We had 3 extra pots waiting to be filled once we settled in our new place; so before it got too late in the season we went to Adams and Son’s garden shop again to see what we could add. It was June 25th 2010. I picked out 3 types of peppers, 4 sprouts of each which means 12 more pepper sprouts – and I have to mention it cost me under $3.50! Are you kidding me? What a steal, I simply could not resist. This time I chose three very different varieties from what we already had (also from each other) – chocolate beauty, pepperoncini, and manzano orange chilies. This make 9!

I was happy to find pepperoncinies because I have never seen them at a garden shop before. I love eating them pickled but I can’t recall a time that I have ever eaten them fresh or even seen them available fresh in the market. The pepperoncini sprouts were already pretty tall, they came with a few peppers already formed and lots of flowers.

In just one week, the pepperoncini plants near doubled in size and continued to produce many more peppers. We still have not picked any but I’m thinking we should some time soon. Not sure what to do with them yet. I know they’ll be good in salad, so I think I’ll try eating them fresh first and then take it from there. If we can get enough peppers towards the end of the season I would love to try pickling them.

The Chocolate Beauty peppers are supposed to turn into a deep chocolaty purpleish. Yes! That will be great, I hope they’ll grow to be fairly large. We don’t have any other pepper with that coloring or that have the bell pepper shape. When we first got the sprouts there were 2 tall and two short. No peppers but lots of flowers. This plant flowers in clusters, little bunches.

Within a week we began to see the peppers form and a week after that they were about an inch fat! And now they’re obviously even bigger. Can’t wait to see the color seep in.

The manzano orange chili pepper plant looks a bit different than the rest of our peppers. The leaves are large, furry & textured; the flowers are a beautiful purple. The pepper will be an apple-like shape and even more exciting… the seeds will be black! Very cool, I don’t think I have never eaten or even seen one of these – this is why I wanted to grow them. There’s something exciting about growing and caring for something you have no particular expectations for. There were red and yellow manzano peppers available as well but I though orange would look nice among the rest of the peppers.

Big news for the Hungarian hot yellow peppers! They’re huge! They’ve been growing like mad.  Take a look at what they’ve been up to…

We’ve already harvested our first batch. Pictured below are four Hungarian hot yellow peppers and two sweet banana peppers. You can see how similar they look – the banana peppers are the two resting on top, the only difference in appearance is that they’re slightly more slender and have a little more point in the tip. Looks aside, these peppers do not taste the same! Holy oh my the Hungarian hot peppers are way spicy! Delicious and even better when spliced with sweet banana peppers (helps ease the spice). We made a pita pizza with sauteed garden pickings the other night. Hope to share it with you sometime.

The Banana Peppers are growing just as well as the Hungarian hots. Apparently they are related – not so surprising based on the looks. Banana peppers are sweet and Hungarian hot peppers are uh… hot. Spicy. I’m happy to be growing both because I love the spice but the sweeter peppers are a perfect compliment to offset the heat. Lots of banana peppers still ready for picking as well…

Our habenero peppers have been looking pretty sad this season. But things are looking up for the little guys, although we have yet to spot any peppers or even any flowers. The habenero pot is finally perking up and showing much improvement. It actually looks healthy now!

Cayenne Peppers were early to show up and have not stopped producing since the last update. We’ve had some great shapes come from these little babies. Little curls and witch fingers. I can’t wait until they turn red! I’m already getting impatient ;) What can we do with all of these? A powder… maybe a cayenne paste?

The jalapenos… I barely even want to talk about them. Ever since the move and well, quite frankly even before the move, the jalapeños just haven’t been doing great. They’re not dead and not even dying but they’re not doing their best. At the old place something was munching on their leaves and once moved to the new place the sun kind of burnt them up a bit… worse than any of the other peppers and I don’t know why they were singled out by the bugs. Tasty leaves I suppose.

