Chef Patti Anastasia
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Serving Southern New Hampshire &
the Merrimack Valley since 2003
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Great meals & the time to enjoy them!
Chef Patti Anastasia Serving Southern New Hampshire & |
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Table Talk » Kitchen Garden/Farmstand ArchivesApril 21, 2008Miss Figgy emerges from winter storageRemember Miss Figgy? When you last saw her, it was July and she looked like this. It's too cold here for figs to survive winter, so Miss Figgy spent the winter in the garage. In November we put her in the back corner of the garage and I didn't pay any attention to her until Saturday when I took a peek to see if she survived the winter. I was prepared to find a pot of dead sticks, but boy was I surprised. I was shocked to see that she had buds forming. Lots of buds. She came out of the garage on Sunday and got a well-deserved drink. It's still cold at night, so she'll be coming in to the kitchen until our nights are consistently above 45 degrees. All of her branches have leaf or fig buds or both! She's not photogenic because she is sticks with buds, but she shows great promise. I see at 4 fig buds, maybe more, some of the buds are so small that I can't tell if they are leaf buds or fig buds. You'll be seeing more of her as she grows this season. Continue reading "Miss Figgy emerges from winter storage" » April 19, 2008I know that it's too early, but I just had toThis winter was exceptionally long. The snow started in November and it snowed and snowed and snowed and the temperature never rose enough for the snow to melt between storms. Our yard has been snow-free for about 2 weeks. Two glorious weeks! Last night we went to Home Depot to buy some fertilizer and I saw that they had herb plants. I couldn't resist buying some. I got rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, sage, thyme, and peppermint. They had lots of basil, but my Aerogarden is loaded with basil and one cold night will kill basil. The others are tougher so I decided to take the chance on buying them AND planting them outside. If we have some really cold nights, I might lose some of them, but it's a risk that I'm willing to take. I spent a few hours this afternoon puttering in the garden and planting the herbs. Updated 4/20/08 Added some pictures.
March 31, 2008It's a jungle in hereIt's been a long time since I posted about my AeroGarden. I'm using the Master Gardener kit to grow Italian basil, Thai basil, cilantro, and parsley. The Master Gardener kit has everything that you need to create your seed pods using your own seeds. I planted these on January 12.
July 28, 2007First Garden HarvestMy small kitchen garden is planted with tomatoes and cucumbers. I planted just before a long cold, rainy spell, so my garden took a beating and it's been slow to recover from all the rain and cold weather. Earlier this week I noticed that beautiful orange tinge on a few tomatoes on one of my Oregon Cherry plants. The cucumber plants are covered with flowers and loaded with tiny cucumbers. Last night ,just as we were just about to sit down to dinner (lamb burgers), I decided to go out and see if I could find a cucumber and a few tomatoes to add to our meal. Bingo, I found a 6-inch cucumber and 3 large cherry tomatoes ready for picking. The first veggies from the garden are always the best. Cucumbers that are young and tender and don't need to be peeled! Tomatoes, still warm from the sun. It doesn't get any better than that. I didn't get a picture of the harvest because the lamb burgers were ready and we were too hungry to take the time for a picture. The veggies tasted heavenly. The cuke was crisp and refreshing. The tomatoes were sweet and juicy. Hopefully they were just the beginning of a bountiful harvest. July 24, 2007Update on Miss FiggyMiss Figgy arrived in May as a two foot tall stick in a small pot. By the end of May, she was a two foot tall stick with a few leaves. Now she's a small tree with lots of branches and leaves. Back on May 23rd, I reported that she had two tiny figs, but one of them fell off shortly after that, so she has just one good-sized fig. But she had lots of branches and giant leaves and lots of buds for new branches and leaves. She seems to grow more every day and is now 33 inches tall.
