny icing so that it dries quickly.

We used marshmallows and chocolate chips, and used food coloring to make pink icing. My sister-in-law said that this one she decorated is Lady Gaga. Hahahahaha. She is very "elaborately decorated".

A boy and girl gingerbread couple. We put popsicle sticks on the cookies to make it easier for the boys to eat.

Like how cute is this right?

Poor little guy did not stand a chance. I ate him. Hehehehe

Nothing beats a plate full of yummy gingerbread people. Yum.

The boys sure liked them. Too cute! What type of holiday cookies are you making? What are your favorites?

With Views Like This

2011-12-01T20:14:00.001-05:00

I'm behind on blog posts with all the traveling. I took these photos on my last few days in Utah. This is a view of my bedroom window at my brother's house. Can you imagine waking up to this every morning? It's an awesome way to wake up. It makes you feel so alive with energy!

Here is another view from the same window. Yes, W O W! When I returned to NYC, this is what I'll miss in the morning. A stunning view.

Here is a view at sunset! How spectacular is that?

Christmas season is in full swing so we did a little shopping. I saw these cute cucumber ornaments at Kohl's. I was so close to buying this because it was so adorable.

After a day of shopping, we always crave some comfort food to re-fuel. The closer you get to Salt Lake City, the more variety you get. We decided on some Vietnamese vermicelli noodles. Barbecue pork chops, spring rolls, bean sprouts and peanuts on a bed of noodles. Yummy.

And who would have guessed that you can find decent bubble tea too! I ordered the honeydew melon. Yum-o!

Food Coma

2011-11-26T19:54:00.001-05:00

We had a dusting of snow in Utah for Thanksgiving. It made for a beautiful scenic drive to my sister-in-law's family's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

As I mentioned in previous posts, we are a family of foodies and eaters, and Thanksgiving is no exception. We cooked up a storm, literally all day.

Holidays for us usually consist of lots and lots of cooking of authentic Chinese cuisine, especially the treats that are time consuming. My sister-in-law's parents taught us how to make fried savory pork "doughnuts". The batter is made out of ground soybeans and rice flour.

A whole bag of rice flour goes into the mixture.

The dough is placed on a special metal utensil, then a pork and chive filling added.

Then more dough to cover the filling. Final step is to add some raw peanuts on top.

The metal ladle is placed into a wok of hot oil and fried until crispy brown.

Here are the doughnuts fritters all finished. These are not sweet, they are savory with a pork and chive filling. They are absolutely delicious right out of the fryer.

For dinner, we had a mostly traditional turkey dinner. The turkey was brined overnight and perfectly seasoned. My sister-in-law carved the turkey, she did an amazing job with it.

I made scalloped potatoes au gratin. This recipe called for 4 cups of heavy cream, cheddar cheese, Parmigiano cheese, and butter, oh my is it completely rich!! Thank goodness we only eat this once a year, it is complete gluttony!

Table full of delicious food, crab cakes, stuffed mussels, yams, honey baked ham, stuffing, sooo good!

For dessert, we did mostly Chinese desserts. I made 2 dan tat pies, or Hong Kong style egg custard tart.

And soybean peanut rice balls. These are rice flour balls, with peanut sugar on the inside and crushed toasted soybean on the outside. Oooh are these ever good. With all this eating, I feel like eating salads for the rest of the week. Hope everyone had a healthy and happy Thanksgiving!

Korean Comfort Food

2011-11-20T15:57:00.001-05:00

Pretty much anywhere you drive near Salt Lake City, you get mountain vistas like this one of the Wasatch Mountains. Just stunning! The Wasatch mountains are the western edge of the Rocky Mountain range. This is the view we saw on our way to the Asian market to pick up some ingredients for dinner last week. We have been cooking up a storm and on this night, on the menu Jap Chae, or Korean Noodles and Korean Seafood Scallion Pancake.

Jap Chae is one of my favorite dishes to make. It calls for Sweet Potato clear noodles with julienne shredded carrots, red peppers, scallions, shitake mushrooms, spinach and your choice of meat or firm tofu. The flavoring is a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar. This can be eaten warm or room temperature. Delicious!

My other favorite Korean dish to make is seafood scallion pancakes. In a bowl I mix 1 egg, 1 cup of water and 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Add 5 minced scallions and seafood of choice. For this one, I used 1/2 pound of shrimp. Cook in a skillet like any other pancake and serve with sweet soy sauce dip. For dip, I use soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, sugar and water. Korean comfort food... Sooo good!

Antelope Island

2011-11-20T02:22:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, we took a ride down to Antelope Island State Park, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake. The island is uninhabited but it is home to lots of wildlife, including a free-roaming herd of 500 bison, antelope, pronghorn and bighorn sheep. We drove around for an hour or so before we spotted some bison. Can you see them in this photo? Hahahaha, It's way out in the distance. Unfortunately, I only had my crappy cellphone camera with me. It's funny how there are over 500 bison on the island and yet it took us an hour to find them. We were wondering, "where were they hiding??"

Then we saw a little herd of bison that was only about 50 feet from the road. They actually looked much closer than this in person, but my cell camera doesn't do it justice. From wikipedia, "The bison were introduced to the island in 1893, and the bison has proven to be a valuable genetic pool for bison breeding and conservation purposes. The bison do well because much of the island is covered by dry, native grassland." It was such a cool experience to see the bison up close. The most amazing thing ever to see wild bison in natural habitat. Truly awesome! I only wish this photo was better!

Chinese Comfort Food: Part 2

2011-11-17T21:52:00.001-05:00

The cooking up a storm hasn't ended. This past weekend we made Lo Mai Gai or otherwise known as lotus leaf wrapped chicken with sticky rice. This is not something we ever made from scratch before. It's something we normally get at dim sum because it is so labor intensive to make. And since it takes forever to make, we made a batch of 30 of them. So that we could freeze them and enjoy whenever we are in the mood to have a tasty treat. This is what lotus leaves look like. The recipe we followed can be found here. Use this recipe and not my bad instruction below.
http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2009/07/lo-mai-gai-glutinous-rice-parcel.html

The lotus leaves need to be soaked for 10 minutes on each side in boiling water to soften.

This recipe uses sticky glutinous rice. We made a big batch of rice to stuff the leaves with.

In addition to the rice, for the filling we used chicken, chinese dried sausage, and shitake mushrooms.

Put some filling in, rice first, then meat, then more rice.

Then wrap it like a present.

Make sure when you wrap it, that it is really tight.

Put the wrapped parcels into a steamer and steam for 25 minutes.

Waiting for these babies to steam was the hardest part.

And here are half of them all done. We froze these for future good eating.

This is what it looks like cooked and ready to eat. Yummy yumminess!

Chinese Comfort Food

2011-11-10T15:37:00.001-05:00

Being out here in Utah with family has been awesome. We are definitely cooking up a storm. My sister-in-law is very much a foodie just like I am. Her entire family, dad, brothers are professional chefs, just like my dad. So cooking is serious business in our family. This past weekend, we spent the entire Sunday making what I call Chinese comfort food. We made Char Siu Bao, (roast pork steamed buns) and another version with a mixture of ground pork, nappa cabbage and shredded carrots. These baos took like 5 hours to make, because the dough needs to sit for 2 1/2 hours to rise.
The recipe we used can be found here.
Dough:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chinese-steamed-buns/detail.aspx
Filling:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chinese-Steamed-Buns-With-BBQ-Pork-Filling/Detail.aspx

After the dough has risen, use enough dough to be rolled out for one bun.

Put filling in the dough.

Then pinch up the sides up to the top and twist.

The buns go into a steamer, and this is what it looks like after 20 minutes of steaming. Ooooh, good stuff!

We also made Chinese Egg Tarts, which is a yummy egg custard dessert.
Recipe here:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/hong-kong-style-egg-tarts/detail.aspx

It's an incredibly easy dessert. Next time, I think I'll use cupcake liners, though these did come out of the muffin pan fairly easily.

We had these for lunch. Typically you'll find these goodies at any good dim sum restaurant. If none are near you, make your own!!

And believe me, it's totally worth the effort!

Hiking + Arches: Part 2

2011-11-07T17:09:00.001-05:00

Our next adventure in Arches National Park was to find the Landscape Arch, probably the second most famous arch in the park. It isn't quite the arduous hike to find Landscape, and the terrain is more kid friendly. It takes about an hour to hike to the Arch. There were lots of cars parked outside the parking lot, a sign of how popular this hike is.

This is the entrance of the hike trail. How cool is this, you have to walk in between these large sandstone structures.

This is a view from inside, looking back. So pretty!

Follow the signs!

We made it, in about an hour, we came across Landscape Arch. My was it worth the hour long hike. Spectacular! It is the longest arch in the park and is quite thin. It looks like it could break at any moment.

After the hike, we drove around to look at other structures. How beautiful is this rock balanced so nicely?

We also drove to an outlook viewpoint to see Fiery Furnace. Fiery Furnace is a series of rock formations "consisting of a maze of narrow passages created by sandstone fins". It's hard to hike here and requires a guided ranger led tour. We didn't have time to do this tour, so we just admired from above.

I had my nephew take a photo of me at the outlook. My nephew is 4 years old. It's why I have no head. hahaha.

Hiking + Arches: Part 1

2011-11-01T17:08:00.001-04:00

I'm really behind on blog posts. I've been super busy and now I have caught the worst cold and have completely lost my voice. (sigh) At least now, I can catch up on writing about my adventures in Utah. Last weekend, we took a drive down to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. I took this photo out the car window on our drive to the park. Isn't this beautiful?

Here's another photo as we were getting closer to the entrance of the park. You can see on the right, some huge rocks balanced on top of the cliffs.

Arches National Park is known for their 2,000 natural sandstone arches. On our first day in Arches, we did the hike to find the Delicate Arch, the park's most famous Arch. At the entrance of the hike trail we saw an old log cabin, that used to be the home of a cattle rancher named John Wolfe. He lived in this one room log cabin! Can you imagine living in one room for most of your life? Amazing!

The hike is about 3 miles long, and with my little 3 and 4 year old nephews in tow, it took us a good 2 hours to get to the Arch. Part of the hike was this steep rock structure / cliff. It's a pretty steep incline for novice hikers like ourselves. We took lots of breaks to catch our breath.

We were pretty out of breath when we walked up this rock. The elevation keeps going higher and higher. Here's a photo of my brother's family, trekking our way up.

To get some perspective of the elevation, check out this photo I took from the bottom of the hill. The Arch was all the way at the top.

Along the way, we saw some amazing plants. Here's an example of a tree at the top of the cliff. Pretty cool.

The hike was so worth it, when we finally turned the corner, we saw the Delicate Arch. And boy was it spectacular. I mean, this photo really does not do it justice.

To get an idea of the sheer size of it, here I am standing underneath the arch. It is enormous! I look like an ant in this photo! They say, the best time to go see this arch is at sunset. And many say they come at night, because the stars are so bright. Since there is little light pollution here, the sky is super dark here and perfect for star gazing. One day, I would love to camp here. It's spectacular!

A Garden in Utah

2011-10-26T19:16:00.001-04:00

I'm on the 2nd leg of my trip, when I left my sister's in Chicago, I boarded a plane to Salt Lake City to visit my brother. They live in the suburbs of Salt Lake, and their backyard is the nicest view of Utah Lake. I've written about it before, but it deserves another mention. Utah Lake is the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. It certainly is stunning. Wouldn't you love this to be your backyard?

My brother's neighbor gave us a tour of her garden. It was so cool! She built this raised bed out of stacked rocks. I really loved the look of it.

Here, they are harvesting carrots. They harvested over 100 pounds of carrots. Amazing! Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the harvested carrots. They were beautiful nice sized carrots. She told us that she didn't even bother with spacing out the carrot seeds, but rather, she just sprinkled the seeds all over the soil and let them grow. She also didn't bother with thinning out the seedlings. Yes sure, some of the carrots didn't have enough room to grow and grew super puny and thin, but for the most part, the carrots were nicely sized.