The good news is that they are not doing worse at this point, in fact I have spotted a few little flowers which means they are really trying to be their best and I expect them to make it big after all. One little jalapeno has made his first appearance. By the next time I share the progress I hope we will all see a whole bunch of little jalepeños.

Last but not least – the red chili peppers. No problems here, they’re growing quite tall and I see lots of little peppers hanging. I can’t wait to harvest them, we seriously had an abundance last year and I think it’s not less than every day that I think about making that damn chili sauce ;)

Oh peppers… I love you!

I’ll leave you with a few non-pepper images of some beautiful found in the yard…

Until next time….

Related Posts:

» Garden 2010
» Our Garden Moved
» Garden Update

This pizza was fresh and delicious, a great option for the summer.  Even though the greens star in this pizza, the plum sauce is the supporting ingredient that gives it an unexpected flare that truly sets this pizza apart from others. Here is what you’ll need.

Dough :
1  ¹/3 cups warm water
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
3 ½+ cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 scant tablespoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons ground flax seed

ingredients on top :
Swiss chard
spinach
arugula
basil
baby bella mushrooms
plum sauce
garlic
olive oil
kosher salt
smoked gouda

Here are the guidelines…

Before you get to mixing your dough prepare your spices. In a small frying pan, dry toast 1 scant tablespoon cumin seeds with 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Cut down on the crushed red pepper if you don’t want the crust to be spicy – half that amount will give it just a hint of spice across the 2 pizzas. Shake your pan over the heat and toast slightly until your cumin browns slightly – don’t burn it!

Mix your dough by hand or with a stand mixer. Start with 1¹/3 cup warm water and add 2¼ teaspoons of dry active yeast (one packet). Let it rest for a moment. Add 1 tablespoon salt, 3 tablespoons ground flax seed, about a tablespoon of honey, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and your toasted spices. Mix in 3½ cups flour; you may need to add more if your dough is too wet, just add a small amount at a time and mix until the dough can form into a nice ball. Let it sit for about fifteen minutes while you prepare your toppings.

We cut down all the chard and spinach ready to be used in the garden and then I added a few handfuls of arugula to the mix as well to bulk it up. I don’t have an exact amount of the greens we used. My logic suggests that more greens are better. While you’re preparing these greens it will feel like there is too much but once you slightly saute them, they will be much more manageable. You’ll wish you had even more.

Start with the Swiss chard. Slice out the center stem and chop it into small pieces, place them in a small bowl and set aside. Gather up the leafy parts of the chard and roll lengthwise, chop into ribbons. Do the same with the spinach. Place each chopped green in its own bowl. Keep them separate so it is easy to cook them at the appropriate time. Toss a few handfuls of arugula in with the spinach – no need to chop.

Gather up your basil – we picked a lot from our little plant. I happen to love the flavor of basil so I wasn’t concerned with having too much. Chop up as much as you think is reasonable or available. We also chopped up a few baby peppers that had fallen from in the garden – the Hungarian hot yellow pepper, and yes, even though it was just a baby it was very spicy! Can’t wait to try the big ones, they’re really getting huge right now!

Chop mushrooms, we used an 8 oz. package of baby bella mushroom. This is a nice amount to stretch across two pizzas, it’s a lot… a lot delicious. Once they are sliced add a few spoonfuls of plum sauce to coat. I didn’t measure this out I just added a few spoonfuls and mixed it up so the mushrooms were lightly coated with the sauce but not drenched in it. This just adds a new element to the pizza, a little bit of sweetness. I got this idea from my friend Alegra; we made a similar pizza a few months back and coated shitaki mushrooms with plum sauce – I thought this idea was brilliant and was very pleased with the results, it’s not something that I had ever considered doing before.  I think in this case it works really nicely as well.

