Organic Dino Kale

On my way to work a couple days ago, I noticed one of my neighbors was giving away a bunch of "organic dino kale" in his/her driveway.  It was written on the pavement in chalk, "free organic dino kale" with arrows pointing to the plants. They were whole plants with roots and dirt attached to them. I was walking to work, so I didn't have time to take any.  I told myself that if they were still available on my way home, I would take a few. A few hours later, as I walked home for lunch, they were still there so I picked a couple of them with less dirt. I put them in a bucket of rainwater in the yard for the time being.

Today I finally have some time to work in the garden, so I planted them in one of the sunny spots. I had clear out all the weeds and dead plants a few weeks ago. It was the perfect spot, and Cracus of course had to check them out. I think he would eat it if I handed him some kale leaves. I clipped off some kale leaves so the newly planted plants wouldn't be too top heavy.  The kale leaves were chopped up and added to my big pot of combination korma curry for dinner.

I finally have some vegetables in the garden!

Hobbiton, Matamata, New Zealand

Ever since I saw The Lord of the Rings in 2001, I knew I wanted to visit Middle Earth, a.k.a. New Zealand. It's hard to believe that was 13 years ago!  Now I made my way to Hobbiton. The excitement had my blood pumping and heart beating fast. The whole time I was in Hobbiton, I was so overheated that I didn't need a jacket. The weather's kind of interesting here. It's almost tropical as it would rain for five minutes and then the sun would come out for a couple hours. It would then start raining again for a few more minutes and repeat.

The vegetable garden in Hobbiton

It took about three hours of driving to get from Auckland to Matamata.  I took InerCity bus to get there and back. The tour lasts for 2 hours. As I stepped off the tour bus, I just couldn't stop smiling. On the way there, I met up with one LoR fanatic from Norway. He had watched the movie in the theater for 87 times when it was released! He was able to answer almost all the questions our tour guide quizzed us. The only one he couldn't answer was answered by me!  I was very impressed with all the vegetable patches in Hobbiton. They are real vegetables. You know I can tell that sort of thing. The tour guide explained that they have several full time gardeners to tend the vegetable patches to make sure they always look nice.

The one question the guide asked that was answered correctly by me was who lives in the hobbit hole with the yellow door pictured below. It's Sam, Frodo's loyal companion. The very last stop of the tour was Green Dragon Inn, which is a real operating tavern in Hobbiton. The tour included one complimentary drink. I had ginger beer which is what kids get since it's non-alcoholic. I felt a little sad as I got back on the tour bus to leave Hobbiton, but I look forward to visit more LoR film locations in Wellington.

Sam's home

Prior to my trip I took some time to upload The Lord of the Rings soundtrack to my phone. As we were walking around The Shire, I had to play Concerning Hobbits at the same time while taking a short video clip. This might be the only opportunity for me to do this ever.

Veggie Patch on Central and Lexington

I enjoy walking around my neighborhood with Kelsey. This morning as I walked pass Central and Lexington, I noticed this little vegetable patch right on the side walk. Despite of its small size, it has a combination of vegetables growing in it, and everything is as big as it can possibly get. I recognized my favorite eggplants in the middle immediately. There are also green onions, chili peppers, shungiku (garland chrysanthemum), Swiss chard, etc. 

I was just amazed at how many different edible plants could fit in that little patch of soil. You can make a good meal out of these vegetables. This patch is located just a block from El Cerrito Plaza BART station, so I think the local deer don't travel to this area; otherwise, I am sure these vegetables would be consumed by deer already.
 

Flowers, Seeds, and Cooking Dinosaur Kale

Snow pea flower

It's been raining on a regular basis for the last few weeks in the Bay Area. I have taken every chance I got in between the rain to check on the plants and take a few pictures. The snow peas are flowering and some pea pods are growing.

I often leave some leafy vegetables to flower for the bees and the seeds. I am still learning different seeds and how to collect them. Speaking of seeds, this Friday, March 4, 2011, from 7 - 9 PM, is the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library's 12th Annual Seed Swap at the Ecology Center at 2530 San Pablo Ave and Dwight Way on the SW corner of the intersection in Berkeley. Please see Ecology Center's event calendar for details on cost if you are interested in going.

dinosaur kale

I have one big plant of dinosaur kale. One seed got mixed in with my spinach seeds last year. While all the spinach from last year are long gone, the kale has kept on growing and thriving. Now it is flowering. I just recently found out it is commonly called "dinosaur" kale. It's a fitting name for its appearance. I had no idea how to cook it, and honestly, it didn't look all that appetizing although I was sure this dark green leafy vegetable has to be highly nutritious.

