If you started your garden from seed in your basement a month or so ago, the plants are about ready for transplant, if not already done.
If you’re like me and start your container/deck garden from starter plants, a couple might have already been repotted; others will be repotted for growth throughout the month.
My rosemary wintered over for the first time ever, and I picked up thyme, basil, Italian flat leaf parsley, arugula and buttercrunch lettuce yesterday. I’m also hoping for tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and other herbs.
So what are you growing, cooking ,and grilling, using Spring produce and herbs, or whatever you’re picking up at your local market?
With last-frost dates in mid-May, it’s still too early for planting starter plants yet. But my garden chives in the southern-exposure bed are about 4 inches tall, so I’m ready to start snipping a few now to sprinkle on scrambled eggs and stir into cream cheese. The backyard rhubarb patch leaves are visible (just barely) from the kitchen window, on-track for May 20th first-harvest and rhubarb upside down cake.
Casa lingua’s residents have long realized that their thumbs are black as night, and not meant to grow anything but kittens into lard-ass monster cats. Flowers I picked up at a nursery sale a year ago were decimated within hours by our bunny population. Hell, we even managed to kill the MINT growing next to our driveway. MINT! I do get acceptable results with the scallions I keep in a water glass on the kitchen window sill.
And so, we leave growing pretty and/or tasty things to those more adept & stay safely on the consumers’ end of things
But you do that SO well! (I’m guilty of that too - pics of Alfie were always embarrassing!) And Finn has taken to being fed whenever I get home from work, and when I go back into the kitchen to cook my own dinner, run to meet me there and expect to be fed his dinner (umm, NO!) and then hollah-hollah at me like he’s wasting away to nothing. Little orange cattorist dude.
And I’ll agree that your thumbs are black as midnight on a moonless night if you’re killing mint. It’s a freaking WEED, @linguafood ! LOL
The farmers love you since you buy your herbies. All kinds of herbies.
We made roasted sweet potato and scallion tacos with cilantro-lime crema, homemade guajillo salsa, radishes, and yet more cilantro. Assorted leftover veggies on the side.
I usually start my tomatoes and peppers from seeds but the prolonged winter and health problems made that impossible this year. I bought tomatos and a basil plant, sugar snap and snow pea seeds, all of which have been planted. I’ll probably buy some pepper plants, cucumber and green bean seeds when it gets warmer. If it does get warmer.
Dinner tonight was grilled flatiron, pommes dauphinoise, salad of mixed greens, tomatoes, onion, avocado, blue cheese, ranch dressing. There was a Beefeater rocks, yes a few ounces of Beefeater I have been saving. For what I don’t know, I just like seeing it there. And of course wine. The potatoes were divine, the steak, not so much.
Oven Roasted Pork Sausages with Red Cabbage- Spinach Slaw - The sausages were roasted with a mixture of coarse mustard and honey until nicely caramelized. The slaw was made with red cabbage, baby spinach, red onions, blackberries, walnuts, apple and vinaigrette from olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard and maple syrup
It was difficult trying to enjoy this amazing brisket while watching that sh*t-show of a hockey game. But anyway, this old family recipe has gradually been modified over the years and tonight reached its greatest form. The brisket was rubbed with Lawry’s, garlic and onion powders, ground pepper, onion soup mix, and brown sugar. It was then placed into a slow-cooker and covered with a bottle of beer (we normally use a generic like Budweiser but tonight I used one of BF’s IPAs we had on hand and it really made a difference with a more pronounced flavor), Worcestershire sauce, mustard, balsamic vinegar, and a diced onion. Cooked on high for nine hours. That gravy was liquid gold.
I wish I knew the secret. It just disappeared since the last summer. We used to have a shit ton of wild oregano, too. Poof. Maybe the flora around us finally learned its lesson
