The Art of the Garden Salad

There is something about the summer that makes me want to eat salads every night for dinner. There are a couple of reasons why, the first of which is that are so many wonderful fruits and vegetables available and a salad is the easiest way to eat as many of them as possible. It's also a super easy dinner that doesn't involve any "real" cooking (ie. heat) and is light enough that we can eat 9PM without feeling stuffed.

Since starting my new gig at HubSpot, an inbound marketing startup here in Cambridge, I haven't had as much time as I did before to cook. This means I have been making a lot of salads, but it does not mean that JR and I have been suffering. This weekend I combined spicy radishes and sweet pea tendrils from the farmers market with cucumbers, red peppers and red onions for a colorful crunchy side salad. We tossed it with a balsamic parmesan dressing (something my father's college roommate, LV, taught me years ago) and it was scrumptious.


Then last night I made up a salad that I believe has everything wonderful about the summer in it. JR's sister made this for us once last summer and it was all I could do not the eat the whole thing and force the rest of them to starve. It's the perfect combination of fresh farmer's market tomatoes, sweet corn on the cob, spicy red onions and flavorful basil and parsley. You throw them all together with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and it's an amazing combination. We had it with Mustard Garlic Chicken last night and it made me wish it was summer all year long.


Tonight I decided to try something new. The last item in my farmer's market goodie basket was some beautiful baby bok choy. I was planning on sauteing it, like I do every single time I get it. Then my parents came home from a BBQ this weekend and told me that someone used it for a salad. I was intrigued. I love bok choy, but I rarely buy it because as far as I knew there was one recipe and one way to make it. It's possible my life was changed this evening.

I took the bok choy and sliced it thin including both the leafy green parts and the crunchy white stems. I then tossed it with some sliced green onions and a tangy Asian sesame vinaigrette (if I had a recipe I would have made it, but this time I went with store bought) and then sprinkled it with some sesame seeds. This looked so pretty that I had to take a photo, just look at all that crunchy green goodness.


Then I chopped up some left over grilled chicken, a couple of hard boiled eggs and the last heirloom tomato and threw them on top (ok, I didn't throw anything, I strategically placed them to try and make it as pretty as possible.) Before I knew it, I had an amazing Asian Cobb Salad! It's even healthy because I skipped the blue cheese crumbles, bacon and oh-so-amazing ranch dressing that makes a Cobb Salad bad for you!


My only regret was that the toppings covered the colorful green bok choy, but it tasted great and you better believe I will be using bok choy as a salad base much more frequently from now on.

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State of decline

Remember my garden?

It was beautiful! The lettuce tasted great and I had visions of us feeding off it all summer long.

And then it got flooded. So we drilled some wholes in my nice self watering container, so it could drain the excess water out.

Then it got flooded again.


After which it never really managed to come back to life. I think part of the problem was that as the leaves on the trees came in more fully, we had less and less sun. I think our patio gets MAYBE 2 hours of sun a day right now. It just isn't enough to dry out the soil after it rains, or feed the plants.


I managed to get one last harvest out of it. Which was amazing and delicious. Then this past week I thought we were making some progress, and Boston was hit with two CRAZY pounding storms.


My lettuce is done-zo. I am thinking about transplanting the parsley and basil in to the larger container to see if it does a little better. Anyone know if transplanting herbs works?

We had a Monsoon in Boston!

God laughed at me yesterday. I wrote the post about my beautiful beautiful lettuce, and then it rained like a monsoon in the afternoon and DESTROYED MY LETTUCE!

Before I started spooning out all the water I did think to take a photo, it was pretty dark so I am not sure you can see the damage - just in case I added arrows and captions (ohhh fun!)


The whole container was sloppy soupy mud. I guess one down side of the self watering container is when it gets over watered (or flooded by a monsoon) there is no way for the excess water to run off. It needs a hole in the bottom that you can un-plug when there it rains too much. I know that would defeat the purpose of saving all the glorious dirt nutrients, but floating lettuce plants is not the look I was going for.

Today I spent the day dragging the container around to the sunny spots so it could dry out. I think we might be ok. The plants are no longer in nice lines, they are kind of crunched together in one corner. I also added in some more dirt to help sop up the water and replace what I dumped out yesterday. I also cut a nice bowl full of the big leaves for dinner tonight. If everything else rots at least we got two salads from it!

The good news is, God must be reading my blog.

Sweet Lettuce!

I kicked off the Memorial Day weekend by working from home on Friday. It was sunny and warm outside, so on a conference call at noon, I was wandering around my patio enjoying all the green. I decided that some of my lettuce was ready for the picking and thought a salad sounded great. I grabbed some scissors and figured I would just get some of the mesclun, and then couldn't stop myself from picking a nice variety!



Isn't it beautiful!?! I contemplated waiting and sharing it with JR, but I just kept picking at it and snacking on it through my call. I finally decided he could wait for the next salad, and added some sliced shallots and dried cherries. It was wonderful! It didn't even need dressing. The lettuce had so much flavor and was so tender. Like nothing I have ever bought at the store.

We went away for the weekend, and when I checked last night, it looks like we might be due another salad later this week! What fun!

Growth!

When I picked out which herbs to grow in my garden, I specifically stayed away from the catnip. I did this, because as I have shared, we have a pride of wild house cats that roam around our place causing all kinds of problems.

However, today I was checking out my plants and I realized that some of my lettuce leaves were crushed and stamped into the soil. When I looked a little closer I realized there we CAT TRACKS running though my lettuce! One of the cats got up into the container and walked through my lettuce.

The only question now is if they also decided the planter was also the right size and shape for a litter box??

