GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Kitchen Sink

February is a time for Planning

A time to look over what you have done. What has succeed and what has failed. And that other thing that failed. If you make a light weight cold frame, be prepared to search for it when it blows away. April showers bring May flowers and Mayflowers bring Pilgrims.

Looking back, I started researching planting by moon phase last year on Gardenfork discussion forums. I’ve hashed some thing out and have found that it’s common sense. In the Chicago Land Area, Mother’s Day is the start of the gardening season. About five weeks before Mother’s day is the full moon. The full moon causes a gravitation pull that may be beneficial to root vegetables. Either way, it’s five weeks before the latest frost and when you can-weather providing-start root vegetables, like beets, carrots, radishes.

The new moon is good for lettuces, greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and grains. This is about four weeks before the latest frost. The increased moon light helps to bring leafy vegetables up and out. I’m going to start my amaranth and quinoa, and most of my flowers about April 17th, outside from seed, weather providing.

The second quarter, a week after the new moon, is good for tomatoes, peppers, squashes, beans, and other plants that grow with seeds inside. This makes senses when looking at the traditional calendar since these are warm weather plants.

The third quarter is a time of pruning or resting. I don’t think many of us take the time to enjoy what we have done. The best time I had in my garden last year was watching a pair of yellow finches go after one of my sunflowers. They were funny little birds, with the female “yapping” at the male.

By my plan. I will start, from seed outside as soon as April 3rd with the root vegetables, then wait a week, plant the greens and flowers, and finally the peppers and tomatoes. If everything freezes and fails, then I have enough seeds and sense just to try the next month.

Ps. There are exceptions. Broad Fava Beans like to be sowed super early. I’m thinking about March 27th for those.

February 19, 2010
My V-Day Gift: Ad Hoc At Home by Thomas Keller

I don’t own a lot of cookbooks. I don’t think a lot of them have a voice. This one does.

ad hoc at home

I only know a bit about Thomas Keller. He is the owner of Per Se in NYC ( never been there, would like to someday ) and The French Laundry in Yountville, CA. He is a very good chef.

But often very good chefs don’t publish very good cookbooks. Thomas Keller does.

Part giant food picture book, Part you-can-cook-this, All comfort food is how I would describe it in one sentence. What I like here is the dishes Mr. Keller cooks here are super approachable.

Even I can cook some of them. I will do the short ribs recipe this weekend.

I think I heard a story Mr Keller on NPR about how he reconnected with his father after after years of not much contact, and that the elder Mr Keller moved to Yountville and in his last years he became a fixture at the restaurant. The younger Mr Keller cooked him his last meal, and ate it with him.

Can’t ask more than that from life.

February 17, 2010
I like the smell of compost.

Nature Mill Composter

There. I said it. I enjoy it. There’s compost buried in the veg garden. Compost in the rotating container. Compost “aging” over the winter in planter boxes. There’s a lot of compost. I like the musty, sour, earth smell of it.

Eric had mentioned on a GardenFork Radio Show how I use the Lasagna method of composting. My method is based on Patricia Lanza Method, Lasagna Gardening. Five years ago, I started with a clay based lot, and have transformed it into dark, rich, worm filled soil, layer by layer.

In the fall, I empty my compost bins into the gardens. I’m not big on chopping down stuff so it’s not uncommon to find an avocado skin, or citrus peel. I’ve kneeled in one rotten potato and that is a stinky mess. A good poking stick will help break down your compost while in the bin with out a lot of turning or lifting. I’ll cover that with some leaf mulch and let winter do it’s work. Come Spring, I have Black Gold! One beautiful dry spring day, I’ll hit the gardens with a hoe and stir everything up. Inspect areas that didn’t break down and pick out any nasty bits to recompost. Make it all pretty and ready for planting.

Last year I got the Nature Mill Composter. It has an arm that spins and is heated. Well, here’s the thing. It’s marketed as an indoor, fairly odor less machine and we have not found that to be true. One of the good reasons for that is, I throw just about everything in the composter with out chopping it up. I also toss in paper towels. It’s my lazy way of balancing the dry with the wet compost ingredients. This year we have it on the back porch. While it does get below freezing, the porch provides some protection from the wind.

I’m happy to say, it’s working pretty well. When it does get clogged up, I’ll dig it out and toss it in the other compost bin. There are days where it smells pretty strongly, but it’s not bothering us. It will sure help with the amount of compostable materials Jim and I produce in the winter, but it’s not our main composter.

