Recipe: Maple Carrots

Of the many ways we use carrots in our house this recipe is hands down the kids' favorite. It seems I can never make a large enough amount and Eric and I always end up giving the kids seconds from our own plates. Rich with butter and carroty flavour, the tiny drizzle of maple syrup at the end of cooking helps to caramelize and enhance the veggie's natural sweetness. You can swap out the butter for a vegetable oil if you prefer, but the taste will suffer with a lighter fat. Saturated fat in moderation is not to be feared, it is a high quality source of fat soluble vitamins and when eaten with veggies helps to make available nutrients which might otherwise be lost. In other words: we eat butter (and coconut oil, a plant-derived saturated fat) because it's tasty AND healthy!

Ingredients:

- 3-4 large carrots (or 5-7 medium sized carrots)

- 1-2 cups water

- 2 tbsp butter

- salt to taste

- 1 tsp maple syrup

Steps:

1. Chop carrots into coin sized slices, about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Carrots can be peeled or unpeeled, depending on your preference. The skins will soften considerably with cooking so as long as they're sufficiently washed you can skip the peeling step and add the extra fiber from the carrot skins to your meal.

2. Place carrots, water and salt in a pan and heat on high. The water should cover most but not all of the carrots.

3. Boil about 10-15 minutes, until carrots are softened and only a little bit of water remains.

4. Lower heat to medium and add butter. Saute, stirring frequently, for about 10-15 minutes until carrots are beginning to brown.

5. Add maple syrup and stir quickly to coat the carrots before taking them off the heat.

6. Serve alongside a hearty fall dish and enjoy! Although, if you're Eric and me, you'll likely get only a bite or two before surrendering the rest to the kids.

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Interseeding

There's grass in the lettuce bed!

Wherever possible, I plant cover crops when a section of the garden is done for the year. These are non-harvested crops that are grown for their beneficial effects on the soil - depending on the variety they can capture excess nutrients, add organic matter, prevent erosion, block weed establishment, fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil or even loosen compacted subsoil. But in some cases, beds will open up too late for a cover crop to establish itself before the cold sets in. For example, this bed of lettuce won't be finished until mid-October, several weeks after I would need to sow oats (a good fall cover), which really need to be in by the third week of September to make a meaningful impact.

The solution is to interseed the cover crop with the main crop. Since the beds are (generally) weed free, this just means seeding between the rows a few weeks before harvest. The main crop is usually fairly tolerant of competition when it's close to harvest, so it's really just a net benefit to get the cover crop in early.

Once the lettuce is out, the oats will take over the bed, crowding weeds and sucking up excess nutrients that would have been lost. Oats will continue growing into fairly cold weather, but will reliably be killed by our winters (once we hit -10° C), which makes incorporating the residue easy in the spring. Even after they have been killed, their fibrous roots will help prevent erosion.

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Recipe: Harvest Vegetable Soup

This is a dish I made for Thanksgiving dinner last year. It captures the general harvest abundance theme of the holiday as it's sort of a smorgasboard of late summer/early fall veggies all thrown together into one delicious dish. It can be made in advance and reheated for dinner but it also works well alongside busy Turkey Day preparations since it's a pretty simple process: toss it all into the oven and puree when sufficiently roasted. For the purposes of this recipe I've listed specific ingredients and quantities, but really the spirit of the dish is to toss in whatever veggies look tasty. Last year we had more peppers available since the summer was less cool and rainy so I featured them heavily. However, a pepper-less soup with early fall's acorn squash turns out to be just as yummy.

Ingredients:

- 2 acorn squash
- 1 lb tomatoes (for this recipe I used 10 of the small tomatoes from this week's box)
- 3 small onions
- 1-2 garlic bulbs
- 3-4 large carrots
- a sprig of fresh rosemary
- olive oil
- salt to taste

Steps:

1. Prep veggies minimally and lay in an oiled roasting pan. For acorn squash, this means cutting in half and scooping out seeds. For carrots: chop off stems and slice in half. For onions: peel and slice in half. The tomatoes I used for this recipe are sufficiently small that I didn't bother with cutting out the core, but if you use larger tomatoes you may want to.

2. Pop the whole cloves out of the garlic bulb but don't peel them as you want them to bake inside
their own skin.

3. Drizzle veggies with olive oil and salt lightly. Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes. You may want to take the garlic out a bit early so it doesn't burn. Watch for the skins to start browning and remove from the oven immediately if they do.

