The beginning of May was rather cold here in Chicago. I anxiously waited for it to warm up so I could get my potted garden started. I worried that I would be getting a late start but actually began the first installation of plants one day ahead of last year. May 16th 2010.

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.

This year our porch garden had 5 pots of various peppers: jalapeño, red chili, habeñero, serrano, & ancho. We used about 40 of our red chilies to make chili garlic sauce and had well over 60 more peppers to use! Many peppers were used fresh throughout the summer but whatever was left at the end of the season we used to make a chili powder. Ingredients : about 50 peppers- we used jalapeños, red chilies, habeñeros, and serranos. We slow roasted the peppers until they were dry enough to grind into a powder. To do this, set your oven to the lowest temperature; our oven went down to about 200°F and seemed to work well. I was prepared for this dry roast to take a long time, possibly even overnight, so I started in the morning and planned to be home all day. Place all of the whole peppers onto a non-oiled sheet pan. Pop it in the oven and periodically flip & turn the peppers so all sides dry evenly. The peppers will shrivel up and become a little darker in color.  The habeñeros seemed to dry the fastest because their skin is so thin, next up were the chilies, then the serranos, and coming in last were the jalapeños. Because they were all different sizes and dried at different rates, I removed each pepper from the oven as it was ready to avoid any sort of burning. This took about 10 hours in the oven before they were all dry enough to grind; it could take longer though depending on the size of you peppers and your oven. We ground all of the peppers together with our magic bullet, but any spice grinder or clean coffee grinder should do the trick as well — if you use your coffee grinder I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a few spicy mornings to follow. This stuff is really powerful! Prep your dried peppers by getting rid of the stems; I found scissors to work the best. Chop the rest of the pepper into smaller pieces to maximize space in the grinder. It might not be a bad idea to wear gloves during this step, my hands felt the heat the following day. Grind until desired consistency. Half way to powder form you get a really nice crushed pepper flake.  We wanted ours to be a coarse powder, as we often use cayenne powder in our kitchen, but sometimes I think it’s ground up a too finely for what we need and it’s hard to sprinkle evenly as a topper. Leaving it as a more coarse texture will make it easier to spread evenly for a little extra spice and it won’t clump together as much as a finer powder would. Throughout this entire process your house will smell strongly of peppers, but once you open the grinder of the fresh pepper powder you’ll really understand how intense it is! Anyone in the house will be able to detect it. This fresh spice is very different from the rest of the powders in your cabinet. We have already used our new spice a few times to make lotus chips, curry, and chick pea snacks!

Chicago’s fall came quick and is already on its way out.  Naturally with cold weather moving in our garden has been fading away.  A couple of weeks ago, Joe & I harvested all of our red chilies to make a garlic chili paste. This would be our first time making a chili paste and our first canning experience! Definitely not the last either! Although we only made a small batch to start, it was enough to get us excited for more canning. We used 37 red chilies to make 3 (4oz) jars of chili garlic paste.

ingredients : 37 red chilies, 4 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, & 2 tablespoons sugar,

equipment used : 3 (4oz) jars, canning tools, a large pot, magic bullet, other ordinary pots.

Making the actual sauce was easy.  We chopped off all of the stems from the chilies and sliced them a couple of times to no particular size. We peeled the garlic and measured out the other ingredients. Then combined everything in the magic bullet and pureed. We added about half of our chili pieces to start and then more as there was room in the bullet vessel, a blender would also work. Once all of the ingredients were combined, we poured them into a sauce pot and boiled for about 5 minutes. We reduced the boil to a simmer until the paste was fully cooked, about 15 additional minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your jars and lids for canning. We used Ball Complete Book of Home Canning to guide us through the process. Start off by thoroughly cleaning your jars and lids with warm water and soap. In a pot large enough to submerge your jars with at least 1 inch of water over the jars, bring the jars to a simmer; do not boil. Prepare your lids by simmering in a smaller sauce pan until you are ready to use them. Once the sauce is done cooking, fill the jars one at a time. Use your canning tools to help carefully lift the jars from the pot to a work surface that can handle the heat. Ladle the sauce into the jars leaving about 1/4 inch from the top.  Use a clean cloth to wipe around the jar rim. Remove your jar lid from the simmering sauce pan with your magnet wand and place onto the jar; tighten the screw band just enough, but avoid over tightening to achieve a proper seal. Place sealed jars back into the pot with a water level that is at least an inch over your jars, cover and bring to a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes. Turn the heat off, remove lid and let stand for another 5 minutes.  Remove jars and leave them alone for about 24 hours, listen for the “pop” sound- this will indicate that your jars are properly sealed. To be sure they are sealed properly check after the 24 hours that the lids do not move when you press them, remove the screw band and lift the jar by the sealed lid. It should be firmly attached.