All the stems, roots, leaves, plants, crazy tomato plants that developed legs and walked across the yard, makes up most of our compostable stuff. It’s also caused me to spread tomato seeds through out my yard. At least we don’t have to plant tomatoes. Yard waste pretty much ends up in a pile in a corner of the yard, until the compost bin is emptied in the fall. I fill it with all the yard waste for winter. The freezing and thawing seems to help break stuff down quickly.

Composting is pretty easy. Just like anything worth doing, it just has it’s disgusting bits too.

February 16, 2010
VendrTV is one year old today

About a year ago, this guy calls me and asks if he can meet me to talk about producing a video show for the web. We met, and he talked about this show he wanted to do about street food, and how he would grow it on the web.

OK, I said, Good Luck.

Well one year later Daniel Delaney and VendrTV have a larger audience than Gardenfork.tv .

So now I’m the one asking Daniel the questions.

We’ve talked about VendrTV here before, but go check out his show here

Below are a few photos of the party I took. The club we were in was packed with street food foodies and Daniel’s friends. People from other countries flew in to be there.

February 15, 2010
The Biscuit Cutter: Twist the Cutter or Just Press Down?

While making biscuits for the Biscuits and Gravy Recipe Show, we were using a short glass to cut the biscuits.

Cut the cold butter into quarters lengthwise

The biscuits came out OK, but I was underwhelmed by the rise. Watch the video here to see the epiphany of using freshly made baking powder.

cube the butter

My food processor is not great at cutting butter into flour

But I was also thinking about the glass we used to cut out the biscuits. I was wondering if the glass, which is fairly thick, was actually kinda pinching the biscuit dough as it pressed down and twisted the glass.

On the Gardenfork.tv website, I read some comments that a thick glass does indeed pinch the biscuit and that you should not twist the cutter either, as that also binds the edges of the unbaked biscuit dough.

I thought I should go buy a stainless steel biscuit cutter, but I’m in the woods here ( in more ways than one ), and not into filling my kitchen with more stuff.

I looked around the kitchen for what was round and similar to a biscuit cutter. Online someone suggested a tuna fish can, but still it seemed the lip on the tuna can might hinder rise.

I then saw one of my salt shakers, and had the eureka moment.

Salt shaker as biscuit cutter

Here I'm just pressing down and not twisting

I pressed out my biscuit dough, and cut the biscuits with and without twisting. Its much easier the get the biscuits to cut with the twist.

I put them on parchment, marked the biscuits sans twist, and baked them

Not a terrific rise with any of the biscuits

None of the biscuits in this batch of dough were amazing, but they were not bad. But my very unscientific test ( we’re not America’s Test Kitchen here ) shows that twisting the cutter has no difference on the rise of the biscuit. A number of the biscuits that were twisted were taller than the non-twist biscuits.

Not a significant difference between twisting and not twisting

Biscuit on left is no twist, on right is cutter with twist

I still need to work on cutting the flour and butter together. Maybe I can find a food processor at a garage sale. The bowl of mine seems too big for the blades. Not sure why, might have to embark on more America’s Test Kitchen style adventures. Where’s my apron….

Added:

Pat, who commented below, makes a good point. You can just use a pastry blender to cut together the flour and butter. But you’ve got to have a good pastry blender, like the one Pat has linked to.

February 14, 2010
No Cable Tv

I love tv and hate commercials. Two years ago we got Apple Tv so I could connect to Boxee and watch Internet Tv. Jim and I brought home our first tv and canceled Comcast(1) Cable. For about six months, we were able to watch almost all programs, online with limited or no commercials. All we had to do was down load Boxee and install it in the Apple Tv and have the patience to watch our program after they aired. It was good, but Apple didn’t like it, and configured software download thingy to block Boxee.

photo by Alvimann

However, with an HD antenna and Apple Tv, Jim and I didn’t miss cable. Most of the programs we watched were on network tv and now there are more network channels to watch. In Chicago we have WCIU. They show all the old Twilight Zone episodes and the like. Plus Kora and Max did a commercial for WCIU. (as much as I hate commercials) We were never at a loss for programing.

Our No Cable lasted about a year. We have At&t cable since it’s packaged with our internet and phone deals. I’m still not happy with it, but that could also be because I’m not thrilled with television. This is where I get into the whole how much I hate commercials. Why are we paying for cable tv and watching commercials? The commercials are so close together and so frequent that I can not “get into” the program that I’m watching. I’ll get up during the commercials and go do something else. Which, you know, isn’t always bad. There are just times when I want to relax and be entertained by tv.

When Jim and I got our kitchen done, we designed a space for a second tv. This tv is also my computer monitor. I got a Mini Mac and wireless keyboard and mouse, plugged everything in, and I can watch GardenForkTV and cook. Follow recipes online and watch some of my programs. Networks pull their programs off of sites like Hulu.com and Slashcontrol.com all the time. I rather not “steal” programing.

