New Series!: Garden and Farmer"s Market Recipes

Of late, my cooking inspiration has come from the bounty of fresh summer fruits and veggies that I have had on hand.  My garden is full of cherry tomatoes, lettuce, kale, leeks, swiss chard, cucumbers and herbs.  My sister's massive garden provides beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, turnips, summer squash, beans and peas: enough to feed four families! In addition to that, we are members of the local CSA (community supported agriculture) with The Green Ranch (thegreenranch.ca) from which we get weekly delivieries of fresh organic vegetables.  This abundance of fresh delicious produce has been inspiring us to eat such healthy meals.  It is easy to make vegetables taste fantastic when they are fresh from the dirt!

I have tired of my Frugal Friday series, and I have decided to begin this new series, inspired by seasonal produce that is available in Saskatchewan this time of year. If you don't have a garden at home, consider joining a CSA near you, or shop at your local farmer's market

A harvest from my sister's garden.  I sauteed these in butter with some chopped shallots, then sprinkled them with paremsan cheese.  

This week, the recipe is Roasted Root Vegetable Chips.  These are quick and tasty, and great for using up those smaller vegetables that are too much work to peel before using (golf ball size is perfect.  Don't use smaller vegetables for this or the chips will be tiny!)  To see the recipe, click on the title, or find the link above among all of my recipe links!

I chose to remove these from the oven before they were too crispy, and I drizzled them with greek yogurt to serve.

Frugal Friday: Another Garden Update

A few weeks ago Suneil and I finally manages to get all of our plants into the ground.  They had been taking up space and making a mess in my house for months, so when the weather finally seemed to be turning, Suneil and I got out there and planted our first family garden!

Admittedly, by the time we got all of the plants outside there were a few that were a little worse for wear.  The beans in particular were planted much too early. I will know for next year NOT to follow the package instructions.  I will plant indoors 3-4 weeks before the last frost rather than the instructed 6-8 weeks.  Most of my okra plants died as well, I think due to lack of sunlight.  They got very spindly reaching for the light and eventually just gave up.  Two okra plants survived, and I planted them along with some seed which is sprouting now, so hopefully I will still get at least one okra harvest before fall.

The rest of the plants seem to be adjusting well and I am very excited to watch my garden grow and reap the benefits all summer long!!  This weeks project (for my dad!) is to rig up some sprinklers so that the garden will still get watered while we are away on vacation.

Here are a few pictures!

Our little plot

This pallet holds lettuce and herbs

This pallet is filled with radishes, chard, spinach and romaine lettuce

I wanted my peas and beans to grow up our chain link fence, so I am trying to grow them in these window boxes

Frugal Friday: Garden Update

A month has gone by since my last gardening post, so I thought it was time to write an update about how it's all going.  As I explained in my previous post, I had planted various seeds in three peat pellet trays and many of them had begun to sprout.  I was happily watching and watering them each day and they were coming along nicely.  After a few weeks, however, I realized the flaw in my plan.  My plants were growing quickly, but unfortunately the weather here in Saskatchewan was not warming up as much as I had hoped.  Many of my plants were getting too big for the tiny peat pellets I had started them in, so I had to transplant into larger containers.  No big deal right?  Except that there are only three windows in my house that really let in enough sunlight to keep plants alive.  By the time I had transplanted all of my plants into larger containers, they were everywhere!  Every window that got even a little sunlight had a chair or table perched next to it covered in plants.  This is not an ideal situation for a family with two curious and sometimes mischievous toddlers wandering around.  I kept waiting for the weather to warm up so that I could start hardening the plants off and moving them outdoors, but the weather has remained very windy and quite chilly so far.  It was even too cold to leave them in the garage overnight and put them outdoors during the day.  Today I finally decided it was warm enough to start, so I rigged up some platforms on the wheelbarrow and the kids wagon so that I could place all of the trays of plants on top and then roll them in and out of the garage quickly and easily.  I am praying that in a few weeks time the weather will get more temperate and I will be able to plant into the ground and take it from there.  Wish me luck as I attempt to keep numerous plants alive through an unusually cold Saskatchewan spring, in a house that gets very little direct sunlight though the windows.

My plants grow sideways in an effort to get to the sun ;(

Rather than buy pots for transplanting, I took my mom's suggestion of using old fruit containers.  They are perfect because many have holes already that are great for drainage.  Also, they come with free fruit, haha. 

I snip the mesh bag off of the pellet and then pop it into the dirt.  This lettuce container had no drainage holes, so I used a knife to add some.  

My easy-roll hardening off mechanism.  Quote from P: "Oh NO!  Wagon!!"

Frugal Friday: Planting my Garden

Another fun way that I love to save money during the summer is by growing vegetables in my garden.  This is totally new to me this year so I am sure I will have many failures and hopefully some successes too.  Last year I saw Michael Symon make a pallet garden on The Chew and  I managed to get my hands on two pallets so I started small with those.  It worked out really well and it inspired me to take it further and find more space in my yard!  We removed a few unattractive trees in our back yard and it left us a great sunny spot to try out this year. I am so looking forward to it.  Having fresh lettuce, greens and other veggies right in our back yard encouraged us to eat so healthy last summer, and it is also a wonderful learning experience for P and D to see where food comes from (other than the supermarket!).

My sister has a HUGE garden (literally the size of my entire back yard) and she plants enough of some basics like carrots, potatoes, onions and zucchini for the whole family.  That means I don't need to plant any of those things in my small plot, and I can experiment with some different things

I will plant my pallets again with things that were successful last year, like lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, lots of fresh herbs and probably some radishes.  In my bigger backyard space I will plant some tomatoes, cucumber, green onions and beans.  Just out of curiosity, I am also going to try some of my favourite veggies: eggplant, okra, kale, and leeks.  I also found seeds for ground cherries.  I love these things so I'm going to test them out too.  I have no idea if these things are going to grow in our Saskatchewan climate but I bought them at a local greenhouse so I'm gonna follow the directions on the packages and see what happens.

In addition to those few spaces, I am going to do some planting in containers.  I will do a few hanging baskets with red and yellow cherry tomatoes.  I am also going to try planting beans and snow peas in containers and let them grow and vine up my fence.  I am not sure how this will work, but I'm gonna find out!

Last year I started my seeds in a starter tray with peat pellets.  It worked perfectly and made it so easy to transplant when the time came.  This year I bought two more of them and last weekend I planted all of the seeds that need to be started 6-8 weeks before the last frost.  Wish me luck with this project and stay posted for updates on how all of my experiments are going.

On Saturday I got everything organized and started planting

I use masking tape to label what I planted in each row

On Tuesday, some of the seeds were sprouting already, yay!