Fried Green Tomatoes

I made fried green tomatoes last night as an appetizer. They were absolutely delicious! I have never made fried green tomatoes before so I was a little hesitant...I shouldn't have worried at all because they turned out great. For the official recipe follow the link at the bottom of this post. This post is dedicated to the recipe and I have laid out step by step directions for those of you who love fried green tomatoes, but have never made them before. The first photograph below is everything that you need (minus the actual cookware and bowls to mix everything). You can see the two tomatoes on the left are more green and are closer to being ripe than the one on the right-hand side. 

All of the ingredients required to make fried green tomatoes

The first thing to do was pick three medium-sized green tomatoes. From the tomato garden I had two tomatoes that were more on the ripe side (still green) and one that was definitely less ripe. It actually doesn't matter how green your tomato is - just pick three (or more!) depending on your mood. I found that the less ripe one had slightly less flavor, but much more than what you would get at the grocery store.

Slicing green tomatoes into 1/3in - 1/2in slices

Line up in preparation for cooking!

  I first sliced each of the tomatoes into 1/3 in to 1/2    in slices. You can see from the insides that the           tomatoes are still a greenish color. There was one
  on the riper side that had some red on the inside. 

    I then prepared each of the mixture solutions             according to the recipe. First, I took an egg
    and slightly beat it with a fork, then added the             buttermilk and mixed well so that the mixture
was   smooth. The container closest to the tomatoes in the photograph to the left is just flour. The bowl contains the egg and buttermilk mixture. Then, I mixed cornmeal, flour, pepper (more than what the recipe called for as we both like pepper), and salt. I lined everything up in order so that I wouldn't have to worry about where everything was. The skillet contained about 1/2in vegetable oil that I heated on medium heat while I prepped everything.

 

Flour

Egg mixture

Cornmeal mixture

After getting the ingredients prepped and lined up, the fun started! The first step was to "dredge" the slices in flour. I basically coated both sides with the flour and then dipped the tomato sliced in the egg/buttermilk mixture making sure everything was coated well. The last step was the coat the slice in the cornmeal mixture. I placed all of the coated tomato slices on a paper plate before cooking them in batches.

Cooking tomato slices in batches

Tomatoes ready for cooking

The photograph on the left shows the tomatoes ready to be cooked! The picture above is the hot vegetable oil and cooking the tomato slices in batches. The recipe says to heat the oil to 375 degrees, but because we do not have a thermometer and I just really wanted to cook them I tested the oil by throwing a few drops of water (I mean a very little bit...don't burn yourself please!). The water sizzled so I figured it was hot enough to cook. I flipped the slices after 2 minutes, but they were not golden brown so I actually ended up cooking them for a lot longer than the recipe called for. I imagine this is because the oil was not hot enough. Honestly, I'd rather have to cook them for longer than risk burning myself with really hot oil. Either way, the tomatoes turned out deliciously golden brown :-)

Cooking the tomatoes!

Fried Green Tomatoes

Above you can see the slices cooking in the oil - by the way I did use the entire tomato, so the ends were included. I then let the tomatoes cool on a rack with a paper towel below to catch any excess grease. As you can see from the picture I cooked the slices until they were nicely golden brown. I had to hide a few slices in order to have some for lunch today :-) I can say that these were a huge hit in our house and I will be making more in future! I don't think that I would change anything in the recipe, even though I love to make little additions here and there. This is just a fantastic (and easy!) recipe as is. Bon appetite!


Original Recipe: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/fried-green-tomatoes-10000000461220/

The Stinking Rose

"The Stinking Rose", aka garlic, is one of our favorite seasonings to add to dishes. It is very flavorful and has been shown to have great health benefits. These benefits increase if you let the garlic sit after being crushed or chopped before cooking. Allicin is a sulfur compound that remains intact for 2-16 hr after being released. Garlic can help improve iron metabolism and a good source of selenium. There may also be cardiovascular benefits associated with consuming garlic. For more detailed information I have included a great website that details some of the health benefits of garlic.

Garlic bunch

Clove with narrow side up

We planted an entire garlic bunch in our front garden near the herbs. To plant the garlic the bunch had to be broken up into individual cloves, but you leave the husk on. Each clove was planted pointed up (wide end down, pointy/narrow end up) about 4 inches apart and a couple inches deep. Nate ended up ordering a garlic bunch from Amazon, our natural go-to! The kind that we bought was organic and intended for being grown in a garden.