I was amazed by her tomato bed. The plants were jammed in there and she said they were big producers. It was like a giant bush of tomatoes!

She had a nice strawberry bed in her side yard. She said she planted 12 everbearing plants and it sent out runners and multiplied like crazy. I saw that some of the plants had ripe strawberries still on it. And she said it produced berries all summer long. I have to invest in some everbearing plants to round out my Junebearing ones.

The most impressive part of all is when she showed us her canning stockpile. And she said... "This is only the kitchen stockpile, I have lots more in the basement." Wow!!! All the jarred tomato sauce are from tomatoes grown in her garden. The apple sauce she said, some were apples from her apple tree, and others were apples picked off of neighbor's trees. She said that she went around the neighborhood in search of fruit trees ripe with fruit. She would go and ring the homeowner's doorbell to ask if she could harvest the apples. In exchange of harvesting, she would give them jars of processed apple sauce. What a great exchange if you ask me!

Chicago Bound for Art!

2011-10-24T02:42:00.003-04:00

Since my sister and her family lives in the suburbs outside of Chicago, I visit about once a year. Of all the times I've visited, I've never been to the Art Institute of Chicago. During this visit, I made sure that I take a special trip downtown to go see it, afterall I did study Art History in college. It was my Major. My sister had to work a half day, so I took the Metra downtown to her office to meet her for lunch prior to going to the museum.

The Metra is so fast and such a convenient way to travel downtown.

Got off at Union Station, and luckily my sister only works a few blocks from here.

The one thing I always notice immediately about Downtown Chicago that is so different from NYC is that the streets are SO CLEAN. There is hardly any litter in sight. Amazing!

We decided to eat at Roti, a "fast food" Mediterranean style restaurant. I ordered the falafel plate with couscous, pickled cabbage, and hummus. Wow, it was so good.

We walked off our big lunch by walking to the Art Institute. It's a good 15 minute walk from where we ate lunch. We walked passed the famous Chicago Theatre. One day, I'll have to catch a show here.

We also walked passed Millennium Park, and I took a picture of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the bandshell designed by Frank Gehry. I've been to this park many times, so we didn't spend any time here. Just a quick walk by.

I noticed that many of the flowers in the gardens were still in bloom at the park!

We also walked passed "The Bean" or the Cloud Gate sculpture. Millennium Park definitely has some cool works of art to look at! Again, we didn't stop here because we've seen / visited it many times.

Finally, we spotted the lions, and we were at the front steps of the Art Institute.

Once inside, I was excited by the museum's amazing collection. I especially loved this Buddha statue. Wow, would I love one of these stone statues in my garden! Maybe I'll buy a replica one day to grace my garden! That would be awesome.

Chagall's stained glass windows stopped me in my tracks. They were indeed gorgeous! I could have sat there and stared at the windows for hours.

I loved seeing Grant Wood's American Gothic. The painting was surprisingly smaller than I thought it would be. I love this painting!

I also love still life. Especially vegetable still life. :) Vegetables in it's pure form is so beautiful, it's not wonder artists painted it.

After walking around the museum for 4 hours, we needed a break, so we headed to the cafe and got ourselves a snack. I picked out an Orange Cream soda from the local Chicago brewers Goose Island. They are more known for their beers, but apparently they make great soda too! I love trying local eats and this drink was delicious! If only I could bring a case back with me to NYC!

The last thing we saw at the Art Institute was this chalkboard at the Windows on the War exhibit. The board said that visitors could write a message on the chalkboard upon viewing the exhibit.

So I decided to just leave the following remark, written in pink chalk.

A Walk in Cantigny Park: Part 2

2011-10-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

Cantigny Park is vast, a whopping 500 acres, therefore I had to write 2 posts about the park. There was a lot to see and so many different types of plants I've never seen before. On our walk, we saw these Reeds. I'm not sure what they are called, but they were beautiful.

Here is a closeup of the Reeds. They felt really soft to the touch. I would love to grow this in my yard. Aren't they cool looking? I couldn't find a sign that identifies these Reeds. Do you know what these are called?

There was a succulent plant near the Reeds that I really liked called Killimanjaro. I really want to grow these! Since these are planted outdoors, I am guessing that they grow back like Sedum? Do you grow these? How well do they grow in colder climates?

The plant that I really loved was in their "Idea Garden". On the Cantigny website it says that the Idea Garden is a garden that seeks to inspire creativity. There are more than 300 varieties of vegetables, herbs, shrubs, and flowers in the Idea Garden and it sure was inspiring. Like check out this Giant Rhubarb. Wow!! I wish my rhubarb grew this big!

They had these little pepper plants growing as well. Not sure what type of peppers these were, they were small plants and very low to the ground.

I'm not sure if they are ornamental or edible peppers. Does anyone know what these are? They come in red, orange and yellow color.

I really liked this trellising system that had birdhouse gourds growing on them.

These are really neat! Like I said above, I'll have to grow these gourds one day, they are so cute and would definitely make nice birdhouses!

There was a lot of whimsy in this garden. Check out the wheelbarrow with flowers growing out of it. Adorable.

And they had this really cute homemade wind chimes. Can you see what this wind chime is made out of? How adorable! This Idea Garden has definitely given me a lot of ideas!

My favorite whimsy item in the garden is this garden border made out of glass beer / wine bottles. I love this look.

After the walk around the park, we were so tired that we decided to order some food rather than cook. We went to Portillo's and got some Italian Beef Sandwiches with hot peppers. Delicious! A perfect meal for a perfect day!

A Walk in Cantigny Park: Part 1

2011-10-12T12:33:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday, my sister's family and I went to the annual Buddy Walk in Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Illinois. From their website, "The Buddy Walk^® was established in 1995 by the National Down Syndrome Society to celebrate Down syndrome Awareness Month in October and to promote acceptance and inclusion of people with Down syndrome." My sister and her family attends every year and I was happy to be visiting during this year's walk. We had the most perfect weather for the walk, a sunny 83F degrees!

My sister's eldest has Down Syndrome so this walk is near and dear to our hearts. The walk is about a mile long and it raises millions of dollars for local and national programs for children and adults with Down Syndrome.

The Buddy Walk in the Chicago area takes place at Cantigny Park. Cantigny is a sprawling 500 acre public park and recreation area left by Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the former owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The grounds was formerly his farm estate and upon McCormick's death was turned into a park. The grounds is spectacular, it includes a golf course, greenhouse, museum, and truly amazing gardens (a formal garden, a rose garden, an idea garden, and a prairie garden). The park is a beautiful place to host a Buddy Walk.

I was surprised to see that there were hundreds of roses in bloom! It was such a spectacular treat for the senses. It smelled and looked just amazing!

Roses of every color and type were on display! How I wish my roses could grow like these! They were so healthy and lush.

One of my favorite parts of the rose garden was this beautiful water feature display. It was 3 large flower pots with a fountain in each of them. It was beautiful.

The grounds had lots of gorgeous pergolas. I love gardening structures and this one was so pretty.

I definitely would love a pergola one day. What a nice place to sit and enjoy the surrounding scenery.

I took a lot more photos of the other gardens, to be posted in Part 2.

In Search of the Perfect Pumpkin

2011-10-10T17:45:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I went with my sister's family to Keller's Farmstand in Oswego, Illinois to go pumpkin picking. Pumpkin picking is one of my favorite activities in the Fall. We set out into the patch to find the perfect pumpkins to decorate the yard. What is nice about this farm is that you can walk out to the patch and cut your own pumpkin!

The pumpkin patch is expansive! So many pumpkins to choose from! It's wonderful to see all this farmland with all these pumpkins growing.

Those will make nice Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween!

Once we found the perfect pumpkins, into the wheelbarrow they went with a kid in tote! The kids loved riding in the wheelbarrow.

Next to the pumpkin patch, they had some very large greenhouses growing all sorts of vegetables. Wow, this was amazing! They sell their vegetables at their farmstands and on this farm. I saw a lot of really ripe tomatoes on the ground! When I see fruit on the ground at large farms, I always think, I hope they get picked up and not left there to rot.

Keller's farm is also very kid friendly. They had a petting zoo for the kids... and for the adults like me. Hee hee. :) They had these cute little lambs with black faces. How cute are they? They were also so very soft. It's no wonder we make sweaters out of their wool!

They also had 2 baby calfs. They were sleepy and didn't want to get pet at all.

Next to the petting zoo area was a large play area where they had different types of playhouses. This one was a castle that the kids liked to climb and explore. My nephew Max especially liked this one. Here he is inside the castle.

There were also these toy tractors that the kids could ride around in. How incredibly cute are these? I want one as lawn decoration! I wonder where I can get one! Too cute!

Good Chicago Eats

2011-10-09T21:59:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite things about traveling is tasting my way through the city I am visiting, and in Chicago there are definitely lots of good eats! My sister and her family loves this restaurant called Joy Yee Noodle. It's a Pan Asian restaurant that serves up Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai dishes. Their menu is pretty detailed and amazing! There are literally hundreds of choices. Here is their page on Bubble Tea and Shaved Ice Drinks. Oh my, I was in heaven. If you've never had Bubble Tea or Shaved Ice Drinks before, it's a Chinese / Taiwanese tea based drink that usually has a combination of some type of syrup or fruit and tapioca or grass jelly balls known as "pearls" found at the bottom of the drink. I'm not a fan of tapioca so I usually go for the shaved ice Bubble Tea drinks which are kinda like an Asian slushie topped with real fruit. I love how they had pictures of every Bubble Tea drink on the menu, since the ingredients can be pretty elaborate, it helps to visualize what the drinks look like. It really helps with choosing the flavor!

I ended up choosing Watermelon / Lychee Bing, which is a shaved ice drink with sweet red cherry syrup, condensed milk, and watermelon and lychee fruit. I grew up drinking this shaved ice concoction as a kid and it's still one of my favorites. So refreshing!

Not to be outdone, the entree menu also had these amazing photos! The menu is so elaborate and there is so much deliciousness to choose from. I get overwhelmed when I see a menu like this because I want to taste everything on it. I love that they had pictures of everything on the menu! If only every restaurant could do that!

I couldn't decide between a few dishes. So I went with the combination of Pho soup and a Bánh mì Vietnamese Brisket Sandwich. If you haven't had Pho soup before, if you ever see it on the menu, get it. It is wonderful goodness. Pho is a rice noodle and the soup I ordered had a beef broth and sliced beef, and it traditionally comes with bean sprouts, cilantro, mint, scallions and basil. All the fresh herbs makes this soup really tasty. The Bánh mì sandwich traditionally is on a crusty French loaf bread and has meat with julienned pickled daikon radish, pickled carrots, pickled cucumbers, cilantro and mint. These sandwiches are addictively good.

My brother-in-law ordered a Korean sliced beef dish in a hot pot. If I didn't go for the Pho / Sandwich combo, I would have ordered this. Korean style beef is delicious. These are thinly sliced beef with a teriyaki style marinade. Accompanied with rice and kimchi. YUM. If you are ever in Chicago, look for Joy Yee Noodle, you will not be sorry!

Chi-town

2011-10-08T01:49:00.000-04:00

I arrived in Chicago on Tuesday, I love visiting my sister and her family, it's not often that I come out here, but I should do it more often. It's only a 2.5 hour flight and this time of year, it's fairly inexpensive to fly. My flight from NYC to Chicago only cost me $99! What a bargain! I took these photos from the airplane. I love going to the mid-west and seeing all the squares and farmland! It looks like a patchwork quilt!

This photo I took as we were getting into Chicago. In the back, you'll see Lake Michigan. It's so pretty from this viewpoint. When I landed at Midway, I headed to the baggage claim and waited and waited for my luggage to load onto the carousel. Forty minutes later and no luggage. I checked with the attendant and she said there was no more luggage coming. Argh! Southwest Airlines had lost my luggage. The flight I was on had a stop in Chicago and then they were on their way to St. Louis. I suspect my luggage went along for the ride. I filled out a lost luggage report and hoped for the best.