Eric mentioned on Gardenfork Radio going cableless. I totally support this since I am not happy with the service from either of the two cable providers. Boxee is coming out with it’s own “box” that hooks up to the internet. So do some of the video game machines. We’re living in an interesting time when it comes to how we watch tv.

All information for how to go cableless I found on sites like lifehacker.com and tuaw.com

(1) I don’t like either available cable company and hate having to pick the lesser of two evils.

February 6, 2010
Food Dehydrator Plans, a Solar Dehydrator from Encyclopedic Cookbook

The original book is from the late 40s

I’ve been talking about this book Tony loaned me, The Encyclopedic Cookbook, a lot lately. We even filled up most of a GardenFork Radio show about it. Link Here.

This book is truly encyclopedic and while we may snicker at a lot of the recipes, like Stuffed Crown of Frankfurters ( this is a Must Make on GardenFork ) the book does have some really interesting stuff in it.

I stumbled across a few pages of food dehydration techniques that I had not seen before, and I thought a few were pretty smart in their efficient use of heat and simple design.

A Solar Dehydrator, simple to build

The chapter is titled Drying Foods; today we would title it Food Dehydration.

Here are plans for an outdoor solar dehydrator, they call it a Sun Dryer, and its brilliantly simple, I like the simple tilt mechanism. Just use wing nut to tilt the solar food drier toward the sun.

The Range Top Food Drier

On the next page was something I had never seen before, and I know my wife would not let me build in the kitchen: A Range Top Dryer . The text was a little vague on this one, but it did say ” Strong flavored foods should not be cooked while food is being dried since odors may be absorbed” OK.

I’m guessing you have the burners on to dry out your food? Or does the heat from the pilot lights give off enough heat to be an effective food deyhrator? Not sure. Anyone know? A quick web search turned up nothing. Still, its quite fascinating to me.

A laundry stove food drier

This design uses heat from the Laundry Stove. I’ve never heard of a laundry stove before, but it looks like you would use it to dry clothes.

This chapter in the book list all the usual vegetables and fruits one can dry, but it also lists some I never considered.

Spinach:

“Steam 3 minutes, Remove excess moisture. Arrange in a thin layer. Start drying at 120F increase gradually to 140F. Stir the spinach carefully from time to time so that it will dry quickly thoughout. … Greens are likely to be of inferior quality if not carefully dried and stored. They dereriorate after long storage.”

January 23, 2010
From DIY Pizza Oven to DIY Near Space Camera

OK. This is one of those wow things. I was doing more research today on how to make a portable wood fired brick oven for pizzas and bread for an upcoming Gardenfork.tv show.

Via the Make Blog, I learned about PizzaHacker, who has an interesting Weber Grill cum Pizza Oven, and Machine Project, who made this temporary pizza oven – which looks pretty permanent to me. ( PizzaHacker on Twitter here )

Thru the Make Zine post I click on a link to pizza fanatic Mike Sense, who hosts two DIY tv shows, Science channel’s Punkin’ Chunkin’ and Catch It Keep It. (Mike on Twitter here.)

Photo from space.1337arts.com

I start reading thru Mike’s blog, and he has posted about these two MIT students who built a near space camera rig out of a styrofoam cooler.

wow.

I keep saying I was born a few decades too early. In college we did not have GPS cell phones and cheap digital cameras. Now they do, so you can build your own near space camera.

So you can make your own rig that will go up 17.5 miles into space, take great pictures, and then find the thing when it lands ( with a GPS cell phone ).

Preparing the balloon – photo from space.1337arts.com

Oliver Yeh , Justin Lee, Eric Newton did just that. Their website has great pictures and a PDF of how they did it.

Here is a complete how-to PDF on how they did it. And here is the home page of their space photography site for more info and consider donating a few bucks to further their projects.

Doug Clarkin built a space camera based on their PDF and here are some photos of his launch. I really like that Doug did this with his 6 yr old son.

Just super cool, i think. I doubt I’ll ever build a near space camera cooler, but its great to know you can for $150. I will build a pizza – bread oven. Thanks to Mike for the pizza info and the post about this.

Here is a video they made:

1337arts Icarus Project TimeLapse Video (Max Altitude: 93,000 ft) from Justin Lee on Vimeo.

January 17, 2010
The Art of Eating In, a new book by Cathy Erway

I’ve met Cathy Erway a few times, the first was at Emily Farris’ Casserole Crazy competition ( we made a GF show about it here ) She’s well known in the Brooklyn Food world, and I really like her blog about cooking in. Its not fancy food, its home food, but thought of in a few new ways.