Instead of sauce we used an oil flavored with a bit of garlic and spice. Crush or chop two cloves of garlic. In a very small frying pan add half of the garlic to about 4 tablespoons olive oil and slowly cook over warm/low heat. This will mellow the garlic and flavor the oil – I also add a dash of our pepper powder for an extra little kick. We use a pan designed to fry one egg, it’s actually something we use quite often. It’s very useful for frying spices or small amounts of oil, I use it just about every time I cook with garlic because I can’t eat fresh garlic without feeling a little ill (although I do love the flavor).  While your garlic oil is cooking keep an eye on it to avoid the bits from burning. Remove from heat for a moment if it starts getting too hot or bubbly. This can stay on the stove top until you’re ready to use it.

In a large pan add a splash of oil and toss in the remainder of the garlic. Saute for a moment over low heat and include the Swiss chard stems. They are very tough so you’ll want to saute them until they are tender. This will take a few minutes. Once the stems are tender, add the Swiss chard leaves and toss it around. Allow it to wilt sightly. Add the spinach and arugula and remove it from the burner. The heat of the chard will wilt the rest of the greens enough. We don’t want to completely wilt them, just enough to tame them – that way we’ll be able to fit more greens on the pizza, it will be easier to top!

Prepare 2 sheet pans by buttering or oiling the surface. Our sheet pans are about 12 x 15. Cut the dough in 2 pieces. We use a dough cutting tool, it’s awesome for cutting dough as well as scraping and scooping chopped ingredients off the cutting board, we just love it. Roll out the dough to be thin and about the size of your cookie sheets. My mom gave us a new silicone rolling pin last week for a house warming gift. It’s great; we’ve been wanting a rolling pin of this shape for quite sometime. The silicone feature is nice because the flour sticks to the pin and the dough rolls right off. Really great gift, we’ll be using it a lot this year – thanks mom!

Get ready to top! I like to top both pizzas at the same time so I can evenly distribute the ingredients. Making pizza is great in this way because you can always make it work with what you have – have more? add more! have less? add less! It’s easy to adapt and hard to mess up.

Start by brushing the garlic oil onto the rolled out dough. Brush all the way to the edges. Give it a nice coat but don’t create oil pools. Adding a lightly flavored oil will really enhance this super flavorful dough.

Next add the greens. Sometimes when they’re wilted they clump together. Spread them out as best you can.

Fill in the blanks with the plum sauced mushrooms.

Sprinkle with basil and any other extra ingredients you might like to include, in our case we scattered the little Hungarian hot pepper bits.

Finish it off with shredded smoked gouda cheese.

Bake at 450° for about 15 minutes. Check it towards the end of it’s baking time and remove the pizza once it’s slightly browned and crispy.

This pizza is extra delicious. With out using a red sauce and by including lots of greens, the pizza feels very fresh and light. Great for dinner, lunch, or a snack!

Surprise your guests with a hint of plum sauce and loads of nutrients.

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» Potato Rosemary Pizza
» Walnut Goat Cheese Pita Pizza
» Gourstada

Throughout the month of June, Chicago was hit with pretty much constant rain, so much that I barely even needed to water anything.

Above you can see the peppers are coming along well, definitely a lot of growth and flowers in the past few weeks. But no Peppers before the move.

The greens have grown so much they have at least quadrupled in size from the time they were planted. They are definitely ready for eating at this time on June 14th.

Over the first couple of weeks in June our cilantro plant bolted in to flowers. We’re new to growing cilantro but generally you don’t want your herbs to flower because all of the energy goes to the flowers and slows the growth for the rest of the plant – also many herbs get bitter once they flower. I think it’s best to use the herbs and prune them regularly in order to promote new growth, keep them happy, and get the most of them.

Cilantro is considered a short-lived plant. It’s recommended to plant new seeds every few weeks in order to keep up with the demand. At this point we just didn’t have the time to eat the cilantro before it went to seed, and it’s lucky for us because now we get to see how coriander seeds are made! Here’s an image of the flowers a couple of weeks back.

Joe and I have been moving our belongings over to the new spot slowly over the past few weeks, including all of the house plants. So in the end we basically just had our big furniture and our garden left to haul over….