My sister works in downtown Chicago, so I told her I would take the train from the airport to meet her at her office. I saw this bike rack on my way to the CTA entrance at Midway. I was so impressed that many people ride their bikes to the airport! Wow, so green!

This was my first time taking the CTA and my sister said it was pretty easy. She said, if you can navigate through the New York subway system, this one will be a breeze for you. There is just one train from the Airport to downtown. She also said don't call it the subway though, because people will know you aren't from around these parts. The locals refer to it as the "L". I found the train easily enough and headed to the Chicago Loop. The train was indeed quite easy to figure out. Much much easier than NYC!

When I arrived to downtown Chicago, my stomach was growling. I was starving from traveling and I decided to get some lunch. Feeling sad about my lost luggage, I decided to get something that would make me immediately feel better. I went to get a Chicago dog with fries. This Chicago hotdog had tons of toppings, and is definitely not something you can easily get in NYC. On the hotdog was relish, mustard, onion, a pickle, hot peppers, and tomatoes! It was delicious and definitely made me temporarily feel better about having no luggage! I'm not sure if the locals eat these or if it's more a touristy thing. It sure is good!!

Later that night, I received a phone call from Southwest stating that they found my luggage! It was returned to me at 12am Midnight. Thank goodness I didn't have to buy new clothes during my stay here!

Living Social

2011-10-05T12:25:00.001-04:00

This weekend, I redeemed my voucher that I bought from Living Social. If you haven't used it before, Living Social is just like Groupon but it is geared towards activities such as travel, dining, trips, theater, arts and culture, salon services etc. If there is one based in your city, definitely check it out. They offer great discounts, usually 40 - 50% off. The deal I purchased was a weekend getaway to Atlantic City that included hotel, four meals, bus transportation, and spa admission, and all for $125. Talk about a bargain! The hotel room was awesome. We had an oceanview room. Check out this view from our hotel room window!

The hotel was steps from the beach. Too bad it's too cold to actually go swimming. We still walked out to the beach to enjoy the sand on our feet and feel the ocean breeze. Here is our hotel, we stayed at the Resorts Casino.

I haven't been to Atlantic City in years, even though I only live 2.5 hours away. It's probably been 10 years since I've been there. I'm not much of a gambler, so the only other activities really are concerts, the beach and the boardwalk. Despite not being here for 10 years, the boardwalk has barely changed. In fact, the rides on the pier look like they also haven't changed since I last was here. I don't know if it was the change in season or the lack of tourists, but the boardwalk and it's stores, games, and food vendors to me seemed really run down. Maybe it always looked that way, and it's been so long that I don't remember. I definitely think AC needs a "facelift" to modernize the Pierfront. It looks like it's stuck in the 90s.

Despite the cold Autumn day, we still enjoyed walking around. One of my favorite activites down at the shore is boardwalk junkfood. I had to get me some of this. Funnel cake! Where else can you find something so incredibly junky? Fried dough with powdered sugar on top? Yes please!

There are also some interesting games on the boardwalk. I saw one of those old Zoltar fortune tellers. These always remind me of the movie Big, when Tom Hanks turns into a little kid again. That's one of my all-time favorite movies. This is a horrible picture, there was a bright glare on the window. I should of had him read my fortune, but I was afraid that I might turn back into a kid. ;)

And since we were in Atlantic City, we tried our luck and had to get in some gambling. I'm not a big gambler, so I stuck to the penny slots. I had a good run on this machine, check this out, ALL 7s and ALL watermelons! On this particular run I won $10. LOL. It is afterall, the penny slots. However, I didn't stop while I was ahead. I continued playing and quickly lost all my winnings and soon I was $50 in the hole. Despite being a penny slot, the funds add up quickly! There is definitely something about all the flashing lights and winning ringing noises that pump you up. But then when your pocket is empty, you quickly hit reality. Haha. All in all, the weekend trip was definitely fun! I'll do it again if another bargain comes around!

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Flying With Me

2011-10-04T10:51:00.001-04:00

I am enroute to Chicago this morning and I picked some tomatoes out of the garden that have a flush of color. I thought... I probably could bring these on the flight with me to Chicago. So I threw them all in one of those takeout soup containers. My sister is totally going to chuckle that I am bringing tomatoes from my garden with me. I also picked some green beans, basil and tomatoes that went to my neighbor. I just couldn't let it go to waste!

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Dad's Garden

2011-10-02T01:27:00.000-04:00

Last week, I went to visit my parents. My dad has a pear tree, and this time of year they harvest bushels of them. But dad has been complaining that he's been finding lots of pears on the ground. Many fall to the ground from the wind, but many he said fall to the ground because of squirrels. He would find a bunch of them with bite marks all over them.

Because of the squirrels, dad has been harassing me to order him one of those squirrel repellents. I ordered the one from Bell and Howell. It's a solar powered device that creates a high frequency ultrasonic sound that is unpleasant to animals. I have to say, for $40 (which includes the shipping) I was pretty skeptical about this device. Dad and I put it in the ground, and I must say, we immediately saw a squirrel screech and run away.... I guess it works! It says it works within a 30 feet radius, and if you have dogs or outdoor cats, they will not like the sound either. Since my parents have neither, this will hopefully keep the squirrels at bay. I think I might have to pick up a few for my yard too.

Here's a look at the hairy gourd squash that dad is growing in his garden. These are easily 3 pounders! Dad gave me some seedlings and I tried growing these this year, but I was unsuccessful. Every single fruit that formed wasn't pollinated correctly and died. Darn! Dad definitely has the magic touch because his are beautiful! Whenever I visit dad, it's a constant reminder of how I definitely got the gardening gene from him!

Love Gardening Clearance Sales

2011-09-29T20:39:00.004-04:00

This time of year is a great time to take advantage of great clearance sales for gardening supplies. I was in Target with my sister and wasn't expecting to buy anything, but who can pass up gardening gloves on clearance! They were 40% off!

We have a lot of mosquitos and tall weeds growing in the yard, so these long leather gloves will come in handy. These are perfect to protect my arms from the attacking mosquitos. They are ferocious, the bugs and the gloves.

Speaking of mosquitos, I picked up quite a few cans of bug spray. LOL. Whenever I look at the photo below I crack up. I don't like to use the strong chemical stuff, but the organic type really doesn't work on these mutant mosquitos that we have in the yard. I literally can't walk outside to the yard without being swarmed by mosquitos. If I don't douse myself in bug repellent, I'll look like I have chicken pox from all the bug bites. I've written about the mosquito problem before in past blog articles. We have a lot of mosquitos because behind our house is a large area of swampy marshland. Since these were also on clearance, I stocked up for next year. Haha.

Still a Mystery Squash

2011-09-29T02:05:00.000-04:00

Last month, I blogged about a mystery squash that was growing in the garden. At first I thought it was a watermelon, because the rind was pretty tough like a watermelon. But in further investigation it didn't look like an ordinary watermelon. It was from a volunteer plant and it looked like nothing I've ever grown before. I assumed it came from my dad's compost, but he also said it wasn't anything he's grown or eaten. So where did the seeds come from? He said that it might be from a bird or squirrel. I decided to harvest the squash because it was a good size and didn't know if it would get any bigger.

I brought the squash to my parent's house because I know they would know how to cook it. I very rarely eat squash.

Inside the squash, it looks like a cucumber or zucchini, however, the skin is quite tough. The seeds are large like pumpkin seeds. The flesh though is very firm, similar to a winter melon. The flavor is very bland, almost flavorless. Anyone have any idea what type of squash this is?

Cutesy Maters

2011-09-28T14:46:00.001-04:00

At the beginning of the growing season, I was overzealous about growing tomatoes. I decided on a whopping 22 varieties. LOL. It was a lot of hard work, and definitely was a little crazy keeping track of them all, but it's finally paying off. The tomatoes are turning color now, which is really, really late in the season. It was a strange wet growing season with lots of rain and cloudy days. So the tomatoes got off to a rough start. But at last, I am finally picking so many beauties. Here are some of the smaller varieties that I've been picking everyday. Aren't they adorable? They are in different stages of ripeness, I pick them as soon as I see a flush of color because I have lots of squirrels that love eating them.

These are the varieties I tried to grow this year and some notes on them. Despite all the varieties I tried to grow, only 14 varieties actually grew well enough to produce fruit. These all turned into salsa, yum.

Brandywine - Large, giant tomatoes, most ranging half - 1 pound. Nice slicer. Beautiful red color. Full of flavor. Very juicy inside.

Black Mystery - Jury is still out whether there is one of these plants in the garden. Some of the marker ink on my homemade plant markers was washed away.

Cherokee Purple - Gorgeous color. Meaty and a good slicer. A squirrel ate the first tomato, still waiting for the other to ripen.

Chocolate Cherry - Best tasting cherry I grew, rich deep flavor indicative of the purple family of tomatoes. Not very prolific in container pots. Will grow it in the ground next time, since I think it didn't like the container pot.

Hillbilly Potato Leaf - Just harvested my first Hillybilly, although it doesn't look like a Hillbilly. I think I might have tagged this plant incorrectly.

Isis Candy - a nice size cherry, yellow / orange in color, nice tart taste, very prolific

Jaunne Flamme - Fabulous bright yellow / orange color, a little larger than a golf ball in size. Great flavor and nice producer.

Paul Robeson - Gorgeous color tomato and super tasty. Nice rich deep flavor, fantastic raw with salt. Not prolific but a keeper!

Persimmon - A beautiful orange color medium size tomato. Flavor wasn't as tasty as I would like. Meaty tomato, great to add to salads for the color.

Roma - Surprisingly, I have at least 6 of these plants in the garden. All volunteers! I didn't have the heart to kill the volunteers so I just let them grow. I didn't sow any of these seeds because last year they were plagued by Blossom End Rot, but this year, hardly any tomatoes had BER. I think because I added crushed eggshells around the soil. Also, it seems like the plants were healthier because they were grown entirely outdoors.

Rutgers - The most gorgeous red color tomato, nice size and meaty. Good for sauces.

Sungold - Too bad this little mater is a hybrid. The flavor is outstanding a very prolific to boot! I harvested the most cherries off this plant.

Tiny Tim - Super small tomato, burst of flavor, perfect for container planting, not very prolific

Yellow Pear - I had 2 Yellow Pear plants in the garden, both were volunteers. I don't particular think these are tasty tomatoes, but the shape and yellow color are adorable.

(I love these giant Brandywines, Isis Candy in the middle for size comparison)

Plants that did not make it:

Druzba - Plant died of disease, and some seeds did not germinate. Sadly no plants survived.

German Johnson - Plant died from bug consumption.

Giant Belgium - Did not germinate

Green Zebra - Plant died from bug consumption.

Hovarth - Plant died, unknown cause.

Manitoba - Plant died from bug consumption, and some seeds did not germinate.

Palmira's Northern Italian - Did not germinate.

Pineapple - Plant died, unknown cause.

Purple Calabash - Did not germinate.

San Marzano - Did not germinate.

The best part of growing tomatoes. SALSA, SALSA, SALSA. Oh my good stuff. Break open the tortilla chips. Pronto!

Canning Jars - Locally

2011-09-27T23:35:00.001-04:00

I finally found a local hardware store that carries canning supplies! So I stocked up with scooping up 3 cases! This hardware store only carries the jars once a year, and they don't carry that many cases. If I had the space, I think I would have bought every single case. hahaha. I've complained about it before in previous blog posts. It is so difficult to find canning jars in Staten Island. The only place I was able to find them was AC Moore, but they charge $1.99 a jar. Um, no way! That would mean a case would cost $24! Forgetaboutit! I found these cases for $9.99. It's the same price as the Ball website, but at least I don't have to pay for shipping!

