The Cellar and the Pantry Blog
When I think of urban gardening, I remember the hand-pollinated heirloom tomatoes I grew on my windowsill when I lived in Manhattan, or the herb garden on my Brooklyn fire escape, or the container garden my friend kept next to her stoop. I think of the fight to keep community gardens in empty lots, and guerrilla gardeners lobbing "seed grenades" into fenced-off abandoned plots. Luckily for their circulation, Urban Farm, the new title launching this month from the publishers of Hobby Farms magazine, has a broader definition of "urban." The subtitle is "Sustainable City Living," but this new magazine, published out of Lexington, Kentucky, mostly caters to the suburban demographic--basically, anyone with a small enough garden that they don't feel comfortable buying Hobby Farms. Read on for the full review of the first issue.
 One of the benefits of growing your own onions and peppers is that they go with absolutely everything. For this edition of Grow Your Own, the cooperative blogging project, I combined them with spaghetti squash, also from the garden, for a quick and tasty dinner that's almost entirely homegrown. Go preheat your over to 350 and give it a shot!
F rom the garden I used: - One small white onion
- One large pepper, as hot as you like; mine was a Joe's Long Cayenne (from Seed Savers Exchange)
- One spaghetti squash, var. Vegetable Spaghetti or similar
From the pantry, I added salt, pepper, butter, olive oil and grated cheese.
So, the tomato wine fermentation was a bit more vigorous than I anticipated--I thought with only about three-quarters of a gallon in a one-gallon glass jug, I wouldn't need a blowoff tube. I was wrong. No problem...there was still a little bit of what looked like sanitizer in the airlock. Liquid, anyway. So I carefully cleaned off the outside of the jug, then carefully sanitized and installed a new airlock.
Posted by: chapka in tomatoes, country wine on
Aug 13, 2009
 There has been an explosion of interest in the last few years in the home production of beer and wine, and also of cider and mead. One home fermentation that seems to have been left behind is country wine; basically fermented sugar water with flavor, and sometimes additional fermentable sugar, provided by...pretty much anything you can think of, from fruit to flowers. An old brewing tradition anywhere people lived without barley or grapes, honey or apples, country wine can be made of pretty much anything in your garden.
So far this year, I've had a bumper crop of tomatoes (luckily no signs of blight yet) and I thought I'd give fermentation as shot as well as cooking and preserving. There are plenty of recipes out there, most of which more or less agree. I designed my own recipe based on these. I can't recommend that you follow it yet, but I'll definitely post tasting notes once it's finished. Read on for the recipe and procedure.
 This month, beer desserts are the theme of cooperative beer blogging project The Session, hosted by Beer47.com.
Here at The Cellar and the Pantry, our specialty is the DIY aspects of beer. So instead of starting with beer, my dessert uses the raw ingredients, including homegrown hops, to make a hop lover's version of traditional rock candy. Read on for the recipe and the results.
Posted by: chapka in canning on
Aug 6, 2009
Why not make this the year you preserve something in your garden? There are plenty of great canning or preserving books, but if you're just getting started, everything you need to know can be found at the web site of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their site includes tested recipes, so you know you can process them safely, as well as basic information to help you get started.
Many urban gardeners have limited space for edible gardening. In Seattle, many of them just gained a few extra square feet. In respone to requests from locals, the Seattle Department of Transportation has lifted a rule that required a special permit to plant anything but grass in the parking strips between the sidewalk and the street. Seattle gardeners are now welcome to use that space for anything that strikes their fancy, including of course edibles. It surprised me to read that a permit was necessary in the first place--when I moved into my house, the parking strips were already planted with (edible) day lilies, and this year I replaced one section with a horseradish patch. An area surrounded on all sides by concrete or asphalt seems like the perfect place for invasive or hard-to-remove species like horseradish or mint. Horseradish also made sense to me because it's hardy and salt-tolerant, a problem most Seattleites probably don't have. Next year, I may try seakale in another of my parking strips.
Posted by: chapka in Grow Your Own on
Aug 2, 2009
The roundup for Grow Your Own #32 is up at Playing House. Everything looks delicious, as usual!
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