My opportunity came when I brought home the leftover Szechwan spicy boiled fish fillet from China Village Restaurant. By the way, that dish is excellent if you are into tongue numbing super spicy Chinese food. What I brought home was mostly that garlicky super spicy sauce, and I thought, why not cook a bunch dinosaur kale leaves in it? 

It was so good, and I am not sure how I did it but I ate it all - kale and all the sauce. Just typing it makes my face start to perspire and mouth water. The lesson here is that if you are not sure how to cook something, cook it in some leftover sauce/broth that you love.

calla lilies

All the calla lilies are blooming in the front and back gardens. They come back every year and are a sure sign of spring that's just around the corner.

I have made several jars of pickled daikon. There are more daikons and some of them have started to flower. I am not sure whether the flowers will produce seeds. I will find out after the flowers die off.

Daikon flowers

Pack Your Lunch and Share With a Friend

I pack my own lunch for the cubicle job almost everyday. When I first started working at this company, they provided free lunch. The facility doesn't have a cafeteria. They would make 2 purchases each week for a combination of bread, packaged salad, deli meats, canned soup, frozen entrees, fresh fruits, and other packaged lunchables. I grew up eating very little pre-packaged food, so it was somewhat exciting for me. I wanted to try everything. In less than three months I had gained enough weight that I couldn't fit into the same jeans I had been wearing from college days.

Sauteed green beans, cherry and grape tomatoes, onion, and lemon basil with a splash of balsamic vinegar

Then there came budget cuts and the free lunch stopped. My waistline was saved. I resumed packing my own lunch. The discontinuation of free lunch was a difficult adjustment for long time employees who never had to pay or pack lunch. I befriended Rosa, who had a hard time with the new lunch situation. Now it has been over a year, and we often do lunch share. She usually brings a meat or fish dish. I bring vegetables and fruit from the farm. We have very different cooking styles, so it is always interesting to try each other's dishes.

We could easily walk down the street and buy something for lunch, but eating out isn't as much fun when you don't want to spend an hour, unpaid, for lunch. We share our food in the lunch room for 30 minutes and get to leave the cubicles earlier to enjoy life.

By the way, shortly after the free lunch stopped, I was able to fit into my old jeans again.

Pickled Japanese Cucumbers

Overgrown Japanese cucumber

Japanese cucumbers can be found in Asian grocery stores. I planted a bunch of them earlier this year, but most of the young plants were consumed by pill bugs. I ended up with only one surviving plant, and I was able to harvest a few cucumbers to make the pickles. This is the kind of pickle similar to what you get in Japanese or Korean restaurants as an appetizer or garnish.

You can make the pickles by cutting them into chunks or slice them thin. I decided to make a jar of thinly sliced pickles.

After you are done slicing them in a non-reactive bowl, such as glass or ceramic, put some salt over the cucumber and mix them together. The salt will make the bitterness sweat out from the cucumbers. Put the sliced cucumbers mixed with salt in the fridge for at least an hour. I left mine in there for over 5 hours.

When you take the bowl out, you will see liquid in there. Dump the bitter salty water out and rinse the cucumber slices with water. I sliced some lemon to put them on the side of my pickle jar before transferring the cucumber slices into the jar. You can stick the lemon slices in there later if that's easier. After all the sliced cucumbers are piled up in the jar, I fill the jar with some Japanese rice vinegar, a little sugar, salt, lemon juice, chili flakes, and water. You can adjust any of these seasonings to your taste. I like my pickles a little sweet, so I put in 1 table spoon of sugar. I put in just enough rice vinegar to fill about half way then add water to cover the cucumbers. Make sure that you leave room on top as the cucumbers may produce more liquid. After you are done assembling the pickle jar, put it back in the fridge overnight.

I tried a slice of pickled cucumbers this morning. So refreshing!

Baby Eggplants!

I love eggplants, and I am a little obsessed with eggplant dishes. It can be cooked in any form and ethnicity, and it's all excellent! Whenever I am in a restaurant and can't decide what to get, I'll just pick the eggplant dish - eggplant parmesan, Baghara Baigan (Indian), Pud Makua Yow (Thai), eggplant tempura, eggplant in garlic sauce (Chinese), eggplant hummus, etc.