Like right now Cathy ( according to her blog posts ) is really into using apple cider as a braising liquid. Something I would not have thought of – but then I don’t get many original ideas in the kitchen.

Now Cathy has published a book, The Art of Eating In:

Rediscover the joy of home cooking through the eyes of one Brooklynite who swore off restaurants for two years. The story behind the scenes of Not Eating Out in New York, The Art of Eating In chronicles Cathy Erway’s journey through the underground of NYC eating, and her favorite recipes along the way. Two years, three apartments, countless food events and some strange restaurant-free “dates” later, she was able to turn eating in into something of an art, rather than mere survival.

You can learn more about Cathy’s book here, and read her blog, Not Eating Out in NY here.

January 17, 2010
Good Indian Food in Kensington Brooklyn

I was painting an apartment in the Kensington area of Brooklyn. Kensington borders several different ethnic neighborhoods, one of them being an area of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India.

I walked out of the building and toward MacDonald Ave, and saw an awning that said “Basmati” . Some of the east asian – indian food places in NYC can be pretty bland buffet food, but this was different, the food looked fresh and the counterperson was real helpful.

I had the special, with fresh baked nan bread. I love lentils and these lentils were still whole, and had a bit of crunch to them. I want to experiment to figure out how to make them. Many people say their lentils come out gritty. not sure why.

I’m not a big fan of cauliflower, but the curried cauliflower was good, it was not cooked to mush, nice texture was still there.

For a simple lunch, this indian food is perfect.

Basmati is at 221 Church Ave near MacDonald.

January 12, 2010
Another use for leftover turkey or chicken

Continuing on my new plan to cook from what is in the fridge, Tony ( mr kim chi maker ) came over for lunch and we had this leftover turkey from one of our turkey injection tests. We also had some bread from the weekend and cheddar cheese.

We tore the meat into pieces, and grilled them in a little oil and sprinkled some dried thyme on them.

When making grilled sandwiches, i don’t oil the bread, i pour some oil into the pan and swirl the bread into the oil, kinda spreading the oil around the whole piece of bread. I also don’t use a lot, maybe a teaspoon per side.I use a thick bottom pan or a cast iron pan/griddle

We also made a simple salad of greens and apples. yum.

A real decadent treat is to grill your sandwiches in olive oil. I also like to spread brown or deli mustard any grilled sandwich. Batampte is a big favorite of mine.

Batampte is a favorite of mine, hard to find outside of NYC

From a few things in the fridge we have a great lunch. What do you put together from your fridge? let us know below.

January 11, 2010
Toilet Paper: Green your Bathroom

I was recently contacted by Seventh Generation about a new product they are coming out with, and they are going to send us some. we’ll see what it is. This reminded me of our Green Your Bathroom : Toilet Paper episode of Real World Green.

Once our site redesign is complete, we’ll fully integrate the Real World Green video series into the Gardenfork site, for now you can watch them all on the RWG page here.

January 5, 2010
Add Walnuts after the flour in the banana bread recipe

I was working on a one-bowl banana bread recipe today, trying to simplify an already simple recipe. ( here is the final recipe )

Surfing the web, I found there are a lot of complicated recipes for banana bread: using cake mixes, Bisquic, all sorts of odd stuff. Why does is have to be?

I did succeed in making a one bowl banana bread that tastes real good. At least I think so.

But, I learned a great lesson in the process.

I had tossed in the walnuts into the ‘wet’ mix, not thinking about what would happen afterward, and then when I added the flour, I found out what would happen.

The flour coats the walnuts. not good.

After you bake the bread, you get little pockets of white flour around the nooks of the walnuts.

Another lesson learned here on Gardenfork for me.

what have you learned in baking or life lately? tell us in the comments below:

add walnuts after the flour…

December 31, 2009
How to inoculate logs with mushroom spore – thanks to Cooking Up A Story

On my to do list is to learn more about propogating mushrooms. I want to learn how to grow mushrooms, and here is a great video by Ashley Terry of the blog Cooking Up A Story. Ashley went to Oregon to learn about inoculating birch logs with oyster mushroom spore. Check out Cooking Up A Story for more cool info.

WWOOF USA: Elm Oyster Inoculation from Ashley Terry on Vimeo.

December 29, 2009
Tatsoi, Greens to grow in the Winter

We just shot a Gardenfork episode about gardening in winter. We shot it on Christmas Day, and I had neglected to pull out my portable cold frame – watch our how to make a cold frame video here – and I did not cover my raised beds with black plastic before the beds froze solid and snow piled on top of them. So I pulled off the snow and put on the plastic.

