Friday Favorite April 30, 2010: Grace Notes from the Garden Blog

I don't have much to say about this week's Friday Favorite except this is a great blog my husband discovered and I have really been enjoying it. Check it out!

Grace Notes from the Garden

In full bloom!

I had some gorgeous iris bloom that have not bloomed in a couple of years. My roses have bloomed. The basil in my herb garden bloomed. There are Asiatic lilies and gladiolus coming up all over the flower garden, and the kitty memorial garden has really filled out and is blooming beautifully.



My broccoli, brussel sprouts, cucumbers, okra, squash, and zucchini are all getting big. The strawberries are doing well and I think I only lost a couple of plants but I am not pulling them up yet, because they may just be slower to put out foliage than the others.

My corn is about 4 inches high so I am finally planting it this weekend weather permitting (it is supposed to rain so we'll see what happens). The eggplant is still too small to put in the ground, I am afraid if I did it now it would not make it because they are so delicate at this point, so I am going to give them another week or two to grow.

My pink girl tomato plant has several blooms. I am so excited, I can't wait for tomatoes to start coming in! Also my blueberry bushes have lost all of their blooms and replaced them with actual blueberries!





My kids planted butter beans at school and so I need to make room in the garden to plant them as well. Don't know how much we'll get from the 2-3 plants, but I think it is sweet that the kids want their bean plants in the garden!
My yard is also in full bloom, mostly clover...because of work and weather it's been almost 2 weeks since it has been cut, but my husband will be getting to that tonight or this weekend if the rain holds off. I like the clover flowers though, they are pretty. Reminds me of the days in my childhood sitting amongst the clover making clover chains and crowns and jewelry from the flowers, and every so often running into a lucky four leaf clover.

Recipes From the Garden: Sauteed Talapia with Garden Fresh Herbs

My hubby dubbed this dish "Delicious Fishes".
I used Talapia but this marinade would be good on any light fish such as Bream, Cod, or Bass.
Great alternative to the traditional Southern fried fish dinner.

Ingredients:
Talapia Filets (1 per serving)
4 Tbsps Olive Oil
2 Cloves Garlic-minced
1/4 cup dry white wine
Salt and pepper (to taste)
1 Tbsp Fresh Rosemary chopped
1 Tbsp Fresh Oregano chopped
1 Tbsp Fresh Basil chopped

Directions:
1. Mix two Tbsp olive oil, garlic, wine, and herbs in a large bowl
2. Marinate the Fish in the herb mixture for at least 30 minutes
3. Add 2 Tbsp olive oil to a pan and heat.
4. Add the fish to the hot pan and sear both sides adding salt and pepper to taste
5. Pour remaining marinade onto seared fish and continue cooking until wine has evaporated and fish is cooked through
6. Serve Immediately.

Friday Favorite April 23, 2010: Yew Dell Gardens

Yew Dell Gardens is a botanical garden in Crestview, Kentucky. I stumbled upon it accidentally as I was trying to find some gardening information, and instantly became fascinated with this gorgeous botanical gardens. I hope to visit it one day. The gardens are filled with gorgeous blooms, some very recognizable and others that are more unusual or rare. It has several unique and lovely buildings including a "castle" and would be a perfect location for a garden wedding. They offer classes and workshops, a concert series, and many different events throughout the year. If you are nearby it would be worth your while to check it out. The photos are stunning and I am sure the gardens in person would be just as beautiful as they appear in the photos.

"The site now occupied by Yew Dell Gardens served as the home, gardens, arboretum and commercial nursery of the late commercial nurseryman Theodore Klein who was for more than 50 years, one of the leaders of the regional nursery and landscape industry. Opened to the public in 2005, Yew Dell is now one of only 13 American gardens designated as Partnership Gardens by the Garden Conservancy, a national group dedicated to preserving America's exceptional gardens. Yew Dell Gardens serves the community as a significant educational resource, a distinctive horticultural treasure, and a priceless cultural asset."

Recipe: Asian Wok Seared Lamb with Cilantro salad and Stir Fried Zucchini

OK, so I bought the zucchini this time, but hopefully there will be zucchini in the garden this summer (I have 8 plants in the ground) and I will be making this with my own and not store bought. The cilantro in this recipe was from my herb garden.
I came up with this recipe after eating at a chain restaurant that we do not have locally. My kids love this and it is a great meal for any occasion and can be made with beef as well as lamb.