While you all ponder that, here are some great week 1/week 2 comparative photos. Look at how much my lettuce has grown all ready!

Week 1 - Full Garden


Week 2 - Full Garden


Week 1 - Lettuce


Week 2 - Lettuce


P.S. Don't worry too much, if the cat did pee in my garden, I promise not to serve those pieces to you when you come over for dinner. ;-)

Should I import worms?

I spent the last week and half working from home for various reasons and that means no blog posts happened! I am in the office today and I plan to more than make up for it! We had a spectacular weekend full of great things to write about.

Saturday was supposed to be a cold, yucky, rainy day – like much of the last month has been. In the early afternoon is started to clear up a bit and I headed out to Mahoney’s the garden store. As I mentioned before, I want to grow some food this year. I was very inspired and planned to grow lettuce, tomatoes, green beans and 12 different herbs and then spring happened. With spring came leaves and our once sunny patio became a beautiful shady patio. So I revised and on Saturday went to look for some good leafy shade loving plants.


I had already purchased 1 large self watering container which I was saving for my lettuce. I planted 12 baby lettuce plants which I hope keep us in greens for much of the summer. These are leaf lettuce plants, not head lettuce, so in theory I can pull the leaves off the outside, and they keep growing more.


I then went to pick out my herbs. I was planning to do a wide variety of different ones but they had such a variety of my old favorites that I couldn’t help myself. I got 3 basil plants (sweet, Genovese and African Blue) 3 mint plants (apple, grapefruit and peppermint) 2 types of parsley (curly and flat leaved) and one thing of chives.

I got home and the sun was out so the went right ahead and planted everything. I am so excited! I can’t wait to have fresh lettuce for all my salads this summer.


The only question is, aren't all gardens supposed to have worms? should I import some to my containers?

Eat Your Vegetables!

One of my #1 requirements for our apartment here in Boston (right up there with more than 350 square feet, a dishwasher, a washer/dryer, and a parking spot) was outdoor space. Although out place in Brooklyn was less than 2 blocks from a fantastic park, it didn't give me what I needed. I dreamed of barbecuing all year round, and fabulous parties under the stars with pitchers of sangrias and margaritas and most of all a garden.

My desire to get my hands dirty (literally) comes from a couple places. First, I need more foliage in my daily life than I get living in the city. This must stem from my country up bringing, and I figure I need to import green-ery in order to be satisfied. Second, friends of mine in NY have the most beautiful roof top garden of which I am insanely jealous , and third, I know that fresh pick vegetables beat anything you can buy in a grocery store and I am afraid they will be infinitely harder to find here in Boston. In Brooklyn we were near an amazing farmers market where I was able to feed my tomato habit. I just don't know if I can find that here and I am not willing to take the chance that I can't. Last but not least, it's in my blood, check out all my Mom's vegetables way back in the day!


So during the great apartment hunt, this was a requirement and we met it beautifully. Our apartment is a garden apartment, with a brick patio out back and landscaped gardens. We did have to agree, and initial, in our lease to never touch the landscaping, but thats not going to stop me. I have been heavily researching container gardens and think we have the perfect spot for the thriving contain garden filled with vegetables. I just purchased "Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers" by Edward C. Smith, which is proving to be a fascinating read, and exactly what I need to learn about container gardening.

Mr. Smith has conducted some extensive studies on vegetable gardening in self-watering containers and holds that these containers might just be better than the ground for all your vegetable needs. The secret to a self-watering container is that they have a reservoir below the soil to hold up to 16 quarts of water. One of the significant problems when you are gardening is that plants need a lot of water, and frequent watering washes all the nutrients out of the soil. The self-watering container collects both the water and the nutrients so that instead of running into the ground, they are fed right back to the plant's roots. This not only decreases the frequency of waterings, but also frequency of fertilizing.


Based on my research, and the amount of sun we have, I plan to start with 3 large containers which will hold about 40 quarts of soil and 16 quarts of water. The first container will be dedicated to my tomato habit. These large containers can hold two tomato plants maximum. Beginners generally have better luck with starter plants as opposed to starting from seeds. I would like to get two varieties of heirloom tomatoes, but it depends largely on what I am able to find in the garden stores near me.

The second of the two planters will be dedicated to fresh herbs. I love fresh herbs, everything is better with them. A large planter can grow around 12 herb plants, so far I am thinking basil, oregano, mint, dill, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, thyme and chives. Since that is only 9 different herbs, I might throw in more than one type of basil. (Who knew there were types of basil?!?!) The only concern here, is that I believe cilantro does better in the shade than in the sun. It tends to go to seed and produce flowers in the sun, but all the other spices do quite well in the sun. I might have to veto the cilantro in favor of another more sun loving herb, but I haven't read up on the herb gardening yet, so more to come on this.

The third container is the major debate. I am struggling between bush beans, pole beans and a variety of lettuces. I love fresh off the vine green beans. Just about nothing beats them. However, based on my reading, bean plants are only good for a couple rounds of beans and they take up a lot of space, where lettuce keep on coming as long as the weather stays good, and it doesn't take up nearly as much space. JR and I eat a lot of salad, and while I want foliage in my life, I don't want it taking over my patio. At the same time, I really love fresh green beans, to the point that in college we used to do a run that went along a field where green beans were grown. At the end of every run in the fall, I would sit my self down in the field and eat green beans until my stomach felt like it was going to burst. You couldn't keep me away. Decisions, decisions, decisions!

The only sad part about my reading is that I need to wait another couple weeks before I can begin on my growing adventure. I do believe that my food obsession is going to spread from eating, buying and cooking to growing this summer. Be sure to check back as I keep you updated on my progress.