  

Garlic garden - sprouting

We planted four rows with about four to five cloves in each row.

Garlic plant - small sprout

Now that every clove has sprouted, I needed to figure out when we can harvest! After reading multiple websites, I realized that we may have planted the garlic a bit late in the season. However, it seems like they are sprouting and growing as expected.

The sprouts start to turn yellow and fall over and you want to harvest before the plant gets dried out. I took pictures of our garlic garden and you can see from the photo that each of the cloves have sprouted. The bottom has started to yellow and so I thought that maybe the garlic was almost ready to harvest. I pulled one out to see how far along the plants are - and you can see from the photo they are not ready yet :-) I will still keep an eye on the garlic throughout the summer and I imagine that towards the end of the summer or maybe early fall we will have some garlic to cook. It will be really nice to be able to just walk out to the front door and pull a bunch out for cooking.

My next post will likely be about cooking green tomatoes. We found a recipe for fried green tomatoes and since we have a handful of medium-sized green tomatoes I figured I could try making the dish this weekend.

Websites:
Health benefits of Garlic: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=60
Growing Garlic: http://www.almanac.com/plant/garlic

Bean, beans, beans!

Green bean and soaker hose

My string beans have finally come in! They are our first vegetables grown from seeds to flower and fruit this season. They come in as sets so I can only pick a small handful at a time. The bean plants are neat - the leaves are huge, but the plants were sneaky when flowering because I didn't notice until there were actual string beans! From what I have read you need to harvest before the seed pods get too large, and often to promote more fruiting. I hope to make a salad with beans and also a side dish when enough get picked. The sooner after you pick the beans is better for eating because the beans will still be nice and crisp.

In general, it seems as though much of the garden plants grow better and tend to have less disease problems if you use a soaker hose. This is because the water is going directly onto the soil and thus, the roots, rather than the leaves which would promote disease. I mentioned the new watering set up in my last post, but want to give a little more detail here. Nate ordered about 50 feet of the soaker hose from Amazon (where else?!). For those of you that don't know, this type of hose is black and once hooked up to water will drip out at a pretty slow but steady rate. Perfect for watering plants. We ended up cutting the hose in a few places so that they could be hooked up to a regular hose (with connectors) and snake around both the tiered raised garden on the deck as well as the two square foot gardens on the ground next to the deck.

Hose on the tomato and pepper plants

The hose is on a timer and I tried out several different lengths of time for the water to be turned on in order to promote the best soil dampness. Right now the timer has been set to go off once a day in the evening, as the sun goes down and the temperature starts to cool, for 20 minutes. This may change depending upon how hot this summer will be. The timer also has a nice feature where you can delay a watering for 24 hours if we would get a nice rain or storm. The other nice thing is that you don't have to worry about watering your plants when you go on vacation as we did last week. It seems like it's been a great set up so far and I like that I can be more relaxed and almost lazy in taking care of the watering. Now, that's not to say that there isn't a lot of work, because believe me there certainly is! But, it is very nice to not worry about watering every day.

I am making mental notes about what I would change for next year's gardens and I think one would be to make sure that my bushier plants gets thinned a little more so that they have more space.

A Tomato is a Fruit!

Tiered raised garden

It has been a while since my last post, but I have a lot of great news for my fellow gardening friends! For my birthday last month, Nate got me a raised tiered garden and we put it together on the deck. The picture to the left shows the raised garden filled with soil.

We filled it with Mel's Mix (1:1:1 of black cow; vermiculite; sphagnum moss) and mixed it throughout each level. The raised garden uses a LOT of soil. The bottom tier goes all the way to the back, so we were not just filling each "third." I think we used something like 10 bags of black kow, 10 bags of vermiculite, and the same proportion of sphagnum moss that we bought in a larger size. The garden was pretty easy to put together, but we did buy a 4ft x 4ft slab of plywood so that the garden had a bottom. This allowed us to fill the garden with the mix.
 
