farm with a view

There are two sides of me: The organic veggie-growing, back-to-the-land “me,” and the “me” who’s been known to dump out a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup and call it lunch more than every so often. I have no excuses ‘cept that their clam chowder has a special place in my heart. (Blame Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter.”)

In these next few months, though, I’ll be veering decidedly toward the healthy, green tea-drinking “me.” Andrew is embarking on a new diet due to inflammation-related health concerns, and so, his new eating habits naturally translates to our new eating habits. Which is actually a very good thing, because the non-inflammation approach makes a lot of sense from a healthy eating perspective and doesn’t require one to do anything that’s just plain wacky, like eating steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The premise of the anti-inflammation diet, in a nutshell, is to remove all the stuff that has been known to increase inflammation or allergic or digestive reactions in the body – wheat/gluten, sugar, dairy, caffeine, acidic foods like citrus and tomatoes, etc. – and replace them with lots of fruit, vegetables, beans, fish, good fats and non-wheat whole grains, in order to get your system back to its baseline level. Then, gradually re-introduce these foods one a time, and see how your body reacts. It’s also recommended to avoid processed wheat and refined sugar regardless of whether your system can or can’t tolerate them, but we all know that.

Obviously, the first few months of the diet is the most limiting. Especially since Andrew is allergic to fish.

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Cabbage worms are chomping through our kale plants at lightning speed. There’s perhaps nothing more disheartening than arriving at the garden and seeing what was once a large, broad leaf, shorn off with only ragged bits and pieces hanging off each side of its stem. (Except maybe arriving at the garden and seeing all your seedlings scattered about, dead.)

I decided to harvest the few leaves that were still intact, knowing that if I didn’t, the worms would most surely get to them that very evening. (We’ve also been hitting the plants with fertilizer emulsion regularly, hoping they’ll outgrow the rate of the worms’ voracious appetites.)

(Holey kale … And these were the better leaves)

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Our efforts to clean up the plot continued this past weekend. This time we tackled the weeds that sprouted when we weren’t looking. Devil’s grass is an ongoing problem at Ocean View Farms, sneaking in and out of all the plots in every which way and creating a vast, complex underground network of milky white rhizomes leading to god knows where. Thankfully we did a pretty good job of digging most of it out when we first got the plot, so the rhizomes we pulled up this past weekend were young and easier to yank. So satisfying. We also amended the soil (where the beans, tomatoes and peppers used to be) with some bagged organic compost that contained chicken poo, worm castings (worm poo), bat guano (bat poo) and kelp meal, then topped it off with a nice layer of steamy horse poo from the community stash.

Oh, but this post is s’posed to be about pesto, not poo. Right. (more…)

Too much cooking this weekend.

On Friday night, a friend came over for dinner so I made Ina Garten’s reliable pappa al pomodoro soup:

On Saturday night, another friend came over and we made succotash. The basics are lima beans – the reason I stumbled upon this dish, given our boatload of beans – and corn. In our version we incorporated baby red bell peppers from the garden; green onions; diced, browned ham; and spice-rubbed pancetta. It was surprisingly tasty, with a nice combo of sweet and salty:

And finally, late Sunday night, we decided to oven-dry a bunch of Lemon Boy tomatoes. Primarily because we’d run out of pots/pans/dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher and tend to let things stack up in the sink) and the Lemon Boys were on the verge of going bad. We set the oven on low before bed and woke up to this:

It’s super easy. Slice about 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick; gently squeeze out some of the juice and seeds (or “acidic slime,” per Andrew); spread on a baking sheet; sprinkle some salt and pepper; drizzle a bit of olive oil; set the oven to 150; let it hang out for about eight hours.

These guys are going on top of pizzas tomorrow.

Phew. Now only have, oh, 20 or so uber ripe tomatoes to go. Not to mention a growing pile of forlorn zucchinis that we’ve been ignoring.

Last night I was pondering just-picked bell peppers, zucchini and too many tomatoes, trying to figure out how to use them, and thought, hey, we’ve got most everything for ratatouille. Why not just roast them sans the eggplant? (Andrew doesn’t like eggplant anyway. So unfortunate.)

Cuisine at Home has a great ratatouille chicken thighs recipe that we’ve made several times. Here’s an adapted version using mostly ingredients we’ve grown ourselves. (‘Cept for the chicken, obviously.) Which makes it all the more tastier, right?

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ROASTED CHICKEN AND SUMMER VEGGIES

Ingredients

4 Roma tomatoes, quartered – I used one gigantic Black Krim and four smaller Lemon Boys; whatever you have on hand is fine
1 zucchini, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 onion, cut into 2-inch chunks
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1-inch chunks – I used 2 small homegrown mottled red/green bell peppers
6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs – you can substitute skin-on chicken breasts
salt and pepper

For the balsamic-thyme oil:
3 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. chopped thyme, or 1 tbsp. dried
1 tbsp. minced garlic
salt and pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with foil. Whisk all ingredients for balsamic-thyme oil together in a small bowl; set aside. Combine all the veggies in a large bowl and toss with 3 tbsp. balsamic-thyme oil. Arrange on one side of the prepared baking sheet. Toss chicken with remaining balsamic-thyme oil and place on the other end of the baking sheet. Season everything with salt and pepper. Roast 45 to 60 minutes, or until skin on chicken is nicely browned.