Belly of the Beest

French Breakfast Radishes

This heat has me longing for cooler weather so I thought I would post a picture from my spring harvest. It was taken in June when the weather was temperate, rainy, but cooler. Here’s a post I meant to put up earlier in the year, but it slipped into the wrong folder so now here is it!

A lot of people, myself included, would say that when they think of spring vegetables peas are the first thing they think of. I wish that was true! But honestly the first things to come out of the ground in the spring are: radishes, asparagus and rhubarb! Nick and I have eaten our fair share of all three in the past couple weeks, but radishes are the only vegetable that we have harvested from the garden!

I went to the plot to plant my broccoli and I noticed all these little red things sticking out of the ground! I thought someone had put pebbles there for some reason, but then I looked closer and remembered that I had planted radishes there! They are beautiful little French breakfast radishes. They aren’t too spicy, but they aren’t bland either. The only bad thing about them is you have to eat them so quickly or they start to go a little soft!

I’m so proud of my little radishes for making it through this totally crazy spring! Everything is a couple weeks late because it has either been too wet, too cloudy or too hot for the plants to do much.

Print Friendly

Edible Flower Salad

Our garden has been kicking ass and taking names this year! Our lettuce has supplied us with more than we could possibly eat; our nasturtiums are blooming like crazy and have a variety of tastes. Red is spiciest, orange is medium and yellow is fairly mild. I still have a hard time eating flowers though! I look at them and think, “I’m not suppose to eat this, it is too pretty!” But then, I remember how tasty they are and savor them, knowing that their season is fleeting and this is one thing you can’t just go get from the store. We made this salad for a barbecue we went to last Saturday. It looks sort of magical in the dusk light, doesn’t it? The salad was simple, lettuce and flowers from our garden, sliced strawberries from the store and a honey mustard dressing too. The dressing is so deceptive though! It is the color of avocados, has an avocado on the front and so I’ve been calling it “the avocado dressing” for years! I JUST discovered that there are NO avocados in it. They just tell you it is good on avocados. Boo. It is still really tasty though!

Here is our garden a few weeks ago!

Later this summer we are having an edible flower party so I’m hoping some of the blooms will still be around so I can use them in the dishes I decide to make. We also planted some little violas for eating too. They look so amazing next to the vivid warm colors in the nasturtiums.

We also had a good crop of radishes; peas and our first carrot emerged from the dirt yesterday! And our little alpine strawberries have been producing tiny delicious little berries for about 6 weeks now and how no signs of stopping. Those are amazing to munch on while weeding our little plot! It is so amazing how much you can fit into such a small space!

As we approach mid-summer I am already dreaming about the green beans, the basil and the ripe tomatoes. Our spring veggies have been great so I’m hoping our summer ones will be nice too!

Print Friendly

Currants at the farmer's market over the summer.

I love winter, I really do. I love snow and I love cold. I love the feeling of walking inside after shoveling or after a long cold walk. I love scarves and hats and coats. I love stews and heavy bread.  I love root vegetables and apples. But you know what I miss during the winter? Berries, beautiful, fresh, sweet berries.

Before Nick and I went to Europe this fall I got a collection of eastern European fairy tales from the library called Stories of Hope and Spirit: Folktales from Eastern Europe. It was an incredible collection with stories that formed beautiful and deadly images in your mind. The story that made the most lasting impression on me was called “Strawberries in Winter.” It is a tale about a beautiful young woman and her evil step-mother and step-sister. They are cruel to her, as is the way in fairy tales, and make absurd demands of her. They send her on errands into the cold winter nights that they think she will die trying to complete. Yet she always finds a way to fulfill their desires and in the end the cruel women die because of their malcontent. I won’t ruin how this happens because I want you to buy or check out the collection for yourself. The book can be found here. It is worth the money or the wait to get it from the library.

Blackberries at the farmer's market

Earlier this week we had a big storm that dropped quite a bit of snow and it reminded me of this story. I know I could go to the store and get berries in the winter, but they wouldn’t taste right. None of the berries would. I was even dreaming about berries the night before the storm. In the dream I was searching for ice cream. When I found some it was topped with fresh blackberries and it was so refreshing. This, I should mention, is an anomaly because my dreams are usually more like nightmares, so it was pleasant to have a rest from that for a night.

I know it is only December, but it is nice to have something to look forward to.

Print Friendly

The color is perfect, isn't it? I wanted to drink this while I was shooting!

This is honey from my dad’s bees. They live on the grounds of the American Legion Post in Downers Grove and have been getting a free ride for about three years. This year, my dad harvested the honey and I missed the filtration and collection process because I had a job somewhere else that morning. I was quite sad to miss it, but I’m hoping to catch them next time. The following photos are from when we first set up the hives in 2008.

