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.

A quick entry with a recipe for fancy butter…

1 stick of salted butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon honey
2 cloves of roasted garlic
1/8 heaping teaspoon hot pepper powder

Combine ingredients into a small storage container and enjoy all week while you use it to make all your breads and crackers taste more exciting ;)

Over the holidays we were gifted some pretty amazing things. There are two new special tools I am specifically referring to right now, a KitchenAid! and a Calphalon Dutch Oven!!! Oh my! Could it get any better?! The year has already started off much much better than last, I couldn’t be happier. Both Joe and I are employed with jobs we like and we’re in good health (crowd cheers) plus, we’re set up to bake anything and everything we want. I’m ready to make 2010 a great year full of fresh bread & happiness. Cheers to all and thanks for taking a moment to look at my little site, a project that I desire to keep growing into something beautiful.  And thank You (M&D and B&R) for gifting tools that will help us grow (up & out;) as well.

Of course we had to break into our new toys immediately to take them for a spin. First stop — rosemary bread. We combed the internet for the recipe we would bake first. We landed on a recipe from ThePioneerWoman.com.

This recipe was adapted from
ThePioneerWoman.com

Rosemary Bread

20 oz. of bread flour (all purpose is okay, too) – about 4 cups.
8 oz. of water (or 1 cup).
4 oz. melted butter with chopped herbs of choice (we used rosemary).
2 teaspoons salt.
1 teaspoon active or instant yeast (if active, it would be best to sprinkle yeast over the water to let it start to work before mixing it in).

In your KitchenAid stand mixer (with dough hook) sprinkle yeast over the water before mixing in the rest of the ingredients.  Mix together on low speed for about 10 minutes or so until you can achieve a windowpane with the dough- this is something I never knew about until I followed their instructions. Achieving a windowpane is when you can pull off a small chunk of the dough you’re kneading and stretch it gently to see if it is somewhat translucent. If you can do this without it tearing, it’s ready.

Once this elasticity has been achieved, allow the dough sit out with plastic wrap over it for 1-4 hours to double in size. After it’s gotten bigger, it should be kneaded for a minute or two so that the yeast can redistribute – Once we kneaded the bread, the dough seemed to return to its original size and become more dense.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut a large ‘X’ into the surface of the bread dough so it can bloom!

Bake inside a covered cast iron pan after coating the rounded dough with olive oil and sprinkling with kosher salt. Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on, then remove lid to finish it off for another 15 to 30 minutes.

The bread can get brown on the bottom if it’s too close to the heating element; if that happens, just slice it off with a sharp knife.

We baked ours for the 30 minutes covered and an additional 20 without the lid- next time we’ll do the additional 30 minutes because our dough was a little too moist although it was still very delicious.  Our outer crust was beautifully perfect, this was an excellent first experience with both our KitchenAid and cooking with the dutch oven. We can’t stop thinking about mixing up our next batch of bread!

It’s exciting to think about how much easier the bread making process will be, the possibilities just opened up. Looking forward to finding more recipes to try.

Salad is a dish that has infinite possibilities. You can add just about anything you desire and it’s near impossible mess it up (with the exception of adding raw onions).   We are trying to eat salads more often- like everyday.  I don’t know why we don’t do this already because it’s not hard to prepare, it can be a very filling meal, and you never feel gross after eating it.  The freshness is light, leaving you with energy instead of feeling overstuffed and heavy.

I want to share with you the salad we made the other day as inspiration for you to increase your salad intake as well as getting creative with what you add to your own.  The best part about this is that you have control over what you include in your salad, which means you can make it perfectly delicious to your taste.  Plus it can be as laborious or as simple as you want to make it. Here is what we used in ours this time…

Baby spinach, greenish red heirloom tomatoes & cucumbers.

Herbs- rosemary, thyme & sage.  Each chopped up a bit, especially the sage which we only used a tiny amount of.  We still don’t quite know what to do with sage yet but I like the flavor so we try to use it anyway ;).

Portobello mushrooms sauted in olive oil with chili garlic paste & basil. I like a little spice so I easily added a bit of our favorite hot sauce.  Crushed red pepper or black pepper would be a nice and convenient option for heat as well.  I like to saute the portobello slices until almost cooked before i add the Basil. Adding it towards the end wilts it just enough to cling to the mushrooms but still taste fresh.

#1 Best tofu and crumbles.   This salad was delicious and extremely satisfying.  Adding either the tofu or the crumble would be enough crisp for one salad, but adding both is twice as nice.  More salad ideas to come…