Early Spring Inside The Hoop House {Friday Five}

What's going on inside the hoop house we built? 1) Garden beds of Price Farm Organics soil from City Folks Farm Shop and peat moss over cardboard broken by walking paths of landscape cloth covered by mulch. Alas any gaps between the cardboard and cloth are already growing weeds... 2) Seedlings hardening off on the hardware-cloth shelves. 3) Strawberry plants under the shelves where water drains down from seedlings. 4) Cold-tolerant food like kales, lettuces, and beets. 5) Friends and family hanging out. The hoop house is always warmer than the outside; on the days reaching 70 deg F recently, the hoop house sauna was positively steamy!

Maple Cider Vinegar Kale & Sweet Potatoes ala Skillet {Recipe}

Way back in August when the grass was green and the weather sticky hot, Flying J Farm opened its (barn) doors to host the Shake the Hand that Feeds You dinner benefiting Slow Food Columbus. Alex, Lil, and I attended with our Japanese exchange student Anna.

Chefs from Skillet Rustic. Urban. Food expertly cooked up much of the feast including a lingua appetizer sandwich that helped inspire our sweet heart charcuterie. The family-style meal included a whole roast pig, tomato salad, rosemary potatoes, braised cabbage, and our favorite dish of the night, sweet potatoes and kale.

Chef Casey's pairing of my favorite vegetable, kale, and nutritious sweet potatoes was a new combination to me. Every time I eat at Skillet R.U.F. I am struck by their simple brilliance and want to recreate dishes at home.

Six months after the Flying J dinner, I chopped the last of our homegrown sweet potatoes to share with family on Christmas Eve. I prepped the vegetables early in the day and cooked them together just before guests arrived. I covered the dish to keep warm during cocktails.

The sweet, earthy, toothsome kale and sweet potatoes were a tasty accompaniment to our roast goose and mushroom pie. The leftovers kept well. Alex suggests that these kale and sweet potatoes topped with a poached egg would be an amazing simple dinner. I agree and know this dish will make its way onto a meal plan soon.

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Maple Cider Vinegar Kale & Sweet Potatoes Time: 15 minutes preparation, 20 minutes cooking Makes: 6 side dish servings

1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 red onion, sliced into two-inch pieces 2 cups sweet potato, peeled and diced into one-inch pieces 1 large bunch kale, leaves washed well, removed from ribs, and chopped/torn into large chunks 1-2 teaspoons salt (to taste) 10-20 grinds white pepper (to taste) 1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup 1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add olive oil and onions. 2. When onions have begun to turn translucent, add sweet potatoes and turn up the heat. Cook for 10 minutes, tossing or gently stirring regularly. 3. Add kale pieces, salt, and pepper. Stir gently and reduce heat back to medium. Cook for five minutes or until kale starts to wilt. 4. Pour maple syrup and apple cider vinegar over the mix. Continue cooking until sweet potatoes are cooked through. Serve warm.

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PS. Need a little reassurance that summer will come again? Relive Shake the Hand that Feeds You through pictures.

Added to Simple Lives 76.

Overnight Marinated Kale Salad

I could call this recipe the 'convert kale salad' for all the people who hate kale but love this dish.  It could be named 'Basi Italia Rip-Off' because I first tasted the salad at the elegant Basi Italia restaurant in Columbus and have been recreating it in my kitchen ever since.  Another good title would be 'best salad ever' as someone always declares as much when I serve it.  It is refreshing in summer and useful to make with bountiful local kale in cooler months too.

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Marinated Kale Salad Servings: 10 Time: 15 minutes prep, overnight marination

5-6 cups kale, washed and cut into thin strips.  Any type works; the lacinato or dinosaur kale tastes best.

1/2 cup dried fruit.  Basi uses dried currants; my version has dried cherries

1/2 cup nuts or seeds.  Basi uses pine nuts but since my episode of pine mouth I substitute sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon honey

zest and juice of one lemon

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler (omit and add 1/4 teaspoon salt for a vegan dish)

Mix kale, fruit, lemon zest and seeds in a glass bowl.  In a separate dish, mix lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and honey to make a dressing.  Pour dressing over kale and toss to coat evenly.  Refrigerate overnight or for six hours minimum.  Before serving, toss in Parmesan shavings.

[/print_this] Recipe added to Fight Back Friday.

Kids Cook Green Monster Smoothie and Kale Chips

This week's Kids Cook class was about greens. A great way to talk to kids about healthy eating is to compare foods to a rainbow.  What do you like to eat that is red?  yellow?  green?  Eating colorful foods means you are taking in all the vitamins you need.  We sang a song about the rainbow and shared our favorite colorful foods.