Thank goodness I got the jars, because I have been busy canning the harvests. I did a whole case of pint size jarred pickles. And some heirloom tomato salsa. Yum! Canning season has begun!

Compost Pile

2011-09-26T23:59:00.003-04:00

My compost pile in the DIY bin that we made out of wooden pallets is definitely pretty full. It's mostly a big pile of brown leaves. I also throw in there dead plants from the vegetable garden. I love composting. It's like this fun game, I throw as much organic material as the space can handle and then "ta da" like magic, watch it transform into beautiful black rich compost.

One of my favorite tasks in the garden is turning the compost. I just love seeing what stage the compost is in. (LOL, I need a life.) I just turned the compost recently and I can already see some black gold hidden in the middle and on the bottom. Oooh, I can't wait until the entire pile turns into usable compost. Hopefully by the spring, I'll be able to use it in the raised beds. It would be great if I didn't have to buy any compost from the hardware store! That is the goal at least.

Little Garden Visitors

2011-09-25T20:47:00.000-04:00

Mom and dad visited today and mom helped me harvest veggies out of the garden. I went to pull some carrots and I suddenly saw some little visitors. Can you see them in this photo? It's a little hard to tell in this photo.

So here is a better look. See it now? I took these photos with the crappy camera on my cellphone. So I couldn't get it to focus. Sorry for the blurry photo. This little gal was munching away on the carrot tops. This is my first time growing a bunch of carrots, I had no idea that it would attract so many butterfly caterpillars. Interestingly, it seemed like they only were chomping on the carrot tops, and not much else in the garden. That is a relief!

Another view. I Google searched caterpillars and found that these could be Monarch butterfly caterpllars! There were so many in the carrot raised bed, I saw at least 10. They were only eating the tops of the carrots, so I left them undisturbed. If they didn't turn into something so pretty, I would definitely consider disposing of these monster eaters. But since I don't eat carrot tops anyway, I really didn't mind my new visitors. They will consume everything in it's path, but butterflies are such great pollinators so they can gorge themselves in my garden. I'll forgive them.

Here are some of the carrots I pulled. These are Purple Haze. I got these seeds from Greens and Jeans. I have never grown purple carrots before. These are pretty neat. They don't look very "purple" to me, more like a chocolate brown. I grew a lot of different purple veggies this year. Purple tomatoes, carrots, and bell peppers. They are fun to grow because they are so unique!

And here is today's harvest! The garden is finally in full swing production. I really can't believe I grew all of this!! Wow! I'm getting a little bummed that winter is around the corner. I've got to get me a greenhouse!! :)

My New Favorite Tomato: Brandywine

2011-09-25T01:42:00.000-04:00

One of my new favorite heirloom tomatoes that I grew this year has got to be the Brandywine. Wow, is it ever a gorgeous tomato! I am soooo going to grow this again for years to come. I received these Brandywine seeds from EG over at Our Engineered Garden.

Isn't this just gorgeous? I mean, wow, what a beauty! This clocked in at half a pound!! I gave this tomato to mom and dad. They were amazed at how large it was.

This one was even bigger! It's as large as my hand. This tomato was 3/4 a pound! Wow!! This one, I gave to my neighbor. She was shocked of the size! The Brandywines were definitely not the most prolific tomato plant, there were only like maximum of 3 fruit per plant. But what they lacked in quantity, they definitely make up in size and taste. Therefore, these will definitely be a keeper! I am saving some seeds to use for next year. Hit me up if you want some seeds. Since I got these seeds originally from EG, I figure it's my duty to pay it forward to other gardeners who want to try this gorgeous tomato.

Not all of my tomatoes faired well in the garden. This Cherokee Purple was half eaten by a squirrel. I didn't see that it was really ripe on the vine, it was hiding under all these tomato leaves. Darn it! For some reason, only one Cherokee Purple tomato plant survived, and there are only 2 tomatoes growing on the plant. I had a few seedlings that didn't quite make the hot summer, so with only one plant, I was really bummed to lose a precious tomato. With this one eaten, now there is only one remaining tomato. I really hope it doesn't get eaten by a squirrel or bird.

This Roma tomato suffered the same fate. I rather the squirrel eat the Romas since I didn't plant any Romas this year. All of my Roma plants were volunteers. I didn't plant any Romas because last year they were plagued with Blossom End Rot. This year, I incorporated crushed egg shells into the soil, and only a few of the tomatoes suffered from BER.

Here is my harvest yesterday. This basket easily weighed 4 pounds! This is my best harvest yet this year. Other garden bloggers will chuckle because this is small in comparison to their harvests.

In that basket was 5 Brandywines! Since we have such a squirrel problem, I pick the tomatoes as soon as I see a blush of color. These I'll turn into salsa!

It's Pole Bean Season!

2011-09-24T00:22:00.001-04:00

The autumn weather is upon us and the stifling hot weather is finally a thing of the past. You know what that means? It's pole bean season! Woohoo! I'm growing for the second year in a row, Blue Lake Pole Beans. They are a very prolific plant and produce once in the Spring and then again in the Fall.

I harvested this the other day. I collect this many green beans every other day! Isn't this awesome! I've been getting so many that I've been even giving them away. Yeah for green beans!

Baby Potatoes

2011-09-23T01:10:00.004-04:00

I keep the potatoes in the basement and I must confess, I had forgotten about a container of potatoes. I suffer from the out of sight out of mind syndrome. A few months back, I noticed that many of the potatoes had started to sprout and also, some had grown roots and little potatoes. As an experiment, I decided to stick these in the ground to see if it would grow. I can't wait to dig these out of the ground. I hope they grew into some nice size red potatoes.

A Brooklyn Seed Exchange

2011-09-21T18:30:00.001-04:00

This past weekend, the Revel Gardener hosted a seed / plant swap at her house. It was the first seed / plant swap that I ever attended and it was so much fun! It was a small crowd, with just 4 of us attending, but what we lacked in numbers, we definitely made up in enthusiasm! We were all eager to talk about gardening, gardening, and more gardening. Revel Gardener had such a great setting for our seed swap, we milled about in her beautiful backyard. She has a gorgeous peach and cherry tree and vegetable garden in her Brooklyn backyard. I can't believe I didn't take one photo of the yard or the trees! Believe me, it was stunning! In addition to bringing seeds and plants, we also were asked to bring something for the pot luck, something we made from the garden. I brought some homemade brushchetta using all homegrown ingredients including heirloom tomatoes, garlic and Italian Genovese basil. Genovese Basil is my new favorite basil to grow. Wow, the smell is intoxicating, so very fragrant!

I was so impressed with the attendees of the swap. I met a fellow Staten Islander, Ralph, who brought many plants, among them these two awesome banana plants! I was thinking people would bring seedlings but he brought two large trees! He propagated these two from another banana plant. Aren't these just amazing? I couldn't unfortunately take one of these home with me because I was taking public transportation and these were in what looked like to be 10 inch pots. I don't think I would have been able to carry one of these plants on the subway. Hahahaha. I would have tried though, believe me!

Red Garden Clogs brought this box of planting goodies. In the box, she had lots of different perennial flower seeds, a couple sage plants, metal plant markers, and lots of gardening books that she no longer needed.

She also brought some peppers she grew, these look awesome!

I came home with these two books. One from Red Garden Clogs and the other from Revel Gardener.

And I scored these stash of seeds! Everyone had so many seeds to share! I also was the recipient of the sage plants. Everyone else was already growing sage, so these all came home with me. I also took home some plant markers and some scallion seedlings from Ralph.

The ending to the amazing event was this homemade dessert! Revel Gardener made us apple cobbler and her husband made homemade ice cream. Oh wow, was this ever good! A perfect ending to a perfectly fun time! I can't wait until Spring for our next seed / plant exchange!

Gorgeous Harvest

2011-09-19T01:36:00.002-04:00

One of the reasons why I love gardening is that I love to share the harvests with friends and family. I went to see my parents last week and I brought with me this gorgeous bounty. Don't you just love the colors? I still get giddy knowing that I grew all of this. I do. I mean, I only started gardening last year, so it's kinda funny to me that I actually grew garlic, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and green beans, and all from seed, (clove for garlic). It just brings a smile to my face whenever I harvest, that I can actually grow food, it's kinda comical to me. I guess I find it funny because it's like I'm in on a funny little secret. That I can grow fresh organic produce and it won't break the bank. Heehee. I love the expression on my parents face when they saw the variety of veggies that are coming out of my little garden, and I think I saw them chuckle as well. It's like they are in on the joke too. I think they are just as amazed as I am that I can garden with such amazing results and actually grow food! Haha. For the first time EVER, I haven't had to buy vegetables all summer long! For some reason that makes me laugh out loud! Heeheehee. It is awesome!

Hydroponic Farm Intern

2011-09-16T22:53:00.001-04:00

Back in July, I went to this lecture about "Urban Farming" in Soho. I went to the lecture because I was really interested in learning about best practices of urban gardening from urban farmers. I have a bit of an obsession when it comes to learning about urban gardening, how I can be better at it, especially figuring out ways that I can grow more efficiently, but the talk was more general than I thought it would be, and I didn't get much information from the lecture itself. After the lecture, I did however meet a very interesting person in the audience. I met Lee Mandell, the founder of Boswyck Farms, a hydroponic farm in Bushwick Brooklyn. What is so unique about Boswyck Farms is that it has a large focus on educational programs. From their website, "We also like to teach about hydroponics and growing food; and we like to run community workshops about urban farming and sustainability. In the summer of 2009 we decided to bring our program into schools by designing a science curriculum with the goal of creating an innovative approach to the study of botany. With a focus on inquiry and the scientific method we hope to help our students understand not only the biology of plants but new ways to experience science in the classroom." In addition to their educational programs, they also are involved in the local community, by not only providing hydroponically grown food to food pantries, they also set up systems in the food pantries themselves. I've been really interested in learning about Hydroponic gardening and I love their mission, so I immediately asked him if he took on interns. He said he did and for the last 2 weeks, I've been interning there once a week. This week, Lee took me to the Child Development Support Corporation (CDSC), where they have a weekly food pantry and a very substantial hydroponic system in place built by the team at Boswyck Farms. They built a two-tier system which maximizes the vertical space. Isn't this just the coolest thing ever?? On this day, I helped Lee setup some additional grow lights for some new beds.

Here are some other views of the tiered system. For urban environments, where space is at a premium, hydroponics is a great way to grow fresh vegetables indoors. I asked Lee how much it cost to run the grow lights, the water pumps and any other equipment needed to run the hydroponic system, and he said the energy it takes to grow a head a lettuce translates to about 50 cents per head. That didn't seem bad to me at all! In fact, that seems very reasonable.

Here is how the plants get started. They sow the seeds directly into blocks of oasis, this is super cool.

The lettuce seedlings are really taking off.

Heads of green leaf lettuce. The fresh heads of lettuce are harvested and are available during the food pantry days for families and individuals in need to take home.

And a closeup of one of the Romaine beds.

These heads of Romaine lettuce are almost ready to be harvested. The families and individuals who come to the food pantry get access to this super fresh produce. This hydroponic farm setup is such a great sustainable model to have at a food pantry since they are constantly resupplying their own organic resources. Educational, practical, and sustainable = totally awesome!

Real Funky Carrots

2011-09-15T22:44:00.000-04:00

I tried growing carrots again this year. This is a crop that is so hard to grow correctly for some reason! Even though the soil was tilled and I sowed the seeds in raised beds, I guess the soil was still a bit too compacted because again, the carrots grew all stumpy despite being in the ground since the end of April. Do you grow carrots? If so, what is your secret?

Not only are they stumpy, they grew like fingers. LOL. What the heck is this?

