Chipotle Roast Chicken

I made this roast chicken for dinner Sunday night, the recipe is from this month's bon appetit. It's a good recipe if you are hanging around the house early Sunday afternoon with no plans for the evening except to eat. ( you will check the bird and fuss over it often)

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2010/04/chipotle_roast_chicken_tacos

I deviated from the recipe quite a bit I didn't use the garlic or the chicken broth. I used about a cup or so of white wine and the pan juices were delicious. I also used chopped fresh cilantro, fresh lime wedges and brown rice as my accompaniments in addition to the pan juices, corn tortillas and avocado slices. It was a good Sunday night supper, so good in fact I didn't have time to take pictures of the finished product.

Not too much action outside in the beds......

well, from what I can see. I am sure there is a lot going on under the soil at least I hope there is. It was really rainy and cold here up until today. I spoke to my brother Dave who lives in Vermont and he dryly told me it was snowing up there. Snow in April! I can believe it.
This weekend meterologist Mike Donahue is predicting highs to be in the 80's Friday and Saturday and a whopping 90 degrees on Sunday. I am hoping the high temps don't warm the soil and the seeds too much although maybe they will just push up and out faster.
I took a few more pictures around the house. I blogged a week or so ago about a plant called sweet woodruff that I had discovered was providing nice shaded ground cover around the garage. This past weekend I was even more delighted to discover the sweet woodruff also flowers these really cute tiny white flowers.
Mike made local news this week as he is part of a select group of air traffic control towers to use a new next generation GPS guided radar system. Go Mike!
and, Orion has been really into the dandelions lately. He makes sure every single one of them has properly propagated millions of seeds on our lawn. There will be billions next year he hopes.
In other news, little miss maeve is turning 1 next week. We are looking forward to seeing some family and friends this weekend and next.

Earth Day Fun!

Earth Day was the day Orion and I chose to get out and get sowing. It was really fun. He was interested in the seeds and even planted a few of the big ones like the peas. Lay the pea on top of the soil and then push it in until the dirt reaches your knuckle, then lightly cover hole with dirt. (That's a lot of directions!) He preferred fighting squirrels and digging in the dirt with his little shovel but such is the life of an energetic 4 year old. In the late afternoon a few of the neighborhood kids came over to bounce in the bounce house with Orion while Mike and I talked with the parents and finished the garden. It was a great day.
*for pest protection I ended up buying black netting that I put over the beds. This will keep out the squirrels, birds and rabbits until the seedlings break through. In the mean time I have to go out and choose our fencing (will prob choose chicken/rabbit fencing)

Pea sticks!

Pea Sticks! It sounds like a kid-friendly swear word alternative, doesn't it? I think I may use that one next time.....well.....maybe. But in terms of the garden, the pea sticks are going to be all the branches that have fallen over the winter that Mike has gathered in a big pile in the back yard. I am going to re-purpose them into a natural trellis for the pea seedlings to climb. It's sounds a little Martha I know, but I think they will work well and keep the garden looking organic and natural- the way I want it. A good tip that I read is that your high growers like corn, peas, anything with a trellis are best planted on the north side of the garden so they don't cast shadows and prevent the low growers from getting light. Here is what they might look like.

Seeds ordered!!!

I ordered the seeds from Burpee yesterday. They should be here in a few days and we can start sowing! I ordered the early growers. (the soil temp can be as low as 40 degrees as the nights are still chilly here in Delaware) The early growers include carrots, radishes, spinach, lettuces, peas and swiss chard.
I started this blog the other night while thinking about the carrots and radishes:

In Julia Child's memoir My Life in France she talks about the simplicity of eating freshly made mayonnaise with crisp, crunchy, dew kissed carrots and radishes from the garden. That description of the fresh vegetables always stuck out in my head as one of the most memorable descriptions of food ever. The combo immediately sounds weird and yet intriguing. I thought about how our culture advertises to us even at a young age that salt and sugar and processed food is best. What 4 year old would want carrots instead of goldfish? Not mine! (He can't even eat goldfish-that's a blog for another day) Could something so simple taste good?

I suddenly remembered the blender mayonnaise recipe from my Joy of Cooking book and decided to make it again. I went to work pouring and scraping. What I found was real mayo tastes nothing like Hellmans or Miracle Whip. I dipped some baby carrots in-yum!!! It's incredible that homemade mayo could make something as simple as baby carrots taste so good. Try it for yourself you will see what I mean.

