Our garden has officially moved! And so did we, of course. I guess I can blame all of the busyness and work of moving for my slow-to-post attention to this site as of late. But now we and all of our plants are settling into our new space and getting ready to share again.  But first let’s touch base with last couple of weeks of the garden’s progress, a lot has happened since the first update.

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!

Indian inspired foods and flavors are some of our favorites.  Samosas are an absolute treat; whenever I have the chance I order a few and love them!  So, why not make them at home? Experimenting with Indian flavors is definitely something we love to do at our house, whether we are making curries, breads, or snacks.  Samosas can be surprisingly easy especially if you make them as we do (and cheat a little bit). I think the hardest part of making authentic style samosas is rolling out the dough, so we skip that step to make it easier! The recipe varies from batch to batch as we add new and different amounts of flavor each time. I will post modified recipes as new variations are made. For now, try these delicious little snacks. The secret ingredients to our style are edamame and wonton wraps – that’s right, wonton wraps!

:: what you will need ::

4 cups potato cubed
2 cups edamame (just the bean)
1 pack of wonton skins (50-60)

2 tablespoons ghee
1 teaspoon minced ginger
3 fresh green chilies
(or 2-3 teaspoons chili paste)
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
¼ teaspoon asafoetida

1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon fenugreek
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon coriander powder

2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon salt

oil for deep frying

•Take time to prepare the ingredients before you start cooking. Peel and cube potatoes, boil until soft and drain.  Then, thaw and warm edamame and set both aside. Mince the ginger & chili; if you don’t have fresh green chilies you can substitute them with a chili paste (we often use this chili garlic sauce).   Measure out cumin & asafoetida.  In another small bowl measure out the powdered spices :: turmeric, fenugreek, cinnamon, & coriander.  Have the salt and water ready to go.  It’s always best to have all of this taken care of before you begin cooking to avoid feeling too rushed or missing ingredients, especially when you’re cooking with a lot of spices.

• Heat ghee in a large stir fry pan or whatever you have that will fit 6+ cups of ingredients.

•add chili and ginger, allow it to cook for a moment just until they begin to brown, add cumin and asafoetida and heat until the mixture is browned.

• Add powdered spices, then water and salt, stir together until spices are mixed.

• Add potatoes, stir, then add edamame.  Stir for about 3 minutes over medium heat. Cover with a lid over low heat stirring occasionally until all pieces are tender enough to mash.

• Cool slightly and mash until potatoes are broken down. I use a hand masher. Don’t worry about mashing the edamame completely.

• Fill wonton wraps, fold into triangular shape. Have a cup of water and a plate for your work surface. Set one wonton skin on the plate and scoop about a tablespoon of filling on to it closer to one corner. If the samosa has too much filling it will be more difficult to fold. Dip your finger in the water and run it along the edges of the wrap to help seal it. Fold diagonally into a triangle and press edges, crimp with fork for extra seal, fold edges over and crimp again to ensure that the samosa does not open while frying. I have also folded them like mini egg roles, which is a little bit easier to do, but the triangles are nice because the edges get a little crispy and they look more like samosas. I don’t have a pictured step by step right now, but I winged it the first time I tried and it worked out just fine… so, I know you can do it too!  The first couple might look sloppy, but you won’t know the difference once they’re fried!  You’ll have about 60 tries to get the hang of it ;)

• Deep-fry. I use a small pot so I don’t have to waste too much oil, fill it up about an inch and a half, enough to cover what you are frying. Heat the vegetable oil on high heat, test if it’s hot enough by throwing a corner piece of a wonton skin (from the one that accidentally ripped – you’ll probably have a couple of these) into the oil; it should fry up to the top and brown.

• Once it’s hot enough to fry use a slotted spoon or a utensil that will allow oil to drip through; be sure to choose one that will not melt and will not transfer heat to the handle. It will get very hot! Place the raw samosa on the utensil and lower it into the oil. I always leave the spoon in the oil underneath to minimize dripping hot oil as well as being cautious to not start a fire!

• Once the samosa turns brown you can remove it from the oil and place it on a plate or cookie sheet with paper towels to soak up extra grease.

• Because we use such a small pot to deep fry we can only fry about three at a time, by the time we get to the end most of them have cooled down.  This is why we put them on a cookie sheet, warm up in the oven before serving if desired.   Enjoy.