4. After veggies come out of the oven throw all but the garlic in a food processor. You'll need to scoop the acorn squash flesh out with a spoon.

5. The garlic will be softened and might have a very squishy texture. Cut the cloves open and squeeze the garlic flesh into the food processor.

6. While the veggies are pureeing (this will likely take several minutes), finely chop 2-3 tsp of rosemary.

7. Move the veggie puree to a large pot and add broth or water to desired texture. For this recipe I added 3 cups of water and made about 7 ½ cups of soup in total. Heat on medium for 10 minutes and adjust salt to taste. If you use water instead of broth, don't forget to add salt to bring out the flavor in the soup.

8. Serve and garnish with whole rosemary. Other tasty finishing options include a dollop of sour cream or full fat yogurt, or 2 or 3 croutons made from buttered toast (ideally a thick, crusty bread) cut into cubes.

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First Mushrooms

I was walking by the mushroom totems (previously) the other day when I noticed this:

Opening the paper cover revealed more:

One of the three logs is in full flush, and the others are not far behind:

This was just a trial to see if this inoculation technique (the totem method) will work for me with one of the species of wood that I have in abundance (poplar). So far I have been very happy with the results. Compared to the plug spawn method (where hundreds of holes need to be drilled in the log and filled with mushroom spawn), the inoculation was very quick and I have not touched the logs since wrapping them in the paper bags. The best part so far has been the flavour. These mushrooms have a richer and more complex flavour than any oyster mushrooms I have had before.

If all goes well, I may be scaling up production next year. I still need to monitor the overall productivity of the logs as well as the harvest window. Since oysters fruit naturally and cannot be "forced" on a schedule, I need to see how long they can hold on the log (before getting over ripe) and how long they can be stored for. I suspect both periods may be short.

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Recipe: Potato and Turnip Gratin

Another week, another recipe with layered slices of veggies, baked to perfection! It must be the cooler days turning my mind to comfort foods as we slide into fall. Hakurei turnips are back and - although bigger than their spring versions - still very tender and sweet. They are delicious layered between slices of potatoes along with garlic and fresh thyme. This is a good recipe for waxy potatoes because they will hold together as they cook in the liquid. Baking the veggies in milk and egg instead of heavy cream make this dish a cross between a more traditional au gratin and a frittata.

Ingredients:

- 3-4 medium sized potatoes
- 2-3 turnips
- 4-5 garlic cloves
- a few springs of thyme
- 1 egg
- 2 cups of milk (or more, depending on the size of your baking dish)
- (optional) 100 g of Parmesan, grated
- olive oil
- salt

Method:

1. Slice potatoes and turnips very thinly. These delicate Hakurei turnips don't need peeling, and whether or not to peel the potatoes is up to you. I tend not to peel potatoes in general because 1) I am lazy, and 2) the skins contain fiber and nutrients like vitamin C, folate, potassium and iron, among others.

2. Slice garlic thinly as well.

3. Drizzle olive oil on the bottom of a baking dish and layer slices of potatoes, turnips and garlic, packing them in tightly. Sprinkle some fresh thyme leaves and salt in between the layers as you go.

4. Whisk egg and add milk. Pour the mixture into the baking dish. You may need to add a bit more milk to ensure that the liquid comes up to the level of the veggies but doesn't cover them.

5. (Optional) Shake grated Parmesan over top of veggies.

6. Bake uncovered at 375 F for 45-60 minutes, until top level of veggies are browned. Let cool for 10-15 minutes before serving.

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Chickens At Work

The chickens have been on grass in an unused pasture since I moved them outside in the spring. Now it's time for them to do some work!

In a happy coincidence, the chicken tractor (their mobile coop) is almost exactly the width of two of my standardized beds. I've moved them on to a couple of the old garlic rows, which have been filling up with weeds since the garlic was harvested. In the picture above, you can still see some of the straw mulch that I used. I will move the chicken tractor down the row a little bit every day and the birds will happily eat all of the weeds and scratch out any bugs they find in the soil.

I figure that the manure they leave behind in a 10-14 day trip down the row will cut my fertilizer usage by about 40 percent next year (in those rows). In theory, the bugs they eat should also reduce pest pressure next year but we'll have to see about that.

I'm hoping to have the chickens patrolling garden beds that have finished for the year until about the end of November, when they will need to move into their winter housing. Until then, they will be eating garden culls, clearing weeds and bugs, and improving the soil, all while giving us eggs (and a few more for meat). Not a bad deal at all!

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Eva Mae Farm