I use a metal blade food processor and I double this recipe.
Beat 1 egg well with a fork to blend the yolk and the white, let it settle a few seconds, then measure. If doubling, just use 1 large egg.
Combine:
2 Tablespoons well beaten egg
1 large egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon dry or dijon mustard
Process on high speed until well blended, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides, then sprinkle the mixture with:
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice and/or white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Process for 7 to 8 seconds
Have ready in a small spouted measuring pitcher:
3/4 cup oil, room temp (sometimes I use olive but it's a wild flavor so I also recommend corn or vege for a more mild flavor)
With the machine running, add the oil in the thinnest possible stream. After about 1/3 of the oil has been added-the mixture will have swollen and stiffened (you can hear the difference)-add the oil in a slightly thicker stream. Stop the machine when all has been added and scrape down the sides and around the blade, mixing in any unabsorbed oil. If you want a thicker sauce, add as before:
up to a 1/4 cup oil

If your sauce ends up too thick, add as needed:
Light or heavy cream, milk or water ( I haven't had to yet)

Taste the mayo and stir in:
1 1/2 to 3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1/2 to 1 teaspoon dry or Dijon mustard
salt and ground white pepper to taste (I use black because I don't care if you see the black flecks)
Eat immediately with fresh vegetables such as carrots, radishes, or sweet peppers.

What's your Hardiness Zone?

If you would like to start a garden, any garden, a good place to start is looking up your hardiness zone on a hardiness zone map.

What are Zone Maps? Gardeners need a way to compare their garden climates with the climate where a plant is known to grow well. That's why climate zone maps were created. Zone maps are tools that show where various permanent landscape plants can adapt. If you want a shrub, perennial, or tree to survive and grow year after year, the plant must tolerate year-round conditions in your area, such as the lowest and highest temperatures and the amount and distribution of rainfall.

My Zone here in Delaware is 7 so I won't start planting outside until the last week of April. Most people who grow fruits and vegetables even start their seeds indoors in Feb or March (depending on what they are growing) and then transplant the seedlings outside.

I found a ton of websites but this one from the Burpee Seed site was the most straightforward and informative.

http://www.burpee.com/ancillary/zonefinder.do

Beds mostly done

The beds are done for now. I need to get some chicken wire or wire of some kind and a few posts to enclose it in. I don't want any local critters helping themselves to my garden or using it as a litter box.
I walked around the house snapping some pictures of the Spring plants and bushes. It's always incredible to see how fast they sprout leaves and then flower especially with the heat we have had lately. A surprise favorite of mine is some sweet woodruff my mom planted last year, it spread really well and provides nice looking ground cover in some shadier parts of the beds. We are also keeping an eye on a lilac bush we trimmed back last Spring in the hopes we will get more than 1 lilac bloom this year.
The weather has been unseasonably hot, yesterday was a scorching 89 degrees! Pollen is out and covering everything. Today is going to be 84 degrees and sunny. Rain ending the week and next week is back to normal temps with highs in the 50s.

Diggin the Dirt

The last fewdays can be summed up in one word: progress. I managed to dig out 2 and 3/4 of the beds in a pretty short span of time. It was probably one of the hardest workouts I have ever accomplished and I was sore, sore, sore. I used muscles I didn't even know I had! I bet you I burned maybe 2,000 calories in two days? Maybe? I have to thank the Cliff bar company for the protein bars and Starbucks for the caffeine that kept me in it to win it.
The workout isn't over yet-The topsoil was delivered two days ago so I still have to fill up the wheelbarrows with our mushroom soil, wheel them back to the beds, dump em, and start the process over until the beds are filled. We will be planting by the end of the month after the danger of the last frost has past.
I am happy because:
-once I am done with the beds, we plant and fingers crossed have a good harvest, I never have to dig the ground like that again.
-because my husband is a weather guy I have all the inside info on when the best times are to get out and garden. For example, at Mike's advice I dug the beds after a long, soaking rain so the soil was easier to shovel and it was easier to pull the clumps of sod off. Hadthe earth been dry, I probably would have thrown out a shoulder, cried and called a company out to dig the beds.
-It was fun! I really got to know the earth while I was digging and a lot of the *yikes* earth dwelling critters like; worms, cicada larvae and grubs. I threw the cicada larvae in my neighbor Matt's yard. Tons of worms mostly and our soil is full of clay. This concerns me because of drainage BUT the beds will be about 8 inches up off of the bottom earth layer so that should do fine.

This coming up week the forecast is looking gorgeous so I will be out finishing the beds and Mike will be "supervising" perhaps drinking a ice cold beverage with his brand new beer cozy that reads "I got loaded at John Orsini Topsoil".