Every year I try to grow eggplant. Sometimes I try to grow from seeds, other times I get 4-inch plants from local nurseries. So far I have very little success with them. Sometimes they die off completely. Sometimes, I get one or two tiny eggplants. I never got enough to actually make a dish with them. I planted 8 4-inch eggplants back in mid-April. Pill bugs love eating their leaves. For a while I thought none of them survived. I was surprised to see them bloom over a month ago. I was happy just to see the purple flowers. A couple days ago, I was delighted to see these little eggplants growing under those tattered leaves.

Japanese Cucumbers

Growing Japanese cucumbers has been a challenge this year. I have started planting them as 4-inch seedlings since March. Each time they were devoured by pill bugs. In late June, I bought another Japanese cucumber seedling with a couple melon seedlings, and they were attacked by a bird that was trapped in the garage overnight. I had to spend weeks to nurse them in the green house before planting them outside. This time, it has been able to flourish despite of limited sunlight and heat. Miraculously the wine barrel with the cucumber and melons is pill bug free.

I grow Japanese cucumbers for pickling. The pickles are great for hot summer days although we are not having too many hot days this summer.

Second Generation Potatoes

Wine barrel potatoes fertilized with Dusty's litter box contents

Back during last week of December 2009 I planted my first batch of potatoes. Although they have been quite low maintenance, I have wondered whether it was cost effective to grow a vegetable that is so cheap to buy. After I started harvesting the potatoes, I have replanted some tiny potatoes to regenerate them. Now the second generation is growing in one of my wine barrel planters.

Tiny potatoes on the left were planted in the wine barrel

I very much enjoy digging for new potatoes. Apparently, I really enjoy digging into dirt for "treasures" (see Wild Mushrooms Photo Album). Additionally, I recently found out that commercially grown non-organic potatoes consistently contain pesticide residues. It is one of the top 12 worst offenders. The full list is on Environmental Working Group (EWG) website. Now I am quite happy with the constant supply of new potatoes right on the farm.

More second generation potatoes are sprouting in the raised bed

Late Summer, Late Tomatoes

Early Girls, Husky Cherry (the tiniest tomato), Yellow Grapes, and Green Beans

I planted 5 varieties of tomatoes on March 29, 2010.  They were Early Girl, Roma, Yellow Grape, Yellow Cherry, and Red Husky Cherry.   It's now August, and the Early Girls are just started to turn red. They are quite sweet, but did they take forever to grow!   Last year at this time, I had a huge yellow cherry tomato bush covered with orange little tomatoes.  They were so ripe that they turned orange!  I had so many little orange tomatoes, I was giving them away.

Early Girl

This year, I am just now started picking Early Girl tomatoes on a daily basis, but the plants are already drying up.  I have picked 2-4 Yellow Grape, Yellow Cherry, and Red Husky.   I have yet to pick any Roma tomatoes.  Last year I was able to make some tomato sauce with home grown tomatoes.  I hope that I'll have enough tomatoes to make it again.

Red Husky Cherry

Zucchini

I have continuous success growing zucchini for a couple years now. The blossoms are great for deep frying with cheese stuffed inside. If you are going to eat the blossoms, make sure that you pick the male flowers. The picture above shows a female flower with a zucchini on one end (upper flower) and a male flower with just a skinny stem on the end (lower flower).


The zucchini I grow are small. I think that's because I am not giving them enough room. I also get blossom end rot frequently. You can see a rotting zucchini in the picture above right underneath the male flower. If I catch those rotting zucchini early enough, I just cut the rotted ends off and eat them.

Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the developing fruit. So either the plant is not absorbing enough calcium from the soil or the soil doesn’t have enough calcium in it to start with. The solution is to get a PH soil test kit and test your soil. If it is lacking calcium, the solution would be to add calcium to your soil.

If the test shows the soil is okay, then you can increase nutrient uptake to the roots of the plant by mulching and adding compost/organic matter to your soil.

Harvesting Green Onion Seeds

Most of green onions on the farm were grown from store bought onions. Green onions (a.k.a. scallions) you get from grocery stores come with roots. If you save about 2-3 inches from above the roots and stick them in the soil, they will start to grow. You will then have endless supply of green onions.

They will flower and each pompom looking flower is actually a cluster of small flowers. Bees love onion flowers. I often wonder what onion blossom honey tastes like. After the flowers dry up, you will see little black specks of seeds in each tiny flower. Each cluster of flowers probably produces nearly 100 seeds depending on the size.


