In Giardino

I just harvested from the garden.  My favorite part of gardening, to be sure.  Some lovely leaf lettuce, some basil, and nasturtium.  Nasturtium in salads is just wonderful.   it has a peppery taste and every part of the plant is edible, leaves, flowers and buds.  Some folks pickle the buds and use them like capers.

As a lot of things are ripening, we are eating a lot of salads with our meals.  

Seems that we aren't the only ones enjoying our garden.  Methinks some birdies have been helping themselves to my tomatoes.  Sneaky birdies.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Birdie in Cucina

In Cucina Al Fresco

It is a lovely afternoon.  So lovely that my work from home husband is working al fresco on the patio and I am joining him to prepare dinner and harvest from the garden.  Here we have the first of the peppers to harvest, some cherry tomatoes with one heirloom and one each of the eggplants were grew.  Now I am no expert, but the eggplants havent increased in size in over a week, so I am assuming that they are ready to be picked.  I specifically chose them for their small size.  I am hoping to combine all of these beauties in some way in the next day or two.  Next to the bowl, I have some garlic chives freshly cut along with some other herbs.

The chives will go in some garlic mashed potatoes later today.  The herbs are for the herb butter to baste the grill roasted turkey that is in the grill as I type.   i am using the same technique that I used for the duck earlier - Indirect grilling.  This means on my gas grill I turn on just the rear and from burners.  I place the turkey on the stand up rack over an oven safe casserole.  This gets placed in the center of the grill and the lid is closed.  The heat surrounds the turkey to cook it.  I will baste occasionally with the herb butter, but I also slid some under the breast skin to keep that from drying out and add flavor.

I love cooking outside and we have really used our grill a lot this summer.  I foresee us continuing well into fall and maybe on nicer winter days too.  Beats heating up the house when it is warm, that's for sure.

i started the turkey pretty early, mainly so it has time to rest and be ready for eating when we are ready.  This turkey isn't very large, about as big as the duck was really.  So it should not take more than 2 hours, if that long.  I will do the potatoes closer to diner time.  Add salad and left over asparagus and that's dinner!

Tonight is graduation night for puppy school.  It starts at 6:30, so I want dinner to be ready before we go.  Not sure if we will eat before or after puppy school and that is okay, because I think everything will sit well if we need to eat it after.  Turkey is great for left overs and hubby can have his hot turkey sandwiches he loves so much.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Birdie in Cucina

Al Fresco

Tonight's dinner featured brined and grilled boneless pork ribs with a dry rub featuring cardemom.  Granny Smith apples sauted in butter with onions, coconut palm sugar, and fresh rosemary.  A salad featuring greens and tomatoes from our garden.  Al fresco on a beautiful day in mid August that seems more like mid September.

We worked up our appetite by taking the dogs to the dog park today.  I worked a bit in my sewing studio and we will close the day with a date night at the movies.  I cannot think of a better way to spend a day.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Birdie in Cucina

Birdies

So, it hasn't been the best of weeks.  My symptoms have been playing games with my head again, rendering me useless most of the time.  It has been a while since I have had symptoms this strong, so it is extra disappointing.  When this happens, I don't feel like doing very much.  Cooking hasn't been too necessary, as we have enough left overs to get us through the week.  I am keeping up with my household duties, as the schedule I have set keeps them easy to do.  I am thankful for that.

This all makes for some pretty boring blog posts, however.  As I rest, I can spend sometime outside with my camera, hoping for some good bird shots.  I finally got some shots of the Goldfinch that likes our sunflowers.  So, here he is.

In Giardino

So much for a serene and restful Sunday!  We worked hard today in the garden and the rest of the yard.

When we installed the patio earlier this year, it left us with this mound of dirt that we refer to as Puppy Mountain.  The dogs like to run up and down it and dig it up.  But it is ugly and hard to mow, so down it comes!  With the help of my hubby and a rental tiller, soon it looked like this:

Now we can get grass seed and have a nicer lawn along with the awesome patio.

While hubby worked on excavating Puppy Mountain, I worked on the new garden bed and fencing.

I planted my fall crops of kale, cabbage, arugala and lettuce.  Then mulched with straw to hopefully keep the weeds out.

Fencing is important when you have a puppy.   If there is no fencing, there if more excavation of those lovely veggies!

After a morning of hard work, lunch time!  Remember thise burgers I talked about last time?

Here they are all ready to be grilled, along with the sweet potato chips waiting to be baked and the lettuce greens drying.  A yummy salad and crunchy chips are the perfect burger accompaniment.

We still have more work in the garden to do this week.  Hubby has the week off, so we are trying to get as much done as we can.  Along with some fun stuff too.

