My Root Cellar



Apparently fall is a woeful time for me and blogging. I'm sorry for the lack of substance here recently. Writing is a way of processing life and, admittedly, it sometimes takes me a while to process. Kind of like winter cooking, which is suited to braises, stews, and roasting, all of which take time.

 

This morning, I walked to my garden and spent an hour cleaning it up. I pulled up everything except green onions, chives, parsley, and snapdragons (which were amazingly still blooming!), chopped it all into smaller pieces, bagged it, raked the dirt smooth, and stared at it. It's hard to believe that my garden had come full circle again and is now laid to rest for the winter.

 

I got an organizing bug in me after seeing my garden look so neat and tidy, so I came home and whipped my root cellar and freezer into shape. Except for my grandparents, I can't remember anyone having a basement when I was growing up in Portland. Thus living in a house with a basement for the last two years has been a revelation. I have stored winter vegetables in the basement the past two years, but I've decided to be more organized this year, mostly to avoid wasting food.

 

I unpacked my whole freezer and re-wrote my whiteboard list below. I am thankful that my freezer is in pretty good shape. I've realized that my freezer is a better place for storing ingredients that can become a meal rather than pre-made meals. I love to cook so much that I just don't eat pre-made meals. If I'm in need of a quick meal, I usually make an easy meal like peanut butter and jelly toast or scrambled eggs. It's one of my weird food quirks. I'm pretty proud of this list:

 

 

The last two years, I've bought squash at Green Bluff on a whim. Bad idea. I regret to say that much of it was wasted. This year, I bought just the squash you see below: delicata (delicious roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper), sweet meat (which I'll bake, puree, and freeze in two-cup portions for baking), a Red Kuri (no idea how to cook it, so this is my splurge!), and four butternut squash (wonderfully versatile). I'm prone to impulse fruit/veggie purchases, so I can't guarantee that I won't end up with more squash. But if I don't, I'm content with what I have here:

 

 

My lovely canned goods! I've already shared a photo like this on my blog, but I'm really proud of them. Canning, freezing, and root cellar goods are three of the big ways I like to preserve the precious fruits and veggies of summer and autumn for the lean winter and early spring months. Drying is another big method, but I haven't done much with it yet. 

 

 

On an impulse, I did buy a 10-pound bag of local Yukon Gold potatoes at Green Bluff to add to my stash of red potatoes and fingerlings. It was only $5! I've separated the potatoes by variety into three newspaper-lined boxes. At Green Bluff, I recently purchased two 4-lb bags of red and yellow storage onions for only $1.50 each. A steal! I'm so excited! The last component I'll add to my root cellar is about 20 lbs of Stayman Winesap apples that I'll be picking at Green Bluff tomorrow. The farmer told me these apples are "good keepers." Excellent! That's what I'm looking for! 

 

 

I've been thinking of buying a Dutch oven, so my co-worker was kind enough to lend me his, which is the exact Dutch oven I wanted to buy. I've been testing it out with various recipes, including Butternut Squash Risotto (picture below). The risotto was easier to make than I expected and delicious in an earthy way. With squash, onions, white wine, and homemade chicken stock as some of the ingredients, I happily ate the leftovers for lunch (all week). 

 

 

Today, I simmered the bones of two roasted chickens for three hours, adding in chopped onion, carrots, two bay leaves, and fresh thyme after the second full hour. Happily, the chicken bones have enough meat on them to make Chicken Soup with Herb Dumplings. I'm thinking this Dutch oven will be my next big kitchen purchase.

It's been a good and productive day. I love the possibilities for delicious, healthy meals that are just waiting to spring forth from my cans, freezer, and stored veggies.

How are you preparing for the winter months? Do you can, freezer, dry, or store summer and fall vegetables or fruit?

My Garden, Year Two

This is the second year my college mentor has given me space in her vegetable garden for a garden of my own. This year, I was much more savvy in my planning, so I'm expecting (and praying!) to have a better harvest than last year. We're off to a good start! I thought I'd post some pictures of my garden here to get you oriented to what I've planted. It's always fun to have pictures from the beginning of a garden and I'll be sure to post more when the garden is in full production in August/September. Here are two views of my garden:

 

The picture above shows all the plants expect my tomatoes and one cucumber. In this main part of the garden, I planted potatoes (front left corner), beans, tomatoes, a cucumber, carrots (which I had to replant once), peas, basil, rosemary, chives and green onions. I also planted marigolds, hollyhocks, cosmos and zinnias because I love having fresh flowers. I have a couple volunteer plants from last year that sprung up, including dill, calendula (a flower), snapdragons, a nasturtium, and parsley. As I was weeding today, I pulled up tons of baby hollyhocks and snapdragons that had re-seeded themselves. :) Here's a couple close-ups from the garden:

 

Dottie, my college mentor, and I also decided to try experimenting with straw bale gardening this year. Straw bale gardening was invented as a way to garden successfully even with poor soil. The Mohrlangs have an empty lot next to their house that will be the future home of a Whitworth professor when he gets around to building a house on the lot. In the meantime, he let us use his property for our straw bales. I decided to plant tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and a pepper plant in my straw bales. Here's hoping they thrive! The first picture below is our whole straw bale garden. Dottie's bales have dirt on top of the whole bale while mine just have dirt directly around the plant:

 

A Romanian Rainbow pepper plant:

 

This is a view down the row of bales. You can see a Siletz tomato in the foreground, then a Black Krim tomato, a couple zucchini plants, and English cucumbers at the very end. I also planted two Sun Gold tomato plants given to me by a co-worker, and a lemon cucumber plant.