I have grown some green onions from seeds. They grew very slowly in compare to just planting the roots from store bought onions. However, you do get more tender green onions if you grow them from seeds. I am collecting various seeds for the next seed exchange gathering in the fall.

What Can't You Fry?

Fritz Fry was such a success at Solstice Convergence that I decided to do it again for the herb class. I brought in my deep fryer and some farm fresh produce. I had to make some onion rings just like how my college roommate/best friend used to make - with panko (Japanese style bread crumbs).


I had everything prepped and lined up just the way I wanted. There were onion rings, button mushrooms, green beans, sliced red potato, sliced zucchini, sliced yellow squash, and other assorted sliced squash. Everything was dipped in flour first, egg wash second, and then rolled in panko before dropped into hot (~375 degrees) oil.


Master Ken suggested that I experiment with different herbs and edible flowers. I deep fried some lavender blossoms, zucchini blossoms stuffed with mushroom and garlic or strawberry, mushrooms rolled in panko with fresh rosemary, rose pedals sandwiched between zucchini slices, mint leaves sandwiched between squash slices, and a bunch assorted edible flowers. Basically I was deep frying everything in different ways I could put them together.

I couldn't sample everything, but everything I fried was consumed by someone. It felt festive with all the mixed aroma in the air and colorful fried goodies to share. I was glad that I wasn't asked to fry bugs.

Green Beans

It's becoming a tradition for me to grow green beans in late spring when snow peas season is about over. Green beans are easy and fast to grow. Occasionally I had some problems with aphids but I would still get plenty of beans.

For the last two years, I started the seeds inside of the garage, my other makeshift green house. This year I just planted the seeds outside in a half wine barrel. I covered it with a protective net for the first month just to prevend birds or squirrels to get in there to eat the seeds.


Once the beans start growing, you just need to water them about every other day or even a little less. In less than 3 months, you will have fresh tender beans to pick right from your garden. I love green beans for their versatility. You can blanch or steam them and sprinkle a little sea salt as a meal. If you like butter, add some butter.

You can stir fry them with some garlic, chili, and soy sauce. If you are really craving for some fat, you can coat them in buttermilk batter and deep fry them. They are so good that you can eat a big plate as a meal.

The Dinner Basket

I have collected many baskets over the years. Each of them is used for a different purpose. This small round basket is my meal basket that I keep next to the fridge. This evening I cut some Bloomsdale spinach, broccoli de cicco, and green onion for my noodle soup.

Both spinach and broccoli are my favorite greens. I am happy with the result of growing both vegetables this year. I have totally failed on growing spinach last year, and the broccoli was infested with broccoli worms and aphids. I didn't want to give up on my favorite veggies, so this year I started growing spinach seeds in the green house until they were at least 6 inches tall. Still, they started to look beat up after transplanted outside. I think it had to do with the late summer this year. It's been usually cool and wet this year. It took several weeks for them to adjust and started to thrive. All the spinach plants are flowering now. I will soon be able to collect seeds for next year.


I came upon a posting of 4-inch 6-pack broccoli de cicco for sale on Cragislist.com. I didn't know what broccoli de cicco was until further reading. I was excited since I love the idea of eating all parts of broccoli. I ordered 2 6-packs of broccoli de cicco, and about half of them died off. The other half started to do much better after I transferred them to a different vegetable bed with a different soil mix. I was worried about broccoli worms and aphids. Amazingly, only one small floret was infested with aphids and no worm on any of them. I am not sure why I didn't get the worms this year. A few things I did differently with the broccoli this year are: different location, different variety, further spacing, and I eat the florets early instead of waiting for them to get bigger. Last year I wanted to wait for them to get bigger, and they turned into caterpillar food.

Harvesting Seeds

It rained again two nights ago. Rain in June!??? I don't remember last time it rained in June around here. We grow drought tolerant plants around here because it hardly ever rained. I have been waiting for the last snow peas to dry out so I can harvest them as seeds for next year. The pea pods are now covered in mold. They look nasty. I decided to cut off some pea pods tonight just to see how they look inside.


Most of them look okay once out of the pods. Some of them have completely dried, while the big green ones need to dry out a lot more. I will leave them in the sun room for a few days. As long as we get some sun, they should dry up nicely. Last year I only harvested a few snow pea seeds, and I don't remember if they grew earlier this year. I used some older seeds that I purchased a couple years ago, the few I harvested, and a couple 6-pack seedlings from some nursery. I had snow peas every day for the last 3 months until I didn't want to eat them anymore.