I also usually make Asparagus Stir Fry to go with it but as luck would have it, it was on sale at the store and they were all out. So I decided to try it with zucchini and it was a winner!
Cilantro Salad

Ingredients:

1 head of romaine lettuce chopped finely
1/4 cup of cilantro chopped finely
Directions:

1. Mix romaine and cilantro in a large bowl until well blended.2. Remove from bowl onto serving tray. Set aside.


Asian Wok Seared LambIngredients:

1 pound of lamb cut into bite size pieces (can cut from leg of lamb, or chops)
1 Tbsp sesame oil
3/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp Cilantro chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, minced

Directions:
1. Mix the soy sauce, and sesame oil in a large bowl
2. Marinate the lamb in the soy sauce mixture for 15-30 minutes turning to coat well (can be left in fridge over night to marinate if desired.)
3. Place marinated lamb into preheated hot wok and sear until browned, draining off any excess liquid to allow for searing.
4. Add garlic and cilantro cook for two minute stirring occasionally.
5. Place fully cooked lamb on top of cilantro salad, and serve immediately.

Zucchini Stir Fry

Ingredients:

3 Cups Zucchini julienned or chopped
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp ginger1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1 tsp soy sauce (more or less to taste)
2 cloves of garlic minced

Directions:

1. Preheat wok and add sesame oil.
2. Add zucchini, and cook for a couple of minutes until zucchini begins to get slightly limp.3. Add remaining ingredients, and cook for additional 1-2 minutes stirring continually, be sure you do not over cook or the zucchini will become mushy.
4. Serve immediately

Garden is In the Ground....Almost

This was a big weekend, arts festival and football scrimmage Saturday, and Sunday we spent all afternoon finishing the garden. Daniel edged it to prevent any other mishaps with the phone line, and we incorporated top soil, peat, and compost. We got almost everything planted that was big enough. The corn and eggplant are still too small, I am afraid if I plant them now they won't make it, but hopefully in a couple of weeks they will be big enough.

I still have to set out the squash and zucchini, but the bed is ready for them, it is just a matter of when I can find the time.

Internet is fixed

My internet and phone line is fixed so when I get off of work, finish dinner, and homework, I will be spending tonight posting pics to the blog posts. My baby plants are getting so big, I really need to get them in the ground!

Hopefully my hubby and I can get a raised bed together this weekend weather permitting, and I can plant things. I am not sure because we were going to go to an arts festival in town, but we'll see, it has to get done sooner rather than later.

Friday Favorite April 16, 2010

Today's Friday Favorite is a blog and web community called You Grow Girl created by Gayla Trail. She is a writer, photographer, and graphic designer with a background in the fine arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author of several books, and has been on popula radio, and television shows.

I really enjoy her website and read it every week. It is fun, entertaining, informative, and I appreciate the laid back approach to gardening as that is the way that I choose to garden myself.

The community was created in February 2000 and has grown since then. She describes it as

" ...a thriving online community that speaks to a new kind of gardener, seeking to redefine the modern world relationship to plants. This contemporary, laid-back approach to gardening places equal importance on environmentalism, style, affordability, art, and humour."

The topics she write about span from house plants to vegetable gardens and just about anything else you can think of on the topic of gardening of course. There are forums where you can write about your gardening experiences or ask questions. There is also a store which sells super cute items such as accessories, books, buttons, posters, stationary, and tee shirts.

I enjoy reading her features on specific plants, some which are common plants and other that are more rare, and I like looking at the photos in the garden show and tell section as well as reading the forums and blog posts.

Her gardens are very pretty and incorporate recyclable and reusable art in unique ways. She is also an outspoken advocate of sustainable living, community, urban gardening, and growing food. She really focuses on urban gardening and gardening in small spaces which is helpful for those of you living in apartments or rental property where you don't have a whole lot of room to have an outdoor dug garden. She may be a little controversial for some of you readers, but it is definitely worth taking a look at her great site.