Kids are not known for enjoying deep leafy greens, so we made two easy and tasty recipes: green monster smoothies and kale chips.

First we tasted kale raw.  We pretended we were rabbits because bunnies love leafy greens.  Most kids did not love the flavor but they helped me tear off pieces of kale for the kale chips.

While the chips were roasting, we made green monster smoothies.  Really just a simple fruit and vegetable smoothie, adding the word 'monster' to anything makes kids enjoy it a little more.

Finally we read the beautifully illustrated engaging book In the Garden: Who's Been Here?.

More Kids Cook classes will be presented throughout the month.  Please come join us!

Green Monster Smoothie

1 cup ice

1 cup packed raw spinach

1/2 cup apple cider

1/2 banana

Combine in blender until smooth.  Add a little more cider if necessary to facilitate ice crushing.  Makes one adult or two kid size portions.

Kale Chips

1 large bunch fresh kale

salt, pepper, olive oil

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

Remove the leaves from the stems and wash thoroughly.

Place the kale in a single layer on a cookie sheet drizzled with olive oil.

Put a bit more olive oil on top and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until kale is crispy and a tiny bit browned.

Enjoy Backyard Vegetables through the Fall

Many people put their garden beds to rest after the tomatoes have ripened, but that need not be the case.  Now is the time to plan and prepare for fall vegetable garden plantings, also called succession planting.  It's a great time to start gardening even if you've never grown food for yourself! If you want to enjoy fresh vegetables from your garden through the fall, start with preparing your soil.

For beds used in the summer, turn them over and add a little fresh compost.  For new beds or containers, fill with fresh soil mixed with some compost.

Next up is seed selection.  My number one rule for picking seeds is 'grow what you like'.  Columbus locals can still find seeds at Zettler Hardware, garden centers, and clintonville community market.  It is perfectly OK to reuse seeds from the spring too.

You can try growing any cool-loving vegetable with a fairly short (45-60 day) maturity.  Any of my suggestions below will grow well in containers, provided they are fairly deep (8 inches minimum, more for root vegetables). This year I will grow:

lettuce*

spinach*

kale (Kale is actually even sweeter in fall plantings.  Swoon.)

swiss chard

broccoli

endive

carrots*

beets*

herbs* (great for containers that can move indoors after first frost)

*=successfully planted in fall in previous seasons

Other vegetables that would probably work but I don't love or don't have space for are kohlrabi, cabbages, turnips, radishes, endive, broccoli, and cauliflower.

When you have your seeds, it's time to plant!  Use your seed packet and calculate the planting date by subtracting days to maturity from first frost date.  In Columbus, the average first frost is in the first week of October.  I will start seeding in mid August.

Water well just after direct seeding and keep watered until you see seedlings appear.  Then, water when the soil is dry below 1/2 inch under the surface.

Harvest leaf vegetables (lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, etc.) by cutting leaves regularly.  After you cut, they will continue to produce new leaves.

Root vegetables can be left in the ground until a solid frost.  I hear that some people actually put straw down and just dig out their carrots and beets all winter long.  I prefer to pick them after a certain point, don't wash, and store in plastic bags in the refrigerator.  Carrots lasted for months this way last year!!

With our plans, I hope to still be eating greens and other goodies through November at least.  What are you planting?

I have a few more fall planting posts in the works.  Check back or subscribe to the Hounds in the Kitchen feed for info about garlic, strawberries, and putting the beds to rest.

Favorite CSA discovery

One of the pleasures of CSA membership is receiving produce that we would never choose for ourselves.  It forces us to learn how to cook and eat different things.  Somethings we agree we wouldn't choose to purchase again, but some things have become favorites. My current favorite CSA vegetable is kale.  We will be seeding kale in our garden this weekend because I love it so much.  It is super high in vitamins K, A, and C, low in calories, and contains organosulpher phytonutrients, substances believed to prevent cancer.  It is so sweet that Lil calls it 'rabbit food' and can be convinced to eat it raw.

Sometimes we throw kale in a salad or soup.  It is delicious sauteed just to wilting with a little olive oil or butter.

Tonight I tried baked kale thanks to recommendations from friends.  I removed the leaves from the stems (saving stems in freezer for veggie stock) and washed them.  Then I drizzled a cookie sheet with olive oil, laid the kale in one layer, put a bit more olive oil on top and sprinkled with salt and pepper.  I baked at 250 deg for a about 20 minutes.

The result is a sweet crispy chip.  We ate it with dinner and are finishing off the leftovers right now.  Yum!

What is your favorite CSA discovery?  How do you love to prepare it?