It was pretty cute to see all of our largest plants in the back of a U-Haul! We sent some smaller ones along with them too. Since we only moved a few blocks away the trip wasn’t too stressful for them. Now they lay in a very sunny yard full of life. Here is a peak at some of the plants already growing in the yard…

We’re still figuring out the set up of the new garden. We kept all of the peppers together outside in full sun and the mint, greens and strawberries pushed off to the side in another section – they still get a lot of sun as well. Behind the wooden planters is a patch of mint and strawberries already established. Definitely no shortage of mint in this yard! The strawberry patch was loaded with fruit at the beginning of the month. Our little potted strawberry plant is hopefully just a late bloomer – we still haven’t seen any flowers yet.

The light in the yard is definitely full sun which is much different than our previous garden spot that had only morning and evening sun. So, with the excessive amount of rain paired with a much brighter setting, the outdoor garden has a little adjusting to do. Some of our peppers have burnt leaves.

With a few really heavy storms many of the pepper flowers have been blown off and most of the pepper plants have been up rooted by being blown over a couple of times. When we loose those cute little flowers we loose the chance of it becoming a pepper. A little heartbreaking but there is nothing I can do about it except cover up the roots and help the plants stand tall so they can continue to grow. Even though they have had some weather related struggles they are still doing really well; we may have lost a few buds and a few little branches but that doesn’t mean we’ll be short of peppers. In fact we’re already seeing peppers on half of our varieties.

The cayenne peppers are the most plentiful so far with a minimum of 10 peppers already forming! They are so long and skinny all they way from the beginning of their growth. This is the first time I have ever grown cayenne peppers. I use cayenne powder all the time but it’s not often that I get to eat fresh cayenne peppers. I’m looking forward to it.

The Hungarian hot yellow peppers are up next with several peppers already forming, quite large considering how young they are. When they are under an inch long they are a nice fresh green and once they pass an inch they seem to become a lighter color…. must be heading towards yellow! I wonder how they taste?

Next is the red chilies with a few little babies. I know we’ll end up with a ton of them and I can’t wait to make more of our Chili Garlic Sauce again! We’re just finishing up our last jar now – absolutely delicious, a perfect amount of spice with a hint of sweetness. This makes me particularly eager for these peppers to grow!

The Jalapenos are flowering but have yet to show any peppers, the habeneros are not showing much progress at all. I think they have been very much over watered with all of the rain this month.  I still have hope for them though, we had a lot of luck with them last year and I don’t see why they wouldn’t come around this time.

The banana peppers are on their way. We’re seeing a lot of flowers now as well as new growth. In the first image you can see where a few little branches were torn off in the storm. Never grew these before either, excited to see how big they’ll grow.

Now that we have a sun porch we decided to take full advantage of it and keep our herb garden indoors. It’s right outside of the kitchen so it’ll be supper easy to access while cooking. Also I think it’ll be easier to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re being used quickly enough.

This is the beginning of out indoor garden, we have a lot of house plants out there right now soaking up sun with the herbs. Our last apartment had very little sunlight and as a result most of the plants were not doing their best. So this is a much needed retreat for them. The tree in the corner is a grapefruit tree. My Dad planted it from a seed years ago for my brother and it was passed down to me last year. Over the winter it wasn’t doing well at all and I thought it was done for. But once I brought it outside in the spring it perked back up with tons of new growth, and now it’s living very happily on the porch.

Below is a quick peak at our herbs. Starting from the top – lady lavender, dill, munstead lavender, sage, oregano, French thyme, rosemary, orange thyme, and basil. All doing really well, we have already started using them too!

Let’s not forget about our cilantro, or shall I say coriander? We missed our chance to eat our cilantro, so now we’re moving on to coriander seeds. I have always known that coriander seeds are cilantro seeds, but I never knew exactly how it happened. It all makes sense now.