Recipe: Italian Bread with Herb Butter Spread

This recipe is time consuming because you have to wait for the bread to rise, but the payoff is well worth it in the end! My whole family loved this with the herb butter spread, and also with fresh local honey.
Italian Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast(or 2 packs)
  
• 6-8 cups bread flour
• unsalted butter
• all purpose corn meal
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 egg white
• 1 tablespoon salt

Directions:
1. Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl.
2. Add the yeast to the warm water and let it stand for about 10 minutes.
3. Stir in 2 cups of flour, and beat well.
4. Add the salt.
5. Gradually beat or knead in all but about 2 cups of the flour.
6. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and cover with a clean dish towel.
7. Let it rest 10 minutes.
8. Knead by hand until dough is elastic, kneading in as much of the remaining flour as necessary for smooth dough.
9. Butter a large mixing bowl.10. Place the dough in the buttered bowl, turning the dough to get all sides buttered.
11. Cover bowl with a slightly damp dish cloth and let rise undisturbed for about 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk. (I like to use my cold oven or microwave to sit it in so it is undisturbed.)
12. Punch down dough and let rise about 1 hour longer.
13. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface.
14. Divide the dough in half and form each portion into a ball.
15. Cover with a dish cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
16. Roll each half of the dough into a rectangle about 1/2-inch thick.
17. Roll up tightly, and roll with hands until loaf is 10 to 11 inches long.
18. Place loaves seam side down on buttered bread pans which have been sprinkled with cornmeal.19. Place pans in in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour, until doubled in bulk.
20. Place a shallow pan on bottom rack of oven; fill with boiling water.
21. Bake loaves in center of oven preheated to 375° for 20 minutes.
22. Add 1 tablespoon of water to egg white in a bowl and beat lightly; brush over and along sides of loaves.
23. Continue baking for 20 minutes longer, or until well-browned and done.

Herb Butter Spread

Ingredients:

1 stick unsalted butter1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh rosemary cut finely
1 tsp fresh sweet basil cut finely
1 tsp fresh oregano cute finely

Directions:
1. Let the butter sit in a warm area to soften.
2. Once the butter is soft enough to mash easily with a fork, add the salt and herbs
3. Use the fork to mix all of the ingredients together until you get a smooth spread like consistency and all the herbs are evenly incorporated.
4. Keep in a sealed container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Recipes From the Garden!

I made the best Italian bread with an herb butter spread this week, and I have decided that I should share this tasty stuff with you, so every week I will post a recipe that I have made, hopefully it will contain something from my garden, but if it is a great recipe, I may include it just for fun.

One of my hobbies is cooking and I really enjoy it and have over the years become a pretty good cook. I cook everything from traditional Southern comfort food, gourmet food, to ethnic food from around the world. My husband and I are very experimental and we like to try a lot of different foods. I love to cook great tasting, healthy food from scratch.

I am sure the first few weeks will be things I have made with my herb garden, and a few things I made last year which probably won't have pictures, but I promise were very tasty. Of course, when the veggies start coming in I will be able to really play around with cooking different things and being creative in the kitchen with my garden veggies.

I would love you to share your experiences with me if you make any of my recipes, good or bad!

Bloopers and Blunders!

Recently I asked my readers to send in gardening oopsies and bloopers, so that I can be convinced that I am not the only one who has these gardening blunders.

Well, I have a doozie of one to share. This is my own oopsie, not one that was sent in and I have to apologize for this one because there will not be any pictures uploaded to my blog for awhile while I do not have phone and internet at the house.

My hubby was preparing the last of the garden spot yesterday while I was baking bread and making dinner. He hit and cut the phone/internet line, and they are supposed to come repair it by Thursday April 15. In the mean time, we have no phone and no DSL.

So I can update from work, but no pics until home internet is fixed!

Exciting Announcement...Friday Favorites!

I am excited to announce a feature I promised was coming. Every Friday I will post about a plant, product, garden, or gardener that I find, useful, interesting, inspiring, or fun! I am calling it Friday Favorites! Today's Friday Favorite happens to be a gardener and his garden!

If you live in Mississippi (or some parts of Alabama and Louisiana), Listen to Mississippi Public Broadcasting (aka MPB), or are from Mississippi State University, then you have probably heard of this guy. I emailed him awhile back to ask if it would be ok to blog about him, after all I don't want to be sued, and I finally heard back from him last night. I have been a fan of him, his radio show, and his garden for awhile now, and I feel honored he gave me permission to write about him on my little blog.

Today's Friday Favorite is non other than the Gestalt Gardener himself,
Felder Rushing. If you live in the MPB listening area, you can hear the Gestalt Gardener Fridays at 9:00 am. with rebroadcast on Saturday at 10:00 am. If you are not where you can listen to his show on MPB, you canonline.