This was a pretty simple process  and a great way for us to use so many chilies at once.  We would have never been able to eat the 37 chilies before they went bad and now we can enjoy them all winter long.

–use our experience as a loose guide to the process. We’re just getting started and there is so much more to learn! Safety precautions must be taken when canning and preserving food (especially if you plan to share). Research further!

One item in last week’s produce box was a beet- not so pretty on the outside but brilliant on the inside and super nutritional as well.  Just so happened that I was given an additional bag of beets a couple of days later.  I was excited to have them but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with them. I’ve made a lot of beet soup in the past few years but haven’t really explored much more with them.  I’ve always been a fan of beets though, and it was time to branch out.

I was thinking about all of this while sitting in our garden and noticed that the mint was growing wild and needed to be used.  So when looking for beet inspiration I Googled beets & mint and landed on this site with this Roasted Beets with Mint recipe.

This recipe was found here : Roasted Beets with Mint. We made it according to their recipe except doubled the portions- it was delicious!

Roasted Beets with Mint-

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and lightly crushed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1¼ pounds beets – total without greens, trimmed, leaving 1 inch of stems attached
1/3 cup fresh mint, coarsely chopped

Stir together lemon juice, cumin seeds, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl. Stir in oil and let stand while roasting beets. — We dry toasted the cumin seeds in a pan and lightly crushed them with a mortar and pestle.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.

Tightly wrap beets in a double layer of foil and roast on a baking sheet until tender, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Cool to warm in foil package, about 20 minutes. — This is the first time I have ever roasted beets so I wasn’t certain how tender they would get or how quickly they would roast.  I did know that I did not want them to be mushy at all, I would rather they be undercooked than overcooked.  Because all of the beets were completely different sizes I decided to only roast them for an hour and let them cool for 20 minutes or longer. Turned out to be a good choice because they were cooked perfectly!

When beets are cool enough to handle, peel them, discarding stems and root ends, then cut into 1/2-inch-wide wedges.

Toss warm beets with dressing. Stir in mint just before serving.

This dish was super easy to make.  Fresh mint paired with beets makes a stunning combination not only in taste but visually as well! So vibrant- it even looks healthy!

Fall is slowly moving in on us and with it comes the urge to bake more bread! Joe and I love making bread. We don’t have much experience or a stand mixer, but we love to try out new bread recipes. While searching for ideas on how to use our fresh sage from the garden I stumbled across this Cheddar Sage Bread recipe.  Cheese, bread, & herbs… Yep- sounds good to me!

We have been growing sage all summer and haven’t done anything special with it (until now). I love the flavor of sage but just don’t know much about using it. I was excited to find this recipe because I have never tasted a sage bread before but it sounded delicious to me. We changed a few small things in the recipe and it turned out great! It wasn’t too much work and the rising time was only a couple of hours.  Sometimes when we make bread it feels like the rising time takes twice as long as it says it should. With this recipe I felt like everything went according to plan.

Cheddar Sage Bread
This recipe was found on thathomesite.com
(we slightly modified it in order to use ingredients on hand)

½ teaspoon dry mustard or 1½ teaspoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons fresh sage, minced
3-3½ cups flour (we used bread flour, but all purpose will work just fine)
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 cup milk
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar or 3oz of other cheese
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter

Dissolve mustard in 1 teaspoon warm water – we didn’t have any dry mustard so we substituted it with 3 times as much yellow mustard (this recipe calls for ½ teaspoon dry mustard, we used 1½ teaspoons of yellow mustard instead).

Combine 3 cups flour with salt, pepper, and sage. Warm the milk.

In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, yeast, sugar, and oil. Stir or process to combine. Add the egg and mix well. Add mustard and flour mixtures, adding more flour as necessary so mixture forms a stiff dough and comes together in a ball.

Incorporate cheese into the dough — This recipe called for 3oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese; we used what we had on hand instead- which turned out to be about 4oz of a Gruyere & Colby cheese mix.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour as necessary, about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a lightly buttered bowl and turn to coat top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Punch down, shape in a loaf, put in buttered loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, another hour.

Heat oven to 375°. Melt butter. Brush loaf with melted butter and bake until loaf is golden brown, about 50 minutes  — 50 minutes was just right for us. The bread seemed to turn a golden brown rather quickly and looked like it could be done after about 25 minutes, but we waited until it baked for the suggested amount of time and it turned out perfect. Cool on a rack before cutting into it.

While it was baking the whole house smelled amazing! It tasted just as nice!  We used it all week to eat as a simple toast and for a few breakfast sandwiches as well.