More to come soon!

Related Posts:

» Garden 2010
» Garden
» Garden Update

This year will be a different though. The potted garden will have an eventful summer as it will be moving locations with in a month of its inception. Luckily Joe and I were able to find a lovely new home with a fantastic yard! I’m so excited for it, the yard will have plenty of space for our pots as well as the opportunity to expand (in real ground) next year! More on the new spot later.

One of our absolute favorite garden shops in our neighborhood (or in the world) is Adams & Sons. There you can find a huge selection of vegetables, herbs, house plants, and pretty much anything else related that you would need for an extremely reasonable price – this place is awesome! The people are friendly and helpful, plus they usually have a super sweet shop cat walking the grounds – what a dream life! Anyway, this is where we scored a lot of our pots in the past as well as most of our sprouts for this year’s garden. Make time to head over there sometime if you’re planning a garden of your own.

We didn’t really need to invest in anymore pots this year but it’s always a good idea to freshen up your soil. This year we bought a basic potting soil and mixed it up with an organic mushroom compost which is supposed to be an optimal addition for growing vegetables. We bought a lot of the same vegetables & herbs as last year but also switched it up a bit and added some new things.

For peppers, we’re growing cayenne, habeñero, Hungarian hot, jalapeño, red chili, and banana peppers. This year we planted cayenne, banana, and jalapeños in the large ceramic pot. Last year it was red chilies and jalapeños which surprisingly, when grown mixed up in the same pot, were very hard to tell apart at times. We’re hoping that we won’t have the same problem this year with choosing a variety with each a different shape and color. We’re expecting another great pepper harvest!

For greens, we’re trying out baby spinach and Swiss chard to start. We definitely want to do kale again but we’re having a hard time finding it so far this year. We checked 4 different garden shops and even went back only to find the kale had come in and sold out right away! Blast. We’ll just keep looking for now – we have held it’s place in one of our wooden crate planters, although the other greens are beginning to take over! It’s possible that we may even be able to plant some in the ground at the new space.

Herbs include orange thyme, french thyme, oregano, sage, cilantro, & munstead lavender. From another nursery, and planted a week after, we have dill, rosemary, & lady lavender.  Having your own herb garden is so great because it makes it easy to spice up your dish with fresh flavor at any time. Plus, it saves you a lot of money because you only chop off what you need or you’ll just use what is ready to eat – a lot of times when we buy packaged fresh herbs we won’t be able to use them all in time or we get tired of the flavor by the time it’s all gone. I’m hoping to keep this part of the garden growing throughout the year.

Orange thyme, oregano, & French thyme. Thyme is delicious and it’s fun to grow different varieties at the same time so you can really taste how different they are. I’m looking forward to figuring out new ways to use them. Oregano is also delicious but it’s not an herb I’m really use to cooking with – I thought if we grew it ourselves it would be a great way to get acquainted with it.

Sage. Last year we grew sage as well and made this bread.

Lady lavender, rosemary, & dill. Rosemary is one that we will definitely get a lot of use out of, seems like one of the more hardy herbs that we grow. Dill on the other hand seems rather delicate, this is the first time I’ve tried to grow it.

Mint. This mint is from last year, it came back strong starting back in March! It basically claimed this entire pot and I don’t think it has any plans to give up any space. There were a few varieties in there last year but the peppermint ruled and took over. Luckily Joe and I make a mean mojito and we seem to require lots of mint in the summer months.

Cilantro, basil, & munstead lavender. Basil is an obvious choice, deliciously compliments so many dishes, I love it. I’m thinking we might have to expand our basil garden once we move so we can make pesto and more. Cilantro is another herb we use a lot of, we wanted to include it in our garden to see how it grows. I don’t expect to get too much out if it but any amount is fine – I just hope we can keep it alive through the summer. It seems to grow taller and taller but never wider. Luckily it’s the least expensive herb to buy so we won’t have trouble keeping up with our consumption.