And this one is giving a peace sign. Hahaha. One day... I'll grow a normal looking carrot! I hope. :)

A Fall Harvest & Remembrance

2011-09-13T00:02:00.002-04:00

This is by far the best harvest I've had all season! I picked these yesterday, and all the cucumbers turned into pickles, and the rest of the veggies, eggplant, lilac bell peppers and the giant Brandywine tomato I gave to my parents. They loved the purple colors of the veggies and were so impressed by the half pounder Brandywine tomato. It is a beautiful slicer indeed!

I have been picking cucumbers pretty much everyday now. They are definitely my most prolific vegetable in the garden. I put up 10 pint jars of sweet and spicy dill pickles. And if that wasn't enough, I baked a banana chocolate chip bread. Yum! My friend started calling me the "Martha Stewart" of Staten Island. Hahahaha, I kinda like the ring to that. Now if only I could translate my love of gardening, canning and baking into a profitable venture like Martha, now we're talking. :)

Yesterday was the 10th Anniversary of September 11th... I chose not to write anything yesterday because even though a decade has passed, it's still a little hard for me to discuss the events of that horrific day. Like many of you, I remember exactly what I was doing on 9/11/01. That morning, I was walking out of the subway and onto 6th Avenue / 14th Street on my way to my office. This was shortly after the 1st tower was hit. I remember 6th Avenue at a complete and total standstill, every car, taxi and person stopped in their tracks looking up into the sky. Many people were gasping and crying on the streets. I have never seen anything like that before, it was a very eerie and scary feeling. I rushed to my office, on the 9th Floor of Parsons School of Design, and spoke to faculty and students who were distraught and in tears. Many had relatives or knew people who worked in the towers, and they were desperately trying to get their loved ones on the phone. Being on the 9th floor, we had a direct view of the towers, and we watched in horror the towers on fire, feeling absolutely helpless. Ten years later, and it is still a pretty painful memory. To this day, I can barely watch the news about that day, and about the World Trade Center. Even now, when I watch the news about the events of that day, it brings me to tears. My prayers and thoughts go out to those families affected by this senseless and terrible tragedy. We will never forget. Never. Ever.

BK Swapper Event

2011-09-10T02:47:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I went to my first Brooklyn Swapper event. BK Swapper is an event where foodies bring their homemade goodies to swap with other foodies. Typical items are jams, condiments, chutneys, pickles, salsas, sauces, candy, flavored oils, and baked items. Wow, it was so much fun to meet people who loved to cook and share ideas and recipes! I never realized that Brooklyn had so many people who loved to can, preserve, and talk about food! I've been wanting to meet more people who was just as obsessed with canning as I am. This was heaven!

There were these long tables set out for us to display the homemade items. There was such an amazing variety, it was hard to choose what I wanted to trade for! I had only brought 4 cans of Heirloom Tomato Salsa, now I'm wishing I brought a whole lot more to trade with.

The trading worked like this. You put a piece of paper next to the items you brought. Then people who want to swap with you put their names on your sheet, and if you like what they have you can initiate the swap. How fun is that?

The tomato salsa I brought can be seen on the left here of this image. I canned them in 8 ounce jars. Next to my jars, my friend Aimee brought her amazing fresh figs from her backyard fig tree. Yum!

Someone made hot sauce with Habaneros! I scored one of these! I can't wait to try it!

In addition to the fun swapping, there was also a pot luck. The pot luck was amazing, I was so impressed with what everyone cooked for the swap. There was rice balls, a pear / fig tart, berry bars, tamales, chips w/ dip, bread with dipping sauces, salad, and I brought some of my sweet dill pickles. So impressive, I mean, someone actually made tamales! Wow! This is a photo of the pot luck table after we started eating, a lot of the food was gone by the time I took this photo.

This is what I scored from the swap. In exchange for 4 of my salsas, I got a bottle of chive oil, a bottle of hot sauce, a jar of blueberry jalapeno jam and 2 cheese babka muffins! I can't wait to try everything! This was the most fun event and I found out they have these every 2 months! I am soooo going to the next one! Next time, I have to bring more items to swap... For sure! If you don't have one of these types of swaps in your area, start one! All you need is a group of like minded foodie friends and a place to meet and swap your homemade goods. I guarantee that it will be lots of fun!

Saving Tomato Seeds - Brooklyn Seed Swap

2011-09-07T20:11:00.001-04:00

Since I've been growing a bunch of different kinds of heirloom tomatoes, I've been saving the seeds for next year's garden. With tomatoes like this Paul Robeson heirloom, how can I not save the sees to this beauty?

I've been using the ferment method for collecting tomato seeds. Two great resources for reading about tomato seed saving can be found here.
http://organicgardening.about.com/od/vegetablesherbs/ss/savetomatoseeds.htm
http://mrbrownthumb.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-save-tomato-seeds.html

I know I'll have extra seeds to share, so I've been packaging them for an upcoming seed swapping event in Brooklyn. The seed swap is being hosted by the Revel Gardener and details about the event can be found here. For all your local gardeners, this should be a really fun event. It's being held on September 17, from 3-6pm. At the event there will also be a garden pot luck and some garden speakers. If you are interested in coming, definitely RSVP with the Revel Gardener.

Homemade Canned Heirloom Tomato Salsa

2011-09-06T19:38:00.001-04:00

I've been picking the heirloom tomatoes every week now, and I finally had enough ripe ones to make some salsa!! I got the recipe for making homemade heirloom tomato salsa from Robin over at The Gardener of Eden. Her recipe is very good, I tend to like my salsa on the sweeter side, so I also added a tablespoon of sugar. In the salsa, I used homegrown jalapeno peppers, (seeds given to me by Daphne Dandelions) homegrown garlic, and homegrown Paul Robeson, Yellow Pear and Rutgers tomatoes. I bought a yellow bell pepper and some cilantro to add to the mix since none were ready to harvest. I just love the colors!

The salsa was canned and will be brought to a Brooklyn swapper event that I am attending this Thursday. The swapper event will be pretty fun. It's an event where foodies bring homemade goodies to swap with other homemade goodies. Some items include jams, chutneys, syrups, pickles, candies, you name it! I can't wait to see what is available to trade!

A Mint Comeback

2011-09-05T22:33:00.000-04:00

When I started growing mint, everyone warned me that it is super invasive. Having never grown mint before, I followed everyone's advice and put the plants in pots instead of in the ground. This plant was from last summer, I stuck it in a big pot and let it overwinter on the enclosed sun porch. During the winter, it dropped most of it's leaves and pretty much look dead.

When spring hit, it looked like this. I trimmed all the dead stems and remaining leaves off. I wasn't really sure if the mint plant was even still alive. I thought that the mint plant might have died. It looked pretty sad. The only glimmer of hope was that I saw a few tiny leaves emerging from the soil.

I continued to water the pot everyday, and by August, it was looking like this!! The plant totally came back to life. Gosh, you really can't kill mint. Wuhahahahaha

Yummy Lunch

2011-09-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

I've been growing Utah Celery, seeds from Food Garden Kitchen, and I absolutely love it. It had a slow start at first, and now, it's near the point of harvesting, so I've been clipping stalks here and there as needed to cook with but leaving the plant in place to continue growing. Aren't these just amazing? And I must say, nothing beats picking fresh celery, it's so crisp and tasty!

With the Persimmon tomato I harvested, I made a tuna fish sandwich with the celery and tomato slices. Oh my word, was it ever delicious!! Using fresh veggies from the garden makes any sandwich a thousand times better!

The Aftermath of Hurricane Irene: Part 2

2011-08-30T01:31:00.001-04:00

During the Hurricane, I worried about all the trees around our property and in the adjacent woods. I thought for sure that a tree would coming crashing down. One did, but in the woods and thankfully not on our property. Here is the gaping hole where a tree used to stand.

Here is the tree that fell. It's not a good photo, but you can see the trunk a bit in the foreground and there is a big limb leaning above that. These trees are very tall and sit in city owned property. I am so fortunate that the tree didn't fall onto our property crushing the garden or garage.

And speaking of Hurricane's... I have a gripe to pick. I keep hearing talk around the internet and even from friends about how people, the government and media over reacted about how bad the storm was going to be and that the storm wasn't a big deal when all was said and done. It's easy to Monday Morning Quarterback, and complain after the fact, but I don't think we should underestimate the power of mother nature. A Hurricane is unpredictable, and I think it's better to be prepared for the worst. Seeing all the photos and video footage on TV about all the flooding, property damage, fallen trees, and down power lines is significant and shouldn't be downplayed. In NY alone, there were 6 deaths attributed to the Hurricane. There could have been many more if it weren't for the city government's mandatory evacuations, MTA shutdowns, and stern warnings to stay home. As a wife of a first responder, I see why city officials would close down the MTA and issue evacuations in the flood zone as a preventative measure to protect the citizens and the first responders. If they didn't shut down the MTA trains, subways and buses, I know there would have been a lot more accidents and injuries since more people would have been out in the storm, putting more lives at risk, especially the first responders. While everyone is safe at home, first responders are out in the storm risking their lives to help others. Rescuing people from floods, car accidents, fallen debris, you name it. While the "complainers" are sitting on the couch eating their potato chips, complaining about the subway not running, my husband and all his colleagues are putting in two 19 hour shifts during the storm responding to 911 calls. They only gave his squad a two hour break for a quick nap and then it was back to work. So this is what I ask of you the next time you want to complain about the preventative measures of Irene, think about the firemen, policemen, EMTs, and all the first responders who don't get to go home and watch TV and ride out a storm. They are the ones that work in the storm, saving people like you and me. So let's give them some respect, and stop complaining about being inconvenienced for 2 days. Instead, just thank them and your lucky stars that Irene was a mild storm, and that you are SAFE and sound. End gripe.

The Aftermath of Hurricane Irene: Part 1

2011-08-28T23:45:00.000-04:00

I had such a rough night with the Hurricane. I did not sleep a wink since our basement is prone to flooding when we get constant rainfalls. Without fail, after hours of constant rain, water started coming into the basement through the floors, windows and bulkhead door. Water was even starting to come in through the drain of the slopsink in the basement. It's because the slopsink is connected to the sewer line and with the rainwater overloading the sewer system in the neighborhood, the water was coming back into the house. I spend about 4 hours scooping out the water out of the slopsink with buckets. The more I scooped, the more the water filled the sink. I kept at it even though I was exhausted because if I didn't remove the water, my basement would have flooded. What an ordeal! The next project on my list is to install a shut off valve to prevent water from coming back to the house. When the Hurricane finally passed us, I went outside to check out the garden. I couldn't wait to see what was in store for me. I was really surprised, the garden didn't look as bad as I thought it would. I thought the wind was going to tear down the bean pole trellises, but they were still standing. Yeah!

However, the same can't be said the same of the tomato plants. You can't really tell from this photo, but many of the tomato plants have all fallen over.

Here is a closeup, this tomato plant was tied to a wooden dowel and tomato cage, but that didn't help it much. It toppled over. LOL. I need to come up with a better trellis system. I was pretty amazed that some of the tomato cages barely budged in the howling wind. They did pretty good with protecting the tomato plants. You'll see on the left a cage still standing.

Before the storm hit, I hesitated with picking the green tomatoes. I ended up not picking them and hoped for the best. To my surprise, these large Brandywines stayed on the vine! I thought because they were so heavy that they would for sure be knocked off the vine. I am so glad I didn't pick them because I prefer to have them ripen on the vine. Hooray! I can't wait for the Brandywines to start changing color!! I can't wait to try these tomatoes.

Outside the picket fence the plants didn't fare as well. I guess because they had less protection from the wind. I think the picket fence helped protect the other plants from the whipping wind. Here is the bed with the tobacco and tomato plants. It is a toppled mess.

A view from the other side of the raised bed. The plants are still alive, they just need to be supported somehow. To be honest, I'm not that sad that these plants were crushed. It was the hubs hobby, not mine. :)

Here is the bed with some of the tomato plants. Totally blown over.