July 15, 2007Local BlueberriesWhen I was a kid, every summer included a family outing to pick blueberries. We even had one of those enormous wood-sided station wagon, which was perfect for our family outings. My grandmother joined us and sat in the shade with a cooler of drinks and snacks for us kids when we got tired of picking. Our goal for the day was to fill a 20 quart blue enameled pot. Armed with coffee cans with string loops around our necks so we could use both hands to pick, we'd venture off into the blueberry fields. To this day, one of my favorite sounds is the plunk plunk plunk that blueberries make when they land at the bottom of any empty picking container. The picking containers at Sunnycrest Farm are plastic. But the blueberries still make a wonderful sound when they hit the empty container. And since the farm is just a few miles from my house, you'll find me there almost every week until the blueberry season is over. Their blueberry bushes are tall and easy to pick from, and for me, it's relaxing to be among the blueberry bushes filling my bucket. During July and August, we eat a lot of blueberries. There's always a bowl of blueberries in the refrigerator to snack on. This morning I made one of my favorite blueberry coffeecakes.
Continue reading "Local Blueberries" » June 30, 2007Cherry HeavenYesterday I picked 12 pounds of cherries at my favorite farm: 8 pounds of sweet cherries and 4 pounds of sour cherries. For me, the day that I pick cherries is the official start of summer. I usually pick only sweet cherries, but after hearing Jeremy Jackson talk about his Little Meatballs with Cherry Sauce, I've been waiting for sour cherries to be ready to pick. When I got the announcement that the theme for the June meeting of the Massachusetts chapter of Personal Chefs Network was picnics, I selected this recipe to make for our meeting. Last night I pitted a pound of cherries for the recipe (not a whole lot of fun) so I could make the recipe in the morning. I made the meatballs this morning with some minor modifications to the recipe. The lamb meatballs filled the house with a wonderful aroma. My husband Tom came looking for lunch when I took the meatballs out of the oven. He had his before I added them to the cherry sauce. This isn't a great picture because I was in a hurry when I plated them and took the picture. There were 10 hungry personal chefs waiting to dig into them.
The bright and sharp flavor of the sour cherries is a perfect match for the lamb meatballs. Tomorrow I'll pit the rest of the sour cherries and freeze them. Then I'll be looking for more savory recipes that use sour cherries. My reward for pitting them will be a big bowl of sweet cherries. Continue reading "Cherry Heaven" » May 23, 2007Figlets!Around the time I bought my AeroGarden, I also ordered a dwarf fig tree from Wayside Gardens. Fig trees aren't hardy in my zone 5 garden, but I plan to plant it in a container and overwinter it in our heated garage. I have no idea if this will work, but we love figs, so I decided to give it a try. My fig tree arrived the first week of May and looked like a two foot tall stick. But after a few days out on our 3-season porch, it developed lots of buds, which have turned into branches and leaves. And now it has two tiny figlets! This variety of fig produces two crops, one in July and one in September. It also attracts bird, which love to nibble on the figs, but I don't plan to share my figs with the birds. I might have to net it to keep the birds away.
May 3, 2007AeroGarden Update: Day 25I planted my AeroGarden almost 4 weeks ago. It's growing like crazy. The basil needs pruning. It's time to raise the lights a little. It takes care of itself. At the 2 week mark, I added water and a nutrient tablet to the reservoir. An indicator light came on to let me know what to do. The parsley is the biggest surprise. I've never been able to start parsley from seed.
April 13, 2007Sprouts on Day 4!Last night I noticed some tiny sprouts in my AeroGarden. The oregano, Genovese basil, thyme, and chives have sprouted. The mint, cilantro, and parsley are all slower germinating seeds. I didn’t bother with a picture because the sprouts are very small. The AeroGarden lights are very bright, so don’t ignore the company’s suggestion to put the AeroGarden somewhere where the light won’t bother you. The lights are on for 16 hours a day. Continue reading "Sprouts on Day 4!" » April 8, 2007Fresh Herbs!Today I planted my AeroGarden.
This is my way of having a longer growing season here in the frozen north. I ordered it during a recent Springtime snowstorm. I’m growing a combination of the Italian Herb kit and the Gourmet Herb kit. The first signs of life should appear within a week and I should be harvesting herbs within a few weeks. I like to use fresh herbs in my cooking, but I don’t like buying packages of expensive herbs when I need just a sprig or two. The AeroGarden should solve that problem.
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