Of course we couldn’t forget about strawberries! We’re hoping to actually eat the few berries we grow this year! We plan to bring it inside right before the fruit is ready to avoid donating the first bite to urban nature. This year we planted them in a strawberry pot gifted from Joe’s mom! Thanks! The plant seems very happy.

As a side note, Joe and I began our move over the weekend and gave the new yard some love and water, we found a covered up strawberry patch which had many hidden fruits – of course we ate what was ready, hopefully it will perk up and keep bearing, it looks promising. It was perhaps a little too exciting to discover – some sort of treasure. I just think strawberries are beautiful, that’s why I enjoy growing them so much.

So happy it’s garden time again! The next time you hear about this one it will be on it’s way to a new home.

Related Posts:

» Our Garden Moved
» Garden
» Garden Update

Granola recipe :

(5 cups rolled grains)
18 oz old fashioned oats (5 cups)

(3-4 cups nuts and seeds)
1 cup walnuts chopped
1 cup pecans chopped
1 cup almonds chopped or slivered
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup millet
¼ cup flax seeds ground

(1¼ cup syrup)
¾ cup maple syrup
½ cup honey

(3 cups dried fruit)
golden raisins
cherries
cranberries
blueberries
uncrystalized candied ginger

cardamom (optional)

The oats we used were labeled organic old fashioned oven toasted oats. I think just about any rolled oat or rolled grain would work. It was an 18 oz cylinder which equaled about 5 cups. I measured them out first to give me an idea of the proportions of the other ingredients. Oats will be the base of the granola although I wanted it to be less than half of the entire granola. Place the oats in a giant bowl.

Next up is the nuts and seeds. For nuts we used walnuts, pecans, and almonds. The walnuts we used were pre-chopped and I hand chopped the pecans. The almonds we used were raw and whole, I didn’t want any whole nuts in the mix so instead of chopping again I pulsed them in the magic bullet (or a food processor) to basically make a coarse almond meal. This worked great but I think slivered almond would be ideal. Include other nuts if you have them or love them – cashew, hazelnut, peanut, etc.  As you measure out the nuts place them in the bowl with the oats.

For seeds we used sesame, millet, and flax seeds. It was a heaping ¼ cup of each. We  had flax seeds so we ground them up before adding them to the mix. Other seeds that would be nice are sunflower and pumpkin. Add the seeds to the bowl.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix the oats, nuts, and seeds together and get ready to dress it up with syrup.  I used about 1¼ cup of syrup total – ¾ cup organic maple syrup and ½ cup honey. You can use other types of syrup if you prefer or include a little olive oil as well. Pour syrup mixture over the oats and stir.  Transfer the sticky granola to a large baking dish, we used a 9×12 lasagna dish. Sprinkle cardamom over the top, stir and repeat. Cardamom is optional, I just love the flavor. I probably used about 2 teaspoons or so. You may consider using other spices as well like cinnamon or nutmeg. It’s delicious and flavorful without additional spice though.

Place the baking dish in the over and stir every 5-10 minutes. I baked this granola for about 50 minutes, probably could have taken it out of the oven after 40 minutes. Cooking time will vary depending on your oven and your baking dish. But be prepared to tend to it in order to prevent it from burning. It will need to be stirred regularly throughout the baking. When the granola becomes golden it is ready to take out of the oven. Allow it to cool completely.

As the baked granola is cooling measure out the dried fruit. Get a good mixture going, about 3 cups worth. We started off with Trader Joe’s “golden berry blend” which was 8 oz, about 2 cups. It included: golden raisins, cherries, cranberries, & blueberries. Then we added a small handful of uncrystalized candied ginger chopped and topped it off with extra cranberries. Stir dried fruit into cooled granola mixture and transfer to an air-tight container for storage.

My favorite way to eat granola is on top of yogurt!

ps the next time I made this I added dried coconut!

Related Posts:

» Kale Smoothie
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