This is my dad setting up the first bee hives in 2008

My dad has been raising bees as a side project to his massive garden and it is nice to see some results! We’ve gotten loads of wax from the bees, which is nice for candles, but we really wanted the honey! So through a few swarms and one hive death Dad and his thousands of bees have emerged triumphantly! The honey is clear, delicately flavored and has such a beautiful color.

Bees before they are installed in the hive, 2008

The idea is to sell the honey to raise money for a scholarship that Dad started for graduating seniors at Downers Grove North High School. The scholarship fund is called “Bee Green” and requires the seniors to write an essay about conservation.

He got 61 pounds of honey, so that’s 61 jars and he sold out in less than three days! Each jar is $10 and all the money goes directly to the scholarship fund. The amount available will vary year to year based on what the bees are doing I think, but it is such a great idea! Dad’s thrilled with the honey and is pleased with how quickly he sold out!

Dad putting the bees in the first hive, 2008

Now, if you want to buy pure beeswax candles, let me know! I can make them shaped like a skep, a poinsettia or just plan votive candles and all the money from the candles goes to the scholarship fund too. I make the candles all the time so if you want one, let me know and I’ll email you prices, etc. They make good holiday/birthday gifts!

I hope you enjoy the photos and I hope there is enough honey next year so some of you can order a jar! Here are two photos of the candles too!

Skep

Poinsettia

Print Friendly

Cuccumber leaves with morning dew

I’ve been slow to post these days and I’ve been wondering out loud why this is the case. And it is now clear, looking at my photo history, why. I have been spending a surprising amount of time at my little garden. Nick and I bought a plot in a community garden that just started this spring and it is fantastic! We had been growing little pots of this and that in our shared backyard, but with all the trees the plants never really had a fair shot at being productive. So this post doesn’t have any recipes, it is more like a visual love letter to all my little plants. I have to get a more updated photo, they’ve gotten so big! I hardly recognize them anymore.

Strawberry blossom

Garden in early July

We started the plot in May and I’m shocked at how quickly everything has grown! We have monster tomatoes, the broccoli was wonderfully productive and we’ve already made so much pesto! Right now, the garden is way too full, next year we’ll try the square foot garden method and lay things out a little better, but I honestly like how wild it is. I feel like we just planted the garden, but the first round of broccoli has long since bolted and the tomatoes have become an unstoppable, but delicious red wave that threatens to take over our kitchen. So this year we have or had: 3 varieties of tomatoes in the garden, 4 in our backyard, broccoli, cauliflower, various herbs, onions, green beans, cucumbers, nasturtiums, cabbage and peppers. And of course we had peas! We’ve also planted Kale, collard greens and mixed greens.

Broccoli! This was the tastiest broccoli ever.

This fall we’ll do another round of broccoli and more greens. For now, I’m just enjoying the early morning hours at the garden. It is a lovely space and with everyone’s plot it is easy enough to forget about all the craziness of the city and just enjoy the peaceful little block of gardens. What I love the most about the community garden has been meeting our neighbors! We’ve met some great people and I feel so much more connected with the neighborhood now. It’s great to have a common interest and a good starting point for conversation with different people. In some ways it would be great to have a big space in our own backyard, but that can be isolating, being forced to share space is a great way to meet like-minded, but not identical individuals.

Filling the boxes with donated dirt

If you have the opportunity, I would say it is well worth the money to get a garden plot. I spend more time than I really need to there just because I like it, but the nice thing about a small garden plot is the weeding and de-bugging takes so little time. Even when I’m squishing individual green worms that would otherwise destroy my cabbage/broccoli it only takes a few minutes.

Our first red tomato. This was a few weeks ago already! It's a Paul Robeson

My favorite memory of the garden this year has been biting into the first ripe, sun-warmed Nyagous tomato and feeling like summer was crystallized in that taste. We also planted Paul Robeson, a black Russian tomato (such a good name, yes??), and German yellow stripes. The Nyagous is also a black Russian tomato. We will plant the Paul Robeson again, not sure about the other two….They are both tasty, but I like to try new stuff every year! What have you guys planted this year?

Cucumber flowers

Long story short, the garden is awesome and I can’t wait to get more out of it this year and plan a little more for next spring! More photos through out the season!  I love growing plants!

Our beans are blooming for the third time this year. So many green beans!

watering the garden, photo by Nick Super

Pea flowers in the spring

Our first peas!

Young Kale plants

Our little green beans struggling to break the dirt's hard surface

Our garden plot in early June

Print Friendly