Living the Dream - Going to Market

Some recent pics from our CSA dropoff and the Boulder Farmer's Market.  Our little baby plants aren't so baby anymore!!

Easter Egg Radish Bunches

BEETS!!!

Greens!! Chard and Kale

Wonderful CSA spread

Week 1 of CSA pickup - amazing.

Red Radishes - just eat (sliced thinly) them with salt and butter, on a baguette, you'll be a radish fan, promise.

Fresh Garlic - first harvest.

Saturday Market

Oh Tuscan Kale

Living the Dream - Planting

Sorry folks - it's been awhile!!  Why did things get so busy all of the sudden?  Oh, right - it's planting time!!

Work on the farm this past week has consisted almost entirely of planting.  And when we're not planting, we're weeding.  Planting, wedding, planting weeding - repeat!  As you can see from the pics below, we plant some crops by puncturing holes in plastic.  The plastic does a variety of things - it prevents weed growth, it retains soil moisture (here in CO moisture literally gets sucked out of the air) and it increases the temperature of the soil.  The soil temperature increase is great for crops like eggplant, tomatoes, and all varieties of peppers.  And believe me, come August, when you need ANY of these things, we'll have plenty :)

After the plastic (and the irrigation tape below the plastic) is put into place, it's time to plant.  We have a sweet setup at Isabelle - the water wheel attachment on the tractor!!  The wheel simultaneously punches holes in the plastic, drips a fish emulsion mixture into the hole (an organic fertilizer), and then the folks riding on those comfy chairs drop in the the little baby plant.  Having ridden the tractor all week, I'm now like a human planting metronome (if that even exists..:)

Steve and I planting baby peppers

This may look easy, but if you get behind in the slightest - PANIC - just think of the assembly line episode from "I Love Lucy"

an artistic view of the beds before planting

what, more eggplant??  I'll be making my fair share of babaganoush in September...

YAY for SPRING!!

Here in Boulder it's officially spring.  At the farm, we are almost done harvesting all of the overwintered vegetables and we're moving on to crops that were planted a few weeks ago.  We also just put all of our spring transplants in the ground: kale, chard, broccoli, cauliflower...  And the best part is I still get to wear my overalls with flannel lining - I LOVE cool spring temperatures!  They make you feel like you can farm for 10 hours straight.  As opposed to the summer months, when my skin is 10 shades darker and the sun is intense from 6am to 8pm.

At this time every year I become ravenous for greens.  We're just coming out of the winter months, where I've been cleaning out my freezer and pantry of all the preserved fall veggies, and now, we have fresh veg coming from the ground!  So exciting, seriously.

I cooked for an amazing group of gals at the All Souls Women's retreat this past weekend, and we had the BEST salad for lunch on Saturday.  I had to share it :)

Mixed Green Salad with Brown Rice, Cashews, and Dates
serves 8 as a main dish

For the Salad:
1 lb spring greens: spinach or baby salad greens
1 cup cooked brown rice
1.5 cups cooked chickpeas (1 14.5 oz can)
1/2 cup roasted cashews, roughly chopped
4 ribs celery, chopped
8-10 dates, pitted and roughly chopped

For the Vinaigrette:
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
pinch of black pepper
1/2 tsp brown sugar

Assemble the salad ingredients, whisk up the vinaigrette, and toss the salad right before serving.  Enjoy!!

Grand Canyon Pics

First view of the Canyon from the classic Mather Point

Hike from the South Kaibab Trailhead

Joel has long arms

Hiking back up (reverse 14er)

Day Two - Bright Angel/South Kaibab Loop

the top part of the trail was a bit dicey

mules on the trail

Indian Gardens

shot of the switchbacks from above on our ascent back up

Moab and Arches National Park on the drive home

Gourmet Camping

Who says you can't eat well while camping??  I just got back from a fabulous trip to the Grand Canyon, and one of the nights was spent at the campgrounds in the park.  (P.S. I'm on the lookout for a new sleeping bag...I woke up with a layer of frost on my face.  Fantastic)  Anyways, there is nothing better than a meal while you're camping - it's a great reward after a full day of exertion, and everything always tastes so good when you're super hungry!!  Here's what we ate:

Tortilla Pizzas, with Arugula Pesto, Roasted Tomatoes and Zucchini, and Shredded Parmesan

(I know, could I be more fashionable?)

Here's how I made the meal:

1) Pre-roasting the zucchini and tomatoes in a foil packet

Again, you wish you were wearing this outfit

2) Pull your fall harvest from your freezer in Boulder (arugula pesto) and top 2 tortillas with it.