The next thing to do was decide what type of plants to put into the garden. This spot gets a lot of sun, probably between 8 and 10 hours, and has a fair amount of space.  Recently, Nate and I have been going to the Farmer's Market just down the street from our house. There are several vendors there that sell tiny seedlings that look pretty well take care of. Between the two squarefoot gardens we only had one tomato plant and one pepper plant and since we like both we decided to buy additional plants. We ended up getting eight tomato plants and I planted 4 cherry tomato plants on the first level and 4 big beef tomato plants on the second level.

First two levels with tomatoes

Here I am planting the first tomato seedling!

The deck is the perfect spot for the tomato plants because they get plenty of sun. I read somewhere that they should get at least 8 hours of sun daily. These tomato plants have really taken off. So much so that within two weeks I had to purchase tomato trellises for each plant! The most exciting news is that the Early Girl cherry tomatoes have flowered and each one is fruiting. I am hoping that within the next week or so we will have a few ripe tomatoes.

Early Girl Tomatoes

Hose set-up; trellises on the tomatoes

Watering the tomatoes takes some careful planning. It can be bad to water on the leaves as this promotes fungal growth. I was watering from a hose with a nozzle attachment. Recently, with Nate's help, we installed soaking hoses where the water drips downward. This way I can be sure that the roots of the plants will be directly watered. In addition, this hose is hooked up to a timer so I have it set to water once a day for 20 minutes. This may change depending on how soaked the beds get with each watering.

Now, the pepper plants have been hit or miss. I bought three from the Farmer's Market, but one of them went kaput pretty early on. I also bought a bell pepper plant from Ace hardware that had two baby peppers and one fell off. The other pepper plants seem to be growing well, despite earlier mishaps. Hopefully, a little bit later on I will have better news regarding the pepper plants!

Peas and harmony (on a trellis)

2-3 week old pea sprouts

As you can probably guess from the title, this blog will be about peas! Typically peas are a cold weather crop so I would imagine that most have already been harvesting their peas. I started late (beginning of April), but I have definitely seen a huge difference from the tiny sprouts that came up about a week after planting and the 2 feet high pea plants threatening to take over that corner of the garden today. We are growing sugar snap peas, which has an edible outside as well as the pea fruit.

1 month old pea plants

I didn't really plan on the peas growing so tall. Shame on me I know; the seed package even tells you to have a trellis for the peas. The sprouts grew quickly and within a couple of weeks I had to build a support system. Those suckers are quite spindly and with their tendrils they will latch onto anything within their grasp. In a way they remind me of the
scene in Sleeping Beauty where Malificent used her powers to grow those nasty thorns to trap Prince Philip. Those thorns twist and turn and seemed to grab everything! Now, I know my peas aren't manevolent, but it seemed like one day they were minding their own business and the next taking over the nearby sprouts!

Green twine to tie plants up

I first built a trellis with wood stakes we found at our local Ace Hardware. Side note - Growing up, I used to go to Ace with my Dad and he would buy me a ring pop. So, I have fond memories of that store ☺After getting the stakes, I cut them using a hand saw to 18 in in height. I also had to cut one end at a slight angle so that I could hammer it into the ground. I then placed one stake on each corner and the remaining ones in the centers of each corner so that I had 9 total. Then, using some green twine I wrapped it around the stakes creating three trellises.

Finished trellis!

And of course, not even two weeks later and the peas completely outgrew the trellis I had made. The pictures I have posted on this blog are about 4 feet in height. So far, so good! I can continue to add the green twine as the pea plants grow higher, up to about 4 feet. I can't imagine they will get much taller since they should be fruiting within the next couple of weeks. I am very excited for the peas to produce and am just waiting now for the flowers to start blooming!

White versus Green Asparagus

Over lunch this week we were discussing the difference between white and green asparagus. The question was whether green asparagus is the same species as the white or two different species, which is why they would be different colors.

Purple, white, and green asparagus

Oh, the power of Google! I learned that  white and green asparagus are the same species but it's the way that they are grown that affects the color of the vegetable. To grow white asparagus the farmers or gardeners cover the entire shoot with dirt. Without sunlight, the asparagus stays white.