According to the bio on his website,

"Felder Rushing is a 10th-generation American gardener whose pioneer ancestors settled across the Southeast, bringing many plants with them. Rushing's overstuffed, quirky cottage garden has been featured in many TV programs and magazines (including a cover of Southern Living), and includes a huge variety of weather-hardy plants along with a collection of folk art. There is no turfgrass, just plants, yard art, and "people places."".

He has written or or co-written

"15 gardening books (including several national award winners) and former Extension Service urban horticulture specialist has written thousands of gardening columns in syndicated newspapers, and has had hundreds of articles and photographs published in regional and national garden magazines, including Garden Design, Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, and the National Geographic."

"Felder has been featured three times in full-length articles in the New York Times. He has hosted a television program that was shown across the South, and appeared many times on other TV garden programs.

He has served many years as a distinctly non-stuffy board member of the American Horticulture Society, national director of the Garden Writers Association, and member of the National Youth Gardening Committee. Felder gives over a hundred lectures a year, coast to coast and overseas at flower shows, horticultural and plant society meetings, and Master Gardener conferences."

Felder's gardens are lovely, colorful, whimsical, and unique. There are things in his gardens that will suit just about everyone's taste. The gardens portray a light hearted, playful, whimsical joy, and are decorated with everything from traditional asthetically pleasing objects, to more non-traditional ones that might just make you wonder, "What was he thinking?".

Whatever your personal tastes, when you see his gardens, you can not deny that they are great displays using natural and man made items in harmony with one another as unique, inspiring, avant garde, and mesmerizing pieces of art.

Felder is university educated and specializes in turf grass, but you won't see much if any grass in his cottage garden. Many varieties of plants, statuary, and water featured adorn the garden. Bottle trees shine and glisten in the sun, and the porch roof, is actually a rainwater collector.

Felder also sports a rolling garden in the back of his truck.
Known as his truck garden, he actually drives around with the garden in the back of the pick up truck. Such a great way of always being close to something you love, don't you think?

Felder gives great advice to everyone from the beginner or novice gardener all the way to master gardeners. He believes that you can garden any way you like, there are no rules of gardening, if you like it, it will grow where you live, and you can keep it alive, then it is fine with him to do it. So what if you plant corn in your front yard. As Tim Gunn on Project Runway would say "Make it work!" Be creative, artistic, and go for it, after all, you never know if it works for your garden if you don't try it.

This year I am taking Felder's no rules approach to heart and attempting to grow several plants and vegetables that I have never grown before. A few newcomers to my garden are carrots, eggplant, brussel sprouts, broccoli, corn, and miniature dahlias.

Productive Weekend!

We got a lot done this weekend! I set out the strawberries and tomatoes that I have (still waiting on some tomato plants that I ordered to get here). I like heirloom tomatoes, it is what I grew up with, so that is what I plant. I am not big on whether or not my plants are hybrid or not, and I tend to shop around until I find a variety that works and then stick with it. I am using the same variety of squash, and okra, growing them from seed. I am also using some of the tomatoes I used last year. I could not find one of the varieties of tomato, and my grandparents gave me some of their seedlings last year so I guess those two varieties I won't have, but I did find some heirlooms similar to what I got from them, so I hope they work out. The hubby has done a good job preparing the soil and turning the garden spot, we almost have the extension we wanted finished.

I also finished designing, planting, and mulching the Kitty Memorial garden.
Our pet cat, Mr. Kitty passed away this winter and he was the first pet that my kids have lost (besides fish). They wanted to do something special, and the flower garden with the memorial garden stone looks very pretty. I think it was a sweet idea and really like how it turned out. There is a miniature rose, petunias, miniature dahlias, and pansies.

All of my seeds except the corn and eggplant have sprouted. I need to try and transplant the squash into bigger pots soon, they really took off. I'll probably have monster squash plants again this year. Last year they were nearly as tall as me, and taller then the kids. HUGE!!! My blueberry bushes have tons of buds on them and so do my roses. My lilies have sprouted and my irises have spread like wildfire this year, I was surprised to see so many of them. I hope they bloom this year, they did not bloom last year and the year before, they only had a couple of blooms.
I promise to take a lot more pictures of the garden this year.
I already have some pics of the seedlings, memorial garden, and vegetable garden spot so far, and will post them later tonight.