Garlic, Leeks and Onions

Our garlic was a total failure this year. Something just wasn't right and I am officially done looking at it. We were able to get some straw from a friend and so I am pulling it out, composting it and covering it with straw until planting time. Through the mercy of my dear friend Cheryl, I will get a fresh batch of hard neck garlic this fall along with our mutual new experiment of soft neck garlic! I am really excited about starting this again.

Our leeks are marvelous again this year! Oh how we enjoy leeks and how they seem to enjoy our soil. I guess I was made for root crops. Stealing an idea from a preserving book, we are bringing a bucket of sand into the basement this winter and will trim the roots off of the leeks and plant them in. Watering once, checking monthly, they will likely hold until spring onions are cropping out of the ground.

Given our utter frustration with green beans, I have finally convinced my husband that onions are something we really ought to grow instead. We found discounted ($.50 and $.10) 50 onion sets at the local gardening store and threw them into our patio garden as an experiment in late July. They will only ever amount to table onions but something is better than nothing and if we can keep the kids away from them, we will have some red and white scallions for soups and fall stews.

Kale is a new crop for us this year and as such was only given a small space. What a mistake! The stuff is awesome and thriving in our yard! Who knew?! Next year Kale will get a place of honor in our garden so that we can eat kale chips all fall.

Tomatoes and Peppers 2011

This year all of our peppers and tomatoes were from the UWGB Heirloom sale. We were incredibly happy with the peppers and mildly happy with the tomatoes.

For the peppers, we came home with King of the North, WI Lakes and Quadrato Asti Rossa. All 3 are setting large squat fruit. The WI Lakes are the first to turn red on August 21st. The Kings are setting huge, gorgeous fruit. The Quadrato are totally inconsistent. Some have set softball size fruit and some have their first flowers now. (Aug 21st).

The tomatoes are frustrating. We spread our plants out more this year than any other year and still they are 6' high and collapsing over everywhere. The federle are fascinating. Gorgeous fruit (about the size and shape of typical banana peppers) with yellow and orange stripes on red fruit. These are somewhat hollow and dry inside making them easy to slow roast or cut for salsa.

The Amish paste tomatoes are good producers, rich in deep red, black and dark green colors and very meaty inside making them ideal of canning. They are just slightly larger than golf balls on the small size and about the size of tennis balls on the large size. They are sweet and when roasted taste like candy.

The Martino Romas are a complete disappointment. Nearly all of them have persistent blossom end rot, they are small plants which are nearly swallowed up by the massive neighbors (the Ferderle and the Amish Paste). They are a sickly red color and utterly unimpressive.

One of the conclusions we have come to this year is that our tomatoes cannot be grown together. Our soil is rich with whatever it is that makes these plants into giants. Our plan for next year is to put 1 tomato plant on each corner and one or two on the long grassy edge with 1 or 2 basil plants bedded around each. We hope that by spreading them out, we will give them adequate air circulation. Perhaps using garlic to connect them. The garlic will do it's most important work while the tomato plants are young and tender. When the garlic scapes have been harvested, the tomato plants will start filling up the empty space.

Frozen Pizza Made Real

It's been a long time since I posted... we had a bad gardening season last year, a pregnancy and then a spring birth. With our newest addition about 8 weeks old and getting ready to be baptized, we are finally starting to look at the garden and our kitchen as somewhere fun to go again.

We love pizza in this house. It is the comfort food of choice. Frozen pizza is uber-convenient but tasteless. Fresh uncooked pizza from the local establishment is great but heavy and pricey. Fresh, homemade pizza is wonderful but time consuming. Ultimately, in deference to cheap, quick and tasty we usually default to "Movie Store Pizza" more commonly known as Little Ceasar's (it shares a parking lot with Family Video). Cheap, quick and tasty, however is not health friendly and maybe not even as cheap as homemade done right.

In our search for a solution, we came up with a simple answer - make ahead and freeze home made pizza. To get it right, we stole from a variety of sources that have provided us with a very tasty and reasonably healthy option.

Process:

1. Make dough
2. Line a sheet tray or pizza pan with parchment paper or cooking spray (NOT WAX paper - it will burn)
3. "Seal the dough" by baking it at 500 degrees for 5 minutes.
4. Allow dough to cool
5. Make sauce (or buy your favorite jar/can)
6. Spray the dough with an olive oil based cooking spray or butter or something similar
7. "Dress" the pizza with home made sauce, cheese and toppings.
8. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze on pans/trays overnight.
9. Remove from trays; discard parchment paper
10. Set on something firm (like cardboard) and wrap in plastic wrap several times.
11. Store for up to 3-6 mos.

Because it is a bit of a production, we found recipes that would yield 8 pizzas. Take a look:

Favorite pizza dough - Jamie Oliver
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pizza-recipes/pizza-dough

Favorite pizza sauce recipe - from a blog called Annie's Eats
http://annies-eats.com/2009/07/23/pizza-sauce/

To bake the pizza, we put the frozen pizza in a cold oven. Turned on the heat to 400 and baked the pizza for 22-26 minutes until golden brown and crisp on the edges.

Deliciously easy!