Chlorophyll a molecule

I remember learning in a Plant Physiology class at NC State that it is the magnesium   that is required for the synthesis of chlorophyll, which makes plants green. The magnesium is connected to the center of the chlorophyll ring and is the element necessary to convert light into energy. In general terms, the magnesium molecule is necessary for the formation of chlorophyll, which makes plants green. Chlorophyll absorbs red and blue light, reflecting green light which is why plants look green. If you are interested in learning more, check out the website credits below, these are great resources for additional learning! 

Back to the asparagus. The most abundantly grown are green in color, with white less so and considered a delicacy. White asparagus are grown mostly in Europe and South America and can be pretty hard to find in the United States. There are even purple asparagus! This is a different variety than the other two and is purple in color due to the pigment called anthocyanin.

I really like asparagus, it is probably one of my favorite vegetables. I didn't think to plant any in our garden this year mainly due to lack of garden space. Maybe next year we will try to grow year-old asparagus crowns. This vegetable is perennial, so it comes back every year. I learned that the plants are monoecious, which means that the whole plant is either male or female. The male plants are what you want if you are looking for a more productive crop. Once established, the asparagus crop is good for 20 to 25 years! The organicgardening.com website below has some great tips for gardening asparagus, which we may try next year. 

Asparagus Websites:

www.asaparagus.com.au/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/white-asparagus_n_1412329.html
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/asparagus-growing-guide
Asparagus photograph: www.dreamstime.com

Chlorophyll Websites:

http://www.naturalnews.com/024847_magnesium_medicine_insulin.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-connection-between-chlorophyll-and-magnesium.htm
Chlorophyll photograph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll

Herby Garden

I love the way that herbs smell and taste and I think that they are absolutely beautiful. I started growing herbs in an AeroGarden - this thing is amazing. It's basically a water bath where you set seed pods (containing soil and seeds), add some nutrients every couple of weeks, and set the light system up for whatever you are growing (herbs, veggies, flowers - and it changes the light cycle for you). It is very easy to set up and requires little maintenance. The thing even blinks to let you know if you need to add water or nutrients. I have one that holds 7 seed pods and the first thing I grew were herbs. There were two types of basil, mint (which sadly never made it past the top of the pod), cilantro, parsley, chives, and dill. I harvested them pretty regularly to keep the leaves from interfering with the other herbs for full access of light.

Aerogarden with 7 herbs

Then, I had the brilliant idea of moving them outdoors (once the soil had thawed out) in our front yard where a rosemary bush had once inhabited. I really wanted to start some tomato plants in the AeroGarden since the herbs grew so well. I figured that there would be plenty of light and Nate regularly waters that area with aquarium water (full of fish and turtle poop) when he changes the water once a week. Four out of the six have made it so far - the basil plants went kaput.

Chives

Dill

Cilantro

Parsley














Pasta dish with basil

We use the parsley and cilantro pretty regularly; made some delicious salsa last weekend. The salsa was great, it had diced tomatoes, jalapeno pepper, fresh cilantro from the garden, and a lot of onion. If all goes well, then by summertime we should be able to make our own salsa with all fresh ingredients!

We also have planters that hang off of the deck, where there is also plenty of sunlight. When Nate and I went to Lowe's last weekend, we go pretty much every weekend if the weather is nice and we are in town, I was extremely attracted to the herbs and pepper plants that were already more than seedlings. So, we loaded up with herbs - two basil plants to replace the ones that died, thyme, rosemary, mint, and tarragon. And I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the results by just planting them in what were originally going to be flower planters. We've already made a pasta dish using the basil.

Rosemary, Basil, Thyme

Mint, Tarragon, Basil

I do worry that I may overwater or that they will get too much sun or not enough. This is the first time I've really tried to grow herbs outside (I can't count the AeroGarden as really gardening because it really did all the work for me). Supposedly basil is really easy to grow - but since I had them die after transplanting I'm not sure I believe that! Nate told me that when he lived at the Venice house (study abroad through Wake Forest) they had a humungous basil plant. He's probably aiming for that, I have lower goals of just keeping the thing alive :-) It is very possible that the ground was oversaturated with water. We have been getting a ton of rain this winter/spring. Which can be a curse and a blessing. It has been great for our new lawn, but you do not want pooling of water around flowers, veggies, or herbs. I think that having the herbs in the hanging planters will allow for great drainage and hopefully eliminate over-saturation.

Any tips or suggestions for growing herbs would be greatly appreciated!