Most surprisingly, I only found one green tomato on the ground. A Yellow Pear! Isn't it just amazing that all the tomatoes stayed on the vine? I am sooo impressed! Even after many of the tomato plants fell, the tomatoes stayed in tact. I learned a lot from this big storm, that plants are pretty resilient even after Hurricane gust winds and torrential rainfall. I hope everyone who was in the path of Irene came out of it safe and sound.

Riding Out the Storm

2011-08-28T00:17:00.002-04:00

It's about midnight now and the eye of the storm is inching closer and closer to us. The outer bands are right below us now, and we are getting lots of rain and we are starting to get strong rain gusts. On the news they were saying we could get a foot of rain! That is a lot of rain. The garden is definitely going to flood. :(

Since I was pretty much stuck in the house all day, I decided to take this time to make a batch of Sweet Dill Pickles. I went to the market before the storm and picked up dill, habaneros and onions. The cucumbers, and garlic are from the garden. I tried to grow habaneros like I did last year, but none of the seeds germinated.

Yesterday, in anticipation of the storm, I harvested some Heirloom Tomatoes, Isis Candy, Chocolate Cherry and Jaune Flamme. Since I had a bunch of ripe tomatoes, I had an idea to make some fresh bruschetta. The rest of the ingredients, I harvested this morning. I picked some Italian Genovese Basil and got a bulb of homegrown Garlic that is hanging in the rafters of the garage. Add a bit of olive oil and sea salt, and that's it! Everything everyone says about Heirloom Tomatoes are so true! I didn't grow up eating Heirloom Tomatoes so this is a new experience for me. They are so tasty and flavorful, it's like candy! No wonder everyone loves and raves about them. Isn't this just gorgeous? I am loving all the different colors of tomatoes. As a kid, I only ate red tomatoes, so to know that they come in all these different shades of Orange, Yellow, Purple/Brown is amazing!!

I didn't have any crunchy loaves of bread at home, so I just toasted 2 slices of bread and scooped the bruschetta on top. Oooooh is this ever good! I could eat this every day! I may be stuck at home during this Hurricane, but at least I am eating well!

Final Pickings Before Irene

2011-08-27T13:56:00.004-04:00

I spent the morning taking one last walk around the garden and tying all the tomato cages to the picket fence. If it gets really windy it won't go very far since they are all tied up with twine. I also picked the vegetables that I could save before Irene makes her appearance. Any tomato that had a blush of pink / yellow was picked and will ripen on my windowsill. I decided not to pick any of the green tomatoes, I'm hoping they will stay on the vine... I'm sure most of them won't, in which case I'll have to make fried green tomatoes or pickled green tomatoes. I have to find more recipes with green tomatoes. Do you have any suggestions? I also picked some basil, I think I'll make some bruschetta since I will be cooped up in the house riding out the storm. At least I'll eat well! I saw there was a beet sticking out of the ground, so I harvested it. It was a small little one, the beets didn't size up very well this year. More compost is definitely needed for next year. I'm as ready as I can be for Irene, so now it's just a waiting game. For all those on the East Coast, stay safe!

Preparing the Garden for the Hurricane

2011-08-26T22:46:00.001-04:00

With Hurricane Irene expecting to make landfall here by Saturday night, I spent most of the day in the yard getting ready for the storm. This meant putting away the umbrella, barbeque grill, garbage cans and lawn furniture in the garage. Along with all the patio plants. Let's just say it's pretty packed in there now. Thank goodness for the garage.

I also took this opportunity to walk around the garden and take some "before the storm" photos. The garden is finally starting to look good, it had a rough start earlier in the summer and things were taking it's slowpoke time to grow. But now everything looks so lush. I am so sad that the storm is going to wreak havoc on all the plants.

The back wall has all the cucumbers and string beans growing up the picket fence and everything looks so green and amazing. They are saying on the news that we should expect 60-70 mph winds which bums me out because I fear that it will knock down all the plants. A spring / summers worth of hard work to be knocked down in a day.

Here is the pumpkin plant, these plants are just giants. And I have yet to see a pumpkin forming! Lots of male flowers but hardly any female flowers.

Here's the pumpkin plant spilling out of the garden and taking over the lawn. I was planning to let this plant grow as large as possible to see if maybe a pumpkin would emerge.

The heirloom tomato plants will not stand a chance to Hurricane winds.

More tomato plants in the raised beds.Yeah, these will be a toppled mess after the storm for sure. I don't know whether I should pick all the green tomatoes or leave them on the vine. What to do, what to do. Will they all turn color indoors if I harvest all the green ones? I normally don't pick or eat green tomatoes. But I don't think they will survive on the vine with this storm coming.

Here is a Rutgers and a Paul Robeson tomato plant. I definitely will pick the ones that have a blush color so they can continue to ripen on my window sill. I am so loving how large these Paul Robeson tomatoes get. They are easily 1 pounders!! I will so grow these next year!

Here are the Rutgers tomatoes up close. These beauties are gorgeous. I love that these tomatoes are named after my Alma Mater. On the Rutgers website it says that these tomatoes were "introduced in 1934 by Rutgers breeder Lyman Schermerhorn as an ideal locally well-adapted and improved "General Use" tomato for processing (canning and juicing) as well as fresh market." I hope they taste as good as they look!

I saw this pink rose blooming in the rose garden. It's so pretty, and has no clue what's coming. Maybe I should cut the rose and bring it inside.

I harvested these from the garden today. I only picked the ones that were ready to harvest or had fallen to the ground. Irene may be coming, but at least I won't go hungry.

Picking Tomatoes Before the Storm

2011-08-26T00:00:00.004-04:00

This has been quite the interesting week for us. First we felt the Earthquake that hit Virginia, all the way up here in NYC! Now we are preparing for a Hurricane. An Earthquake and a Hurricane all in the same week? Talk about an eventful week! Watching the news about Hurricane Irene barreling it's way up the East Coast is very scary. Tomorrow I'll be going out to the garden and put all the lawn furniture and garden pots in the garage for safe keeping. We haven't had a Hurricane like this hit these parts in some time, so I'm beginning to worry. In anticipation of the Hurricane coming our way, I went out to the garden and picked some Heirloom tomatoes. My favorite is Tiny Tim. I see now how it got it's name. It's as small as a dime! Cute.

I was watching the news today and saw that I live in Zone A, a flooding and evacuation zone of the NYC area. Mayor Bloomberg said he would announce on Saturday morning whether he will give the order for a mandatory evacuation for residents that live in the orange areas of the map below. That big orange blob in Staten Island, that's where we live. Crap. Double crap! Tomorrow, I have to go into the basement and move all the boxes to the 1st floor just in case it floods like it did 2 years ago when we got 24 hours of non-stop rain. I'm thinking about all those people who live on the East Coast, hoping and praying that everyone stays safe and sound.

Update: I found this interactive map on Weather.com and it tracks the storm. It's a good tool to use to see where the storm is heading.

Waiting for the Heirloom Maters

2011-08-25T13:25:00.007-04:00

I've been anxiously waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to turn color so that I can taste these beauties. My plan this year was to grow as many varieties that I could so that I could zone in on the varieties that I thought tasted the best and therefore would make a return appearance in the garden. I plan to save the seeds for the heirloom varieties that I think are the tastiest. Here is Chocolate Cherry, they are turning into a cool brown color. They should be ripe soon, and I can't wait to try these. I originally received these seeds from Wintersown.org. It's a great place to get tomato seeds.

This is a Persimmon Tomato, seeds given to me by Snarky Vegan. This plant actually got a disease so this is the only tomato on the plant. That makes me super sad. I planted a few Persimmon tomato plants, it's now a waiting game to see if the other plants get diseased. I hope not. This tomato is finally showing a blush of color. It sure is a pretty brilliant orange color and really does look like a Persimmon. I see now how it got the name. I put bird netting around all of my tomato plants because last year we were plagued by squirrels stealing the tomatoes before we got a chance to eat them. This year I proactively tried to prevent the squirrels from taking the maters, even though they stole my peaches and grapes.

This plant has Pink Brandywine. I got seeds from Our Engineered Garden. I am amazed by how large these tomatoes are. They will easily be 1 pounders. I can't wait until the tomatoes turn pink. They will be delicious I'm sure.

I plan to save seeds and start a seed bank so that I can share with fellow gardeners. It was fun to grow so many varieties of tomatoes this year, it was so exciting to see how large each tomato got and what color they would turn. I've never grown any of these varieties before so it was all new to me. But I must say, it was also a lot of work. We ended up having 75 tomato plants, much of which I didn't even sow, many were volunteer tomato plants. Here is one of the raised beds with the tomato plants. I packed 15 plants in here and it's a total tomato mess! I definitely need to do a better staking system because the plants were drooping all over the place. I put tomato cages around some of the larger plants and then tied the other plants to the cages. Even though we had a whopping 75 tomato plants, a few died from disease, some were destroyed by storms, and others just never produced a lot of tomatoes. Next year, I definitely want to limit the number of varieties that I will grow, because I was definitely overzealous this season with the planning. Initially my plan was to grow as many different varieties to see what tasted good and continue to grow the ones I liked in the future. However, when it came down to organizing all the plants and seedlings, and isolating the blooms, for each plant it became completely overwhelming. There are some plants in which I never ended up isolating the blooms, so I hope the seeds saved will be really true to parent. With so many tomato plants, I actually didn't have time to devote to my other vegetable plants. For example, I didn't grow enough Pepper, Eggplant, or Squash Plants. And plants I didn't get a chance to sow properly were my herb plants, Chamomile, Sage, Cilantro and the some vegetables that I never ended up sowing at all were Parsnips and Kale. I wanted to try those this year, but the tomato frenzy took over my life. Definitely next year, I will create an herb garden, and definitely less tomato plants.... I hope!

Update: Hurricane Irene is heading straight for the East Coast and everyone is preparing for the rough stormy weather. I am beside myself with worry about my tomato plants, some are so tall and I don't know if they will survive the winds. Hardly any of the tomatoes are turning color yet. Ugh. I'm hoping for the best. I hope everyone who is in the path of the storm stay safe and sound. And their gardens too.

I Want One of These!

2011-08-24T16:19:00.001-04:00

Last week, we visited my husband's Aunt in Upstate New York. I've always admired her beautiful pergola that she has in her backyard. It has Wisteria growing all over it. I love pergolas and really would like one in our yard one day. Isn't it just beautiful?

Here is another view from the west side of the pergola. If I had one of these, I would grow grape vines to cover the pergola. She said that the structure has been here for many years, and have since started to have structural problems. She told me that since this was built out of wooden beams, the wood is starting to break down / decompose and so she had to nail reinforcement 2x4s to support the beams. She said that if we were to put in a pergola to consider using a metal material instead of wood, however I do love the look of the old wood beams. I know that cedar holds up better than most other types of wood, but does it last forever? I definitely don't want to use treated lumber since I would want to grow grapevines on it.

If I had a pergola like this, I would eat so many meals under here. It is breathtaking. I would throw parties just to find ways to use this pergola! Or just relaxing underneath it with a lawn chair and a good book. It's so romantic and pretty.

The hubs Aunt said that the Wisteria is pretty spectacular when it's blooming in the spring. I have yet to see it in full bloom. Maybe next year. She said that now it is producing lots of seed pods. She gave me some seed pods to take home. The seed pod has an amazing velvety texture. It's so cool. I plan on drying the pods out and trying to grow a Wisteria plant. I'll have extra seeds available so I think I'll bring the seeds to a seed swap that I'm helping organize in Brooklyn. If any of you readers would like a few seeds, I may have some extras to give out. Please note, Wisteria is a large growing vine, so you need a good support system for these plants.

On her property was also this amazing hydranga bush. Wow, it was gigantic and the blooms were starting to die. She said it's all blue in early summer. Beautiful!

I found one of the mopheads still with the vibrant blue color. I hope my hydrangea bushes grows this nice!!