3) Top with veggies and cheese

4) Place the pizza back on the fire until the cheese is melted and the tortilla gets nice and crispy

This was my first trip to the Grand Canyon and it was incredible!  More pics to come.

Peach Chutney

As Mike mentioned below, a fruity chutney is a perfect accompaniment to a roast chicken.  When I was visiting Mike a couple of weeks ago, I made a fantastic peach chutney to top the masterpiece that he pulled off of the grill.  I packed my suitcase with some dehydrated Colorado peaches (because seriously, who doesn't pack there suitcase with pantry items) and I knew that I could whip up a quick sauce to go with Mike's chicken.  

A chutney is a sweet and spicy sauce, and here, the peaches contribute the sweet, while a little balsamic contributes some tangy spice.  I kept this recipe pretty simple, so, feel free to make any variations that come to mind (addition of more spice, such as ginger).

Peach Chutney

4 large peaches, skinned and roughly chopped

(I used a handful of dehydrated peaches which rehydrated in the liquid of the sauce)

1 medium shallot, diced

olive oil

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (this is also flexible - if you don't have balsamic, try red wine vinegar )

1) Heat about a tablespoon of oil over medium high heat and saute the diced shallot (in a medium sized sauce pan) until fragrant and soft.

2) Toss in the peaches and mix well with the shallot.  After about 2-3 minutes, add in the vinegar and reduce the heat to medium low.  

3) Let the vinegar reduce by about half.  Once the vinegar has reduced, add about 1/2 cup of water.  Remove the pan from the heat and pulse the sauce with an immersion blender until you reach your desired consistency.  

Variation:  Try grilling the peaches first.  Just cut the peaches in half and lay them flat side down onto the grill rack.  Grill for about 5 minutes, or until you get some nice grill marks on your peaches.  Grilling them first gives them a tasty carmelized crust.

Grill Roasted Whole Chicken

***Guest Post from Mr. Michael Gordon himself...a.k.a King of the Grill!***

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t hold a parsnip to Leah Biber’s excellence at plucking nature’s bounty from the earth, and slicing and dicing it into some of the freshest and most delicious cuisine this side of the Flatirons.  However, when the recipe calls for meat and fire, I like to think I can hold my own.  I may play the flute for a living, but the grill is my real instrument.  Over the years, Leah and I have teamed up to make some pretty epic meals for ourselves and our friends.  Last Thursday night was no exception.  Leah had a dynamite recipe for a peach chutney to go with roasted chicken.  Never being satisfied to simply put a perfectly innocent animal in the hot box and wait, I lit up the grill and went on a smoky quest to elevate the predictable oven stuffer!

Grilling chicken, in my opinion, is all about indirect heat.  Grilling a whole chicken is about REALLY indirect heat.  I’m sure some of you have sat a perfectly good bird on top of a perfectly bad can of beer, but there are other ways.  I really like to use my smoker to cook whole chickens.  I know what you’re thinking…”But sometimes I don’t want my chicken to taste like it ran out of a burning barn and straight onto my plate.”  I whole heartedly agree.  What I like to do is use my smoker kind of like an oven.  Instead of burning wood, or a combination of wood and charcoal as I would to smoke a chicken, I only use charcoal.  Now of course the charcoal still makes smoke, but only a little...especially once it’s burning nice and hot.  Be sure and use natural lump charcoal.  It looks like burnt bits of wood (because that’s all it is!), and the smoke it produces is gentle and fragrant.  Do not use briquettes.  They look like pavement, and will make the skin of your bird taste like the breakdown lane on I-70. 

Get your smoker cooking at about 300 degrees with a water pan underneath the grill to add a little moisture.  Season a whole bird with anything you like (no loss here only to use a little salt and pepper) and place it on the grill breast side up.  If possible, orient it so that the legs are facing the fire, and breast faces away.  White meat cooks faster and dries out more easily than dark meat, so you can actually take advantage of unevenness in your grill to get both parts cooked perfectly.  If you have it, put a probe thermometer in the breast making sure it doesn’t touch any bone.  Then shut the lid, and don’t open it until the internal temperature reads just over 160 degrees.  For a 4-5lb chicken this should take 2 to 2.5 hours.  The skin will get nice a crispy with a beautiful amber color.  The meat will be juicy and tender just as if you roasted it in the oven, but with a hint of savory smoky goodness.  The only thing that could possibly make it better would be some delicious peach chutney, but as always I leave those things to the professionals.