Now to relax a bit:

A rose in bloom

Our sunny sunflowers.  The birds love them.  I wish I had my camera when the gold finch was visiting.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Birdie in Cucina

In Giardino

While we are enjoying this wonderful summer here in PA, it is time to think about fall garden planting.  I stopped at the garden center the other day and picked up some yummy things to harvest this fall.  Cabbage, kale, lettuce and a sad little arugala plant I am hoping to coax back to life.

Before they can go in the ground, however, we need to make space for them.  We are having such success this year that I am getting cocky and extending the garden bed.

So we took some time today to do just that.  After taking some time to mulch the original sections, we cleared the sod under the shade of the crab apple tree.  The idea being that next year the shade will help the cold weather veggies do better when it gets warm.  We had spinach fail, I think, because it was in direct sunlight during the warmer months.

So, here we are with compost and top soil, after a good tilling of that clay underneath.  The weed blocker will be a walking path.  More work on the fencing, gates and walkway tomorrow.  Then we can plant the fall veggies and begin working on other areas in the yard that need attention.

In cucina, I have chicken breasts marinading in an orange molasses marinade.  I am looking forward to grilling  that tomorrow.  For today, we have grilled Italian hamburgers and fresh salad.  What are Italian, or what I call Dago, burgers?  I use my meatball mix to make burgers.  Now that I am avoiding gluten, I use planko crumbs, oregano, garlic powder, rosemary, pepper, minced onion.  All mixed up and ready for grilling.  Don't forget to dimple the burger patties so the burgers don't shrink as they cook.

Not a very exciting dinner, but fresh and delicious and very summer.  We eat al fresco as often as the weather allows.  Cooking outside is fun and helps to keep the house cool.

The day before yesterday, I made some pretty exciting salmon, if I do say so myself.  Pan seared salmon, with a peach, blueberry and bourbon chutney accompanied by sauteed kale fresh from the garden.  Peaches are in season and I just had to use them.  This turned out fantastic!  I sauteed the peaches in butter with coconut palm sugar and bourbon, then added the blueberries at the end.  A little corn starch thickened the juices.  Yummy!!!!

Until next time,

Birdie in cucina

In Giardino and Menu Planning

There has been a lot of progress in the garden this week.  I am so excited to see a tiny white eggplant forming.   I chose this variety, along with a small dark variety, because of their size.  I am hoping that small doses of eggplant will be more paletable to my husband, who is a bit anti-eggplant.   

I used ro be anti-eggplant myself.  When I was a child, my father would cure quantities of eggplant in olive oil and strong spices like oregano.  This is a very Italian thing to do.  We had a special pottery crock specifically for this purpose.  He would fill the crock with eggplant, oil, salt and spices.  He would then put the lid on the crock and weigh the lid down with a couple of bricks.  And this would sit for quite a while.  The results were how I was introduced to eggplant.  Yuck, in my opinion.

Since my childhood, I have revisited many vegetables I thought I had not liked.  It turns out that I just didn't like the way they were prepared.  Give me eggplant parm anyday!  Grilled eggplant!  Just not that cured stuff.  I have a love hate relationship with zucchini as well.

You see, we were an incredibly poor family and my parents had a difficult time getting food on our table.  My mother's friend had a farm and would give us rabbit meat and veggies from the farm.  One summer there was this proliferation of zucchini.   I mean there was zucchini in everything we ate.  If that wasn't bad enough, my mother had the habit of overcooking it until it was mush.  I find many of her generation did this with veggies.  It's like that had to kill them.  Anyway, I swore I would never even look at another zucchini when I grew up.

I like the darned things now.  In reasonable quanities and cooked correctly or raw.  You will notice that I do not have zucchini in my garden, however.  I am not that brave.  I would end up being one of those people who sneak zucchini on neighbor's porches and running, I think.

Here a tiny purple eggplant is forming.

The beans are growing fast!   I cannot wait until we have some to pick.

Right now the garden guides my menu planning.  We have an abundance of lettuce and quite a bit of kale to eat.  So we are eating a lot of salads.  And in this summer heat, what is better than a fresh, cool salad?  I sure don't want to heat up my kitchen if I do not have to.  We grill a lot and also use the crock pot to avoid turning on the oven.   But you would be surprised how even a crock pot can put off heat.

I usually menu plan around what I find in the garden and what is on sale at the grocery store.  I am trying to be more purposeful about purchasing what is in season as well.  The duck I made a couple of weeks ago was a splurge, but it was in season, so it was cheaper than it could have been otherwise.

I have never been a circular peruser, but I think that I am going to become one.  I think this will help me make better planning choices and help us to save more money.   It will take a lot of torture for me to be a coupon clipper, however.  Let's not get crazy.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Birdie in cuchina