A Tour of the Garden

2011-08-21T21:13:00.002-04:00

I took these photos a few weeks ago. I realized that I haven't posted any photos of the garden layout so here is a little tour. On the right, is the raised bed of pumpkin and zucchini squash. Next to that is a bed of Eggplant, Leeks, Celery, Beets, and Radishes. In the very back are the pole beans, yardlong beans, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.

I'm really loving the celery plants, the seeds were given to me by Food Garden Kitchen. They are growing really slow, but doing very well. And the best part, bugs seem to leave them alone. I like to cut only what's needed for cooking, I'll trim only the outer leaves and stalks to cook with and then continue to let it grow. This will definitely return to the garden next year.

Here is the Japanese pumpkin plant. I'm a little bummed because I have yet to see a pumpkin growing on the plant. The plant is gigantic, so it's very frustrating. Argh...

On the far corner of the garden, are the cucumbers growing up the picket fence. I don't even put up a trellis because they will grow up the fence. I'm growing a few different varieties of cukes this year. White Cucumber, Straight Eight, Parisian, and Boston.

I should have labeled these plants, because I have no idea what's what.

I believe this is a Straight Eight cucumber that is forming.

Here is the left side of the garden. We never got around to putting in raised beds so everything is directly in the ground which I hate because there are SO many weeds! This side has the peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, peas and strawberries.

Here are the raised beds outside of the fenced area. We quickly ran out of room on the inside fenced area so we put 4 raised beds on the grass. I'm thinking I still need more room. Maybe I can put in more raised beds and get rid of the grass entirely. hahahaha. In this bed, the hubs is growing tobacco to roll his own cigars. I'm not thrilled with this "crop" so I only gave him half a bed to indulge in his hobby. The other half of the bed has tomato plants.

This is the bed with the Heritage raspberry plants. We only got 2 berries this year. I'm looking forward to next year, I hope we get lots and lots of berries!

We have one bed with 15 tomato plants in it. I think it's going to get overly crowded, we shall see. Behind that bed, is our rhubarb bed. I have 3 rhubarbs growing in it. For some reason, I have a very hard time growing rhubarb. The three plants I grew last year all died. I planted 4 more this year so I am hoping for the best. I just hope next year I can harvest some rhubarb.

Get Bigger My Sweet

2011-08-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

I'm growing Brandywine this year for the first time, from seeds given to me by EG at Our Engineered Garden. The fruit are forming and getting larger. Get bigger my sweet. I'm looking forward to eating you. I plan to save some seeds to grow next year. Any extras I'll give away to readers just like EG did. Pay it forward, mater style.

19 inches

2011-08-18T14:07:00.001-04:00

A few weeks back I posted about how I am growing Chinese Yardlong beans. Many of you were curious about these beans and asked what they tasted like and how to cook them. I grew up eating these so it's very familiar to me, but I failed to realize that it's not a vegetable commonly seen in American grocery stores. They are usually sold in Asian markets. They are also called Asparagus beans, but I'm not sure why they call it that. Maybe because they are long and slender like an Asparagus? How I would describe this bean is that it is just like a very long green bean / string bean / pole bean. It's just very long.

Cook them how you would cook your string beans, what I like to do is cut them into thirds and sauté them with some olive oil and salt / pepper. Actually... that's how I like to eat most of my veggies. Hahaha. My dad however, he likes it stir fried with black bean sauce and garlic. It's delicious like that too.

Just to give you an idea of how long these beans can get, check it out next to my measuring tape.

If you can't see the number, here's a closeup. Yup, that says 19 inches! ;)
In my opinion, growing these are better than growing regular green beans because harvesting one bean is like harvesting three regular sized green beans. Less to harvest and more food = heaven!!

Tomato Isolation

2011-08-17T18:15:00.002-04:00

I am growing a whole lotta tomatoes this year that I plan to save the seeds from. Since the plants are planted right next to each other, many of my fellow garden bloggers recommended that I try to isolate the blooms so that the tomato plants didn't cross pollinate. I had bought these organza bags and fully intended to wrap each bloom. Let's just say I was over zealous, because I couldn't keep up with all the blooms! LOL.

So I wrapped some of them, but it got overwhelming so I sorta gave up. D'oh. I'll try again next year when I don't plant 22 varieties of tomatoes. What was I thinking???

The Results of Trading

2011-08-15T23:12:00.002-04:00

Today, on my way home, some giant storm clouds were following me. Don't these look ominous? It's been raining a lot these last two days, and the garden has been loving it. And thank goodness, because with the rain we are finally getting some really good veggies forming. It's been a slow moving growing season, so I am eager to harvest some goodies.

I have really enjoyed trading seeds and plants this year with fellow garden bloggers. It's such a great way to try out a new variety in the garden without committing to buying a whole seed packet or new plants. I received some white cucumber seeds from Chronicles of a Frugal Gardener. These are definitely interesting looking. They taste the same as regular cukes. The coloring is definitely cool. I definitely want to grow these again next year.

I also got some Sweet Lilac pepper seeds from Bucolic Bushwick. Here's the first pepper on the plant. I am loving this color. I don't see any other fruits forming. I hope more peppers grow soon.

Bucolic Bushwick and I also did a plant swap earlier in the growing season. I'm so loving that the Fairy Tale Eggplants are setting out fruits now. The eggplants are so pretty. I love the white marbling on the purple skin! I can't wait to try these!

Here is today's harvest! It's the largest one we've had to date. 10 cucumbers! Ten! Do you see how blaring white the white cuke is at the bottom? Hehe. I did a happy dance because now I can make a batch of pickles. Awesome!! I also harvested some radishes, yardlong beans, snap peas, and my first real sized Scarlet Nantes carrot. The carrot took quite a long time to size up, and in fact, it could have been in the ground a little longer. It had a nice sweet taste, I definitely want to grow these again.

And here are the sweet dill pickles that I made tonight. I made these as refrigerator pickles, and should wait 10 days before eating them. I don't know if I can wait that long.

Did I Grow a Watermelon?

2011-08-14T15:51:00.003-04:00

Back in June, I wrote about how we had quite a few volunteer plants growing all around our edible garden. I didn't have the heart to kill any of them. That's how I have 75 tomato plants in the garden. I let the volunteers grow or if it was in a weird spot, I replanted the plants in the parts of the garden which I thought they belonged. If it looked like a squash or cuke plant, I planted it in their respective beds. Then at work the other day, I got a text message from my husband and he said, "We have a giant cucumber growing in the cuke bed" and sent me this photo. I giggled and immediately texted him back. "Well..." I said, "you put a 2x4 underneath it? Um, I think it might be a watermelon." I'm not really sure what it is. I think the seed came from the compost we used from my dad's garden. I'm guessing it's some kind of melon or squash? What do you think it is. It's about 8 inches long right now.

More From the Old Neighborhood

2011-08-13T13:34:00.003-04:00

Earlier in the growing season I wrote about the amazing garden at Automotive Highschool. For those of you who didn't read my old post about them, it's a garden run by the Juniors and Seniors of Automotive Highschool and their teacher Jenny Kessler, and it's purpose is to start a discourse about where food comes from and how it's distributed, through a hands-on experience of growing their own food and visiting local farms throughout the state. They learn about pesticides and the lifecycle and treatment of livestock, how farm animals are raised and how they get to market. It's an amazing program that all cities across the country should take part in. It's interesting how much of a disconnect kids have with where their food comes from, how it's raised, and how it goes from farm to table. In addition, it's a fantastic example of teaching urban youth that it's possible to grow fresh organic produce in a limited amount of space. In urban environments like ours, access and the cost of fresh organic produce can be an issue. The produce they grow can be taken home by the students who raise the crops, the excess is given to local food banks, and sold at the farmers market. When I saw the garden earlier in the season, nothing was growing yet. This is the before shot, back in May.

Here we are in August and like many gardens across the country, it is bursting with lush green growth. Here is a raised bed of broccoli. Absolutely fantastic. Why can't my broccoli look this amazing?

A raised bed of Eggplant. I didn't spy any eggplants forming on these plants because I was pretty far from the actual bed, but I did see a lot of flowers. Soon. Very soon, I'm sure they will be overflowing with eggplants.

This is the iron fence that surrounds the school. Some kind of purple flowering vine covered the entire fence. Just wow. I was thinking they should have grown string beans here. But then the people on the street would pick all the beans I'm sure. So, maybe that wouldn't be a good idea.

In the back was a tall structure that they built and it's either pole beans or cucumbers? I couldn't tell because it was far from the street view. I'm thinking it may be cucumbers because the leaves were big.

A view from the side of the fence, at the front entrance of the school. Look at all the amazing raise beds. Love, love, love this.

What stopped me in my tracks was the bed that was the home to these giant zucchini squash plants. Wowsers. I could see that there were at least 5 green zucchini fruit forming on this bad boy. I read that they grow these produce completely organically, as do I. However, my zuke plant pales in comparison to this one. Despite the fact that I feed my plants fish emulsion and compost. I wonder what their secret is. They must use amazing organic compost.

This sign was posted on the front fence. If I still lived in the neighborhood, I would definitely volunteer to work in this garden. Man, why didn't I notice this program when I lived here!! If you live in the area and want to volunteer send them an email, see the sign below.

You Can Grow That at the Beach?

2011-08-12T20:03:00.002-04:00

Last weekend, I spent the weekend celebrating my friend Tony's 40th birthday. We went down to the Jersey Shore to visit his friend's beach house. The weather was absolutely perfect. I could really live here!! I love the beach. My wish one day is to have a beach house. That would be a dream! If only beach houses weren't ridiculously expensive.

At our friend's beach house, they had the most stunning Bartlett pear trees. Two in fact! Look at the beauty of this tree! I was so shocked how well this tree was growing in mostly sandy soil! Our friend said this tree has been here for over 40 years! There were so many pears on it, too bad none were ripe yet or I'd be eating these!

Some of the branches almost reached the ground with the weight of the heavy pears. Makes it easy to harvest these!

Aren't these just gorgeous? Our friend said that they get much bigger. I asked him how these pears tasted when they were ripe, and then he said something that really shocked me. I seriously almost fainted when he said the following, "I don't know. Mimi, I don't even like pears. I never eat the pears off this tree." I was like.... "WHAT!?!" I was like, oh my goodness, pears are my favorite. I said if he let me come back to harvest all the ripe pears that I would make pear jam, pear tart, baked pear, I would seriously have a pear extravaganza. I said to him, please don't let these pears go to waste, I'll definitely come down to harvest them. I'd be too sad if they weren't eaten.

Not only did they have the most amazing pear trees, they also had the most amazing grapevines! Check out how their grapevines have covered their entire back fence! Totally amazing!! I asked him what type of grapes these were and he didn't know. He said when he was a little kid, his grandfather planted the pear trees, the grapevines, and had a huge backyard garden. I said to him, "Wow, that is so cool. I would have loved to meet him. I think we would have been really good friends!!"

Back in the Old Neighborhood

2011-08-12T01:35:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I went back to my old neighborhood to visit my good friend. I noticed that all of the tree pits on her block that were so nicely planted. She told me that a woman who owns a house on the street plants all the tree pits on the block every single year. With her own money! Totally amazing! I just loved the mixture of plants that she combined.

On this day in the neighborhood there was a free movie in the park. What's great about summer in the city is that they have lots of free activities. Check out the crowd that showed up to watch Jurassic Park in McCarren Park. It was a sea of people. I think it's amazing all these people came out to see a movie that was released in 1993! While I was watching the movie, I joined in on Seedchat on Twitter using my Droid Phone. It's a fun chat online amongst gardeners usually around the topic of seeds and gardening. It's every Wednesday at 9:00pm EST. Use the hashtag #seedchat to join in the chat.

I (Heart) Snap Peas!