I love having a garden. I like thinking about God giving Adam the job of stewarding the earth in the Garden of Eden. Gardening is labor intensive (if my sore back after weeding is any indication), but it's also freeing to dig my hands into the dirt after a week of sitting at a desk in front of a computer. It's good to use my hands instead of my head and my whole body instead of just my fingers. Pray with me that my garden grows and that I can be generous with the fruit it bears!

Have you planted a garden this summer? What did you plant?

Fun Halloween/Fall Pictures

Here are some photos from the last week or so, a celebration of fall and Halloween. :) This picture below is a stream at the Finch Arboretum where the Compost Fair was held last Saturday.

 

 

Here's a loaf of bread I made to go with the soup below it, which is Potato Broccoli Cheddar soup. I've been eating both on and off all week (the bread toasted with plenty of butter) and it's been great. A delicious fall meal. 

 

Here is my housemate Heidi and I enjoying fresh-made soup and fresh-made bread on Sunday night in our dining room. The bread was delicious right out of the oven. We each ate a buttered piece with gusto. :)

 

Here are the pumpkins that my housemates Jo, Pam, and Katie carved. Amazing, right? They definitely elevated pumpkin carving to the next level. I only ever carved the traditional Jack O' Lantern, except I'd accidentally knock the teeth out. So I didn't opt to carve a pumpkin this time. Rather, I separated pumpkin goo from seeds and read cookbooks. :)

 

 

My friend Megan brought me this lovely little pumpkin ghost cupcake at work yesterday. It was delicious!

 

I hope your Halloween was blessed. We had 35 trick or treaters and lots of leftover candy, so I would say that's blessed! My housemates and I also had fun dancing, handing out candy, and eating homemade fudge.

 

What did you do for Halloween? What are you enjoying most about fall so far? 

 

Happy November 1st!

American Grown: A Book Review

I've been researching popular Christian blogs at work and noticed that many Christian bloggers write book reviews on their blogs. I thought that'd be a fun thing to do on this blog occasionally. I know many of you love to read and are always looking for good book recommendations. I'd love for you to use the comments section here to recommend your own books or chime in on my review if you've read the book.

This will also help me be accountable to reading more often and blogging more frequently. A win-win situation, right? :o)

I appreciated American Grown right off the bat for two reasons. 1) It celebrates the history of American gardens from the extensive gardens at Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello, to the Victory Gardens of WWII. 2) The book embraces subjects that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike can support because the book is fundamentally about the joys of gardening, eating fresh, local food and the benefits of an active lifestyle.

The book is divided into four main sections: spring, summer, fall and winter. The primary narrative centers on the evolution of Michelle Obama's White House Garden over the past several years. My favorite part of this book was the way the garden involved people and celebrated tradition and diversity. Elementary school kids planted. White House staff tended the garden. Visiting dignataries received honey from the White House beehives and pickled vegetables from the garden. Native Americans taught the "three sisters planting" (planting corn, beans, and winter squash in the same bed). The plants that grow in the garden celebrate culinary traditions from around the country and world. Etc.

Gardens have a great knack for building healthy communities. Besides using the White House garden as an example of this, Michelle highlights community and school gardens that are bringing new life to derelict land, introducing kids to homegrown food, and drawing communities together.  

I also love that a portion of food from the White House garden goes to a local D.C. nonprofit called Miriam's Kitchen that serves the homeless. Michelle writes "[Miriam's Kitchen's] philosophy is that if someone comes and will only get one meal, it should be the very best meal they can have" (132). I love the principle behind that...when someone is in need, we give them the very best we have.

There's a lot more to like about this book, but I'll leave it you to read and discover. It's not an explicitly Christian book, but there is much to enjoy from a Christian perspective, both in affirming the goodness of creation and its higher purpose in helping people enjoy God's good gifts. And now, in the spirit of gardening, here are some pictures from my garden! I was going to show you my first Silvery Fir Tree tomato, but I ate it before I could take the picture. Perhaps that's how it should be. :o)

My first heirloom Bennings Green Tint Scallop summer squash. I grew it from a seed I got from my friend Megan. Here's the description from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed website: "Colorful light green scalloped shaped fruit, tender and good quality; excellent yields, easy to grow. We have grown this variety for many years; an old favorite."

A zinnia I grew from birthday seeds sent to me by my friend Lydia.

A street view of my garden at Dottie's house with the garden sign I bought at the Gresham Farmer's Market two summers ago. The squash is a Long Cheese Squash, supposed to be extra good for pies!

I will post more garden pictures later. I'm proud of my garden this year and thank God that it's actually produced!

Question to ponder from American Grown by Michelle Obama: Have you experienced community around a garden? What did it look like?