In the show we talk about Eliot Coleman’s book The Four Season Gardener, and one of the greens you can grow in winter is Tatsoi . I saw some great Tatsoi in the Park Slope Food Coop last week, so I had to take a picture and share it with you all.

The Tatsoi in the Food Coop was huge compared to how it grows in my garden, mine does not get nearly as big. I’m wondering if I’m not growing it right, or buying the seed of a minature version.

Tatsoi is an Asian Mustard, and it is cold hardy down to 15F. You can buy Tatsoi seed from Fedco Seeds .

Jessica from the Food Mayhem blog suggests that you can use it as a substitute in any recipe that calls for Bok Choy. I use it in salads, and you can treat it like most hardy greens such as kale and other mustards and saute it with olive oil and garlic. I don’t know the nutrional content of Tatsoi, but its green so its good, i think.

Have you all grown Tatsoi or used it in cooking? Let us know below:

December 27, 2009
Eric’s Waffle Recipe post Christmas, + cornmeal

Its the day after Christmas and I decide that I want to make Waffles. No one in my house, besides me and the Labradors, likes waffles, but I do, so I make them. This time I modified my waffle recipe – watch the how to make waffles video here – with cornmeal. Neat.

I use a cast iron waffle iron I bought online from Camping R US http://www.a1camping.com/, but you can use an electric one. I like the cast iron waffle iron because it is easy to clean, and i don’t have to wrangle an electric cord.

The Cornmeal Yogurt pancakes came out great. Here is the recipe I modified from the original waffle recipe we posted here.

Eric’s Waffle Recipe

1 1/2 cups buttermilk [to substitute milk here, put 1 1/2 tablespoons of vinegar in 1 1/2 cups of milk, let stand for 5 minutes, then add to recipe ]

or

1 cup of milk + 1/2 cup plain yogurt

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup cornmeal – i like the coarse ground, but use whatever you like.

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup canola oil

3 eggs, yolks separated from whites.

Preheat your waffle griddle.

Combine the egg yolks with the buttermilk. add dry ingredients and just mix till mixed, don’t over mix.

Then add oil.

Using a whisk or electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they form peaks,

Then turn the whites into the batter. Do this gently, you do not want to overmix this.

Spray the waffle griddle with vegetable oil or non-stick cooking spray. Pour about 3/4 cup of batter onto the griddle, spread it around a bit.

Close the griddle and sit tight. after 3-4 minutes, gently lift the lid and check the bottom for done-ness, if its nicely browned, flip the waffle griddle to cook the other side. Cook for a few minutes more until nicely browned.

Serve with Maple Syrup and butter, you can also dust with confectioners sugar.

©2008 eric rochow

December 26, 2009
Alphabet Sugar Cookies for my birthday

A good friend of mine stopped by the house and laid out this birthday message for me. What Fun! Making words with cookies.

These are Alphabet Cookies cutters and two cookie batters, one a plain sugar cookie the other a fudge sugar cookie. You roll out the dough, cut the squares, then use the alphabet cookie cutters to cut out the letters. You take the white letter and drop it into the corresponding chocolate letter space. Then take the chocolate letter and drop it into the white sugar cookie with the same letter.

One place you can buy cookie cutters is The Cookie Cutter Shop

We also used the letter from the birthday message to spell out a nickname we have for Charlie Pup:

Do you have any fun cookie cutters or have you made some interesting cookies? Tell us below:

December 23, 2009
The Screened Bottom Board, leave open or closed in winter?

Both our hives have a plastic screened bottom board. I think screened bottom boards are a must for controlling varroa mites.

Varroa mites are a big problem for bees, and with a screened bottom board, mites that fall off bees fall thru the screen and out of the hive. You can have even more mites fall thru the screened bottom board if you dust your bees with powdered sugar. – Here’s a video we did on that.

But I’ve been wondering about the screened bottom board being wide open in the winter. There are different opinions on this, some bottom boards have a wood slide that goes in to close off the screen.

Our bottom boards do not have a slide to close the screen. So I decided to make one out of thin plywood and a foam gasket.

To get this closer board up against the screen, i used cedar wedges to lift the board up to touch the screen.

Whether this is a good thing to keep the hive warmer in the winter, or not as good a thing because some mites that fall off the cluster of bees may be able to climb up into the hive again.

Beekeepers, what are your thoughts here? Do you have a type of bottom board you like? The plastic bottom board will not rot, but I don’t like the entrance reducer it uses, very clunky.

Update: I now believe in areas with winter, one should close up the screened bottom board in winter. See our complete winter beehive prep video here.

Save

December 22, 2009