2011-08-11T11:28:00.000-04:00

The summer snap peas are still coming in, though it looks like the plants are on its last legs. So I sowed a whole bunch of seeds for a fall harvest. I'm really loving the taste of these snap peas. The variety I am growing is called Sugar Ann Snap Pea and the seeds I bought from Sustainable Seed Company. They are on sale right now for $1.99 a packet. The peas themselves don't actually look like the photo on their website, mine look much more skinnier. However, the taste is outstanding. It's perfectly sweet and crunchy. All summer I only picked a handful at a time, I thought 10 plants would be suffice, but now I know I have to plant like the whole seed packet to get the kind of volume of harvest I'm looking for. I like to eat these raw as a snack. Or stir fried. If you like snap peas, I definitely recommend trying these!

Sungold Love

2011-08-10T12:11:00.000-04:00

The only tomato that is ripening on the vine right now are the Sungolds. This is my first time growing these yummy little golden morsels. They will definitely make a comeback in the garden next year.

I absolutely love the taste of these orange cherries. They are sweet with a burst of flavor. I only wish they were heirlooms so I could save the seeds. Granny told me they were hybrids. Does anyone know of a similar tasting tomato that are heirlooms?

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2011-08-09T00:36:00.001-04:00

This is our peach tree. Can you see what's wrong with this photo? Take a good look.

Here's a closeup of the tree. See it now? If you can't tell, check out what the tree used to look like here.

Give up? I'll show you a hint. Note: I didn't take a bite out of this. We found this on the ground.

Stupid squirrels ate all the peaches off our tree. And we had at least 30 peaches growing. ARGH!!! In efforts to save the last 2 peaches, we put netting all around them. LOL. Pathetic, I know, but we have never tasted a ripe peach off this tree yet! Last year, this happened to our peach tree.

Even though we covered the last two peaches in netting, the very next day, we saw that the last two peaches were gone! WTF!! How the squirrels were able to figure there way through the netting and take the remaining peaches, I have no idea. SO. VERY. ANNOYED!!

I suppose that means no peaches for us at all this year. I feel like crying. What a complete bummer. Do you have a squirrels eating your fruits or vegetables? How do you prevent them from eating your entire harvest? Help!!! I need some serious advice! My dad keeps telling me about this device that you plug it that makes a low frequency noise to scare away squirrels. Have you used this before, and does it even work? Ugh.

Eating Locally

2011-08-04T23:15:00.001-04:00

This year, for the first time, our lettuce is growing pretty well. Last year I grew green leaf lettuce and a mesculun mix and it was a horrible failure because everything bolted so quickly. This year, I'm growing buttercrunch lettuce, and I'm really loving how it's pretty heat tolerable. I've been harvesting the outer leaves to use in sandwiches. My favorite is a BLT, a Bacon, Lettuce and "Toast" sandwich. It was delicious. I wish the tomatoes were ripe so I could add it to the sandwich. Soon, very soon. The bacon in the sandwich is from the hub's parent's farm, Heritage Homestead of Depeyster, NY. We are down to our last 4 packages of bacon, and this makes me incredibly sad. It's the best bacon I've ever eaten. Ever. I wish I had more time to bake bread. It would really make this sandwich! Eating like this makes me realize that you really can eat locally even in an urban environment. I would love to challenge myself to eat locally for a month, like other bloggers have done... I'm pretty scared to do so, since our garden isn't as productive as other garden bloggers I follow. Maybe next year, since I'll have 2 years of gardening under my belt. I'm starting to understand what works and doesn't in our garden, so I think next year will be our most productive. Something to look forward to.

I'm So Jealous

2011-08-04T12:17:00.002-04:00

I've tried many attempts to grow hydrangeas in my yard, but I've always netted dismal results. Back in April, I received 2 small hydrangea plants from a contest win from Santa Rosa Gardens. I planted the 2 hydrangeas, a Nikko Blue variety and an Annabelle white one, in hopes that they will take off. For some reason, this is one of those plants that I have such a hard time keeping alive. I know they like moist soil, so I'll try to keep them moist. Also as an experiment, I planted one in partial shade and the other in full sun just to see which plant does better with the different amounts of sun / shade. In the past, I have planted hydrangeas in full sun, and they didn't survive. But so far, to my surprise the Annabelle hydrangea which is in full sun is doing really well. It has more than doubled in size.

The Nikko Belle hydrangea, I planted in a shady area of the front yard. It too is doing pretty well and has 2 blooms on it. I'm really hoping that these plants take off. I love mophead hydrangeas, they are definitely one of my favorites.

These are the hydrangeas growing at my parent's house in their side yard. All of these were planted as 6 inch pots years ago. They sit in partial shade. Look at them now! They are huge and super healthy. I absolutely love the color. I am so jealous! I hope my hydrangea will grow like this.

Check out this Nikko Blue. I love the color. Do you grow hydrangeas? What's your secret to growing lush healthy hydrangeas?

I Grew a Mutant Cucumber!

2011-08-03T17:06:00.000-04:00

Cucumbers are coming in at a steady rate now. I'm picking about one cucumber every other day. I've been using the cucumbers in sandwiches, I should save them until I have enough cucumbers to make Sweet Dill Pickles!

In the midst of the cucumber vine, I did find a weirdly shaped discolored cucumber. Check out the one on the left. It looks like such a mutant! Not only is it an orangey color, it's round!! It came off the same vine as the one on the right. I did a Google search on why cucumbers turn this orangey color, and the search revealed that cucumbers turn this color when they are on the vine too long and over ripe. They are still edible despite the weird color but they might taste bitter. I tasted the orange cucumber and it tasted just fine. It wasn't bitter at all, so it went into my sandwich for lunch.

It Turned into a Different Kind of Talk

2011-08-02T21:19:00.004-04:00

Last week, after a day of marathon business meetings, I headed to Soho to catch a talk hosted by Phaidon Press to promote a new book they published called, "Vegetables From an Italian Garden". The panel discussion was supposed to be based around the topic of "Growing Your Own Produce in Urban Environment", so I was pretty excited about it. The press release said the talk would include a panel discussion on urban farming and sustainable agricultural practices. I went to the discussion thinking that I would come away from the talk with some interesting tips and advice on growing produce in an urban environment like NYC.

Participating in the panel discussion were the following folks, from left to right, Michael Grady Robertson (former Director of Agriculture for the Queens County Farm Museum, currently the owner of Grady’s Farm), the Moderator (Bad on me, I can't remember the name of the moderator of the discussion), Ian Cheney (co-creator of the documentary film King Corn and Truck Farm), and Eric Demby (Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg).

My favorite speaker on the panel was Ian Cheney. He showed us a slideshow of images, among them were a "Truck Farm" he created. I wouldn't call it a farm, it's more of a mobile garden. He created a garden in the bed of a pickup truck. He explained that he came up with this idea when he moved to Brooklyn and lacked any space to grow fresh produce, so he had this idea of converting an old truck given to him by his grandfather, into a garden plot. He retrofitted the back of the truck by drilling drainage holes and added a lightweight soil mixture to grow the plants.

The Truck Farm became the subject of a documentary, and quickly became a traveling exhibition for educating urban youths about gardening and farming. The garden in the truck bed idea spread and now there are 25 fleets of mobile gardens around the country. What a cool idea for getting the word out about growing your own fresh produce! Ian admitted that growing produce this way isn't going to produce high yields, and isn't very practical for the everyday urban gardener. However, it's become a great learning tool to teach others about where your food comes from. As an educational tool for demonstrating the process of seed to edible plant to urban youth who don't normally have access to farms or gardens, it's pretty darn amazing.

I must say however that the rest of the panel discussion was a bit of a disappointment because it wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be a dialogue mostly about urban farming practices, but it quickly became a discussion about Food Justice and the importance of buying local and organic. Michael of Grady's Farm talked about the hardships of running an independent farm. He practices organic farming but said that the farm is not profitable because of the high costs of organic feed, the costs to run the farm, and the property taxes on the farmland, he is lucky to break even. He talked about selling his organic eggs at $6 - $8 a dozen. I'm all for buying locally and organic, but at that cost, who can afford to eat organic? In my mind, its not affordable to all, and therefore very elitist. My in-laws also own an independent farm and they too practice organic methods, but where they are located, selling eggs at that price is out of the question, not only because where they live no one would buy eggs at that cost. But also, they believe that healthy food shouldn't have to come at a high cost. Which led me to make a statement and ask a question to the panel discussion. I told the group that I felt that we as a society had to do more to level the playing field for independent organic farmers. In my opinion, the public needs to be more vocal about demanding safe farm raised food. We need to demand livestock that is raised ethically and produce that is safe and void of toxic pesticides and is non-GMO. There should be more government subsidies for the independent farmer to offset the high costs of farming organically. It's difficult for these farmers to compete with the larger farm conglomerates. Do we have to sacrifice food safety because it is cheaper? I think as a society, we should demand that our produce and livestock be safe to eat. Since buying organic isn't as affordable as I would like it to be, (I can't afford to buy organic with those prices) I'll continue to maintain a backyard garden and grow my own organic fruit and vegetables. I want to be able to have access to healthy food, even if that means I have to grow my own.

I realize that I am pretty lucky in the fact that I have the yard space to have such an extensive garden despite living in an urban environment. And that not many urbanites have this luxury. However, even if I didn't have this space, I would have to seek out ways to have a garden like in a community plot or do container gardening. What's your take on this issue?

I hate you squirrel. I declare war!

2011-07-24T01:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I took this photo. I was so excited because the Glenora grapes were finally turning purple in color. I was totally anticipating eating these. They weren't quite ripe yet so I patiently waited.

Then today, my husband said, "we have no grapes left". What? What? My only guess is that it was a squirrel since these vines are 4 feet off the ground. Not a single red grape left. Whatever it was ate every last red grape off this vine. Notice how it left the green ones untouched? Ugh! And I didn't even get to taste one. So. Very. Annoyed.

At least we have Cayuga green grapes left on one of the other vines. As of today, none of these were eaten.

In an effort to prevent squirrels from eating these, we put bird netting over this grapevine and stapled it to the 4x4 posts. Do you grow grapes? Have you ever had this problem with critters eating them before you do?

My first Zuke and Chinese Yard Long Beans!

2011-07-23T01:17:00.001-04:00

Erin, over at Garden Now-Think Later, grew Chinese Yard Long Beans last year and she raved about them. She loved how easy these were to grow, and how easy they were to find to harvest them. I grew pole beans last year, and indeed, it is hard to find those suckers behind all those leaves. These Yard Long beans however are so long, it's easy to see them to harvest. I grew up eating these beans, so I was so excited to try to grow them this year. My dad gave me seeds, and my cousin gave me seedlings. This plant will definitely be a keeper in my garden. I'm so in love with them!

I had also planted 5 zucchini plants, and many of you told me I would be overflowing with lots of zucchini. For some reason, none of the plants are producing any female flowers, and those that do, seem to not produce a fruit that is pollinated so they turn yellow and die off. At long last, I harvested my first zucchini. I'm pretty disappointed because I was hoping to have lots of fruit by now. I had hopes of freezing some for future zucchini breads. Next year, I think I will forgo growing broccoli and devote that bed to zucchini instead. This is my second year growing broccoli and I hate it. It's just not worth my time since they get ravished by bugs. I want to be overwhelmed with zucchini, to the point where I have more than I can handle. It's not meant to be I guess. I'll be lucky if the plants grow another zucchini for me to harvest. Let's hope it does.

With the harvested zucchini, I decided to make my version of pasta primavera. All of the vegetables are from the garden except for the sun dried tomatoes. I added homegrown snap peas, radish greens, the zuke, and garlic. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and parmasean cheese. Serve warm, yum, it is quite delicious and fresh tasting.

For more dishes featuring the Garden to Table, check out Greenish Thumb!

Is that the actual temperature?

2011-07-22T20:25:00.000-04:00

It was a scorcher today. So hot, that I had to water the plants twice today. They were all wilty, just like me in the heat. Just, so hot. I haven't seen temperatures like this in quite awhile. It's 8:23pm and check out the temperature! Say it isn't so!