Garden to Table - Faster than you think

A comment I hear all the time is 'Eating local and from your garden is nice, but I just don't have time to do all that work and cooking.' Personally, I just think that is an excuse to not try, so in response, I am going to compare the time it takes me to get fresh, cooked breakfast to the table before work with some of the 'faster' alternatives. Seriously, I have a job, I have other hobbies, I have a life outside my garden. In the end, it can't take that long or be that hard for me to keep at it.

6:30am - Already showered and dressed, I get to the kitchen and start grinding coffee beans and filling the carafe with filtered water.

6:32am - I grab a basket and scissors and head dog out the back door with the dog. At the same time, Oivind finishes coffee prep.

6:33am - Say, "Good morning" to the hens and peek at food and water levels. Oh the decisions! Sauteed kale or collard green, maybe some broccoli rabe, but alas, I think a nice loose leaf lettuce salad would be ideal. "Shaft, go poo-poo!" Wait a second, is that the first sunflower of the season

- YAY!

6:40am - I pluck a ripe strawberry from the planter on my way in (YUM) and with lettuce in hand, I rinse off the greens and select some tomatoes (none from the garden yet, but that will only add moments to my veggie selection later in the season). Meanwhile, Oivind already started heating the pan for fried eggs while he is filling Shaft's bowl with a doggie culinary delight (dry dog food to keep those teeth clean). Oh yeah, don't forget, those eggs were either laid yesterday from our hens or they come from our local farm share.

6:45am - With the lettuce rinsed, tomatoes sliced and all tossed with a bit of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, time to grate a bit of fresh Parmesan (really want a better local source for hard cheese). With a hot skillet, the eggs managed to cook all by themselves and while the coffee grounds are being put into the composter one quick action makes my eggs over easy while Oivind's head for the plate.

6:48am - All plated up, we get out the milk for the coffee, all the necessary tools and fill some water glasses.

6:50am - Mmmmmmmmm. . . fresh, local garden to table in 20minutes.

Seriously, we do this every weekday and weekend morning - makes me think hard about whether that Sunday Brunch is worth the effort to go out. Without fail, on weekdays, we are eating within 20-30 minutes of getting to the kitchen. All this while doing morning chores at the same time (taking care of the dog, packing my bike paneers for the day, putting away or loading dishes, etc). Sometimes, I even manage to cook lunch from scratch using fresh garden veggies while preparing breakfast.

So, in contrast, let's take a morning of cereal.

6:30am - Reach the kitchen, start the coffee.

6:33am - Take the dog and diligently watch him do his business while waiting, just waiting.

6:38am - Okay, maybe a bit faster into the house. Coffee is still not done, so get the cereal, milk and bowls to the table. Toss something from the freezer into the bike paneers, because, let's face it, if you aren't cooking breakfast, you aren't cooking lunch.

6:43am - Coffee is done, milk is already on the table with bowls and spoons. Clean up coffee grounds.

6:45am - Pour a bowl of cereal with milk. Viola, you are 5 minutes faster, but my breakfast was beautiful.

Even better, let's look at picking up an egg sandwich or (gast) bowl of pre-made oatmeal at the drive through.

6:30am - Reach the kitchen and take the dog directly outside. Cut out that all time consuming coffee making here.

6:31am - Diligently watch the dog do his business while waiting, just waiting.

6:36am - Back in the house, grab all the necessities for the day. Seriously though, you aren't going pack any breakfast if you really head to the drive through for breakfast. Also, that drive through implies driving, no paneers here.

6:37am - On the road, headed out, making excellent time!

6:42am - Assuming that drive through is 5minutes away and there's not traffic, here you are, at the drive through. Now, I see one drive through from the bus and there is always at least 3 cars inline. So, let's assume they are going fast and it is 3minutes per car, plus your 3 minutes.

6:54am - Breakfast in hand and headed to work. Good thing you are saving time by not eating at the table or cleaning up, because now you can enjoy your fine delectable behind the wheel or at the computer. YUM.

Okay, so maybe you can get to work faster by not bothering, but really, is that what I really want. In the end, it is a matter of saving minutes and if quality of life isn't worth an extra 5-10minutes of you life, then what is? An extra 5 minutes working for the man?

Oh Happy Day - An Ode to My Veggie CSA

(written while eating 3 pints of fresh picked strawberries and drinking bubbly, so forgive me)

What is my happiest day of the year?

Not Christmas, my birthday or the New Year.

There is a day, in spring, I must say

Not marked historically or by holiday

It is the year's very first CSA distribution day.

I wait for and plan for, with recipes all planned

The year's first receipt of bounty direct from the land

Bags full of veggies and fruits each picked by hand.

Surely, I have a garden, a grocer and market nearby

But, getting a harvest picked the same day is why

I look forward to June's first farm share, what a high!

Investing in our Happiness Index

A few weeks back I read a Nicholas Kristof Op-Ed that implied we should start gauging our progress in life according to happiness and not money or stuff. The idea of the "Happiness Index" is nothing new, but maybe it's an idea whose time has come. So, over the last several months, we have been investing in our Happiness Index First was taking 11 days off in Hawaii for a much needed vacation. Second, was our backyard project with the addition of bees, breaking down the fences and building a garden to feed us physically and mentally. Well, that was more than a few months in the making, but in the last few months we needed both the vacation and the backyard project to work out worry free.

Knowing we were headed toward an 11 day vacation right at the start of growing season, we knew we needed our garden to run on its own. We spent much of May figuring out ways to automate garden and seedling waterings and organizing crop planting schedules. Yep, I am so anal that I have a garden calendar down to daily plantings throughout the spring complete with growing notes.

As we boarded our plane to Hawaii, we left feeling pretty care free about the garden. Our seedlings would keep growing under lights and get watering and

feeding every other day through a flow table. The garden got a light 4am daily watering and soaker hoses kept the berries,

flowers, corn and potatoes happily moving along. The real muscle was in moving all our containers into the watering zones. The morning before leaving, I tucked the first pole and bush bean crops into the soil and planted the second tray of lettuces (the middle tray in the picture).

Happily, I can report all our efforts paid off marvelously. The garden is thriving! The beans got off to a strong start. Sweet corn is nearly two feet tall. Shallots are just simply out of control (flowing over the side of the beds) and the carrots are just poking out of the ground. I even might get lucky with my broccoli and cauliflower this year. Under the lights, the tomatoes, melons and winter squash were ready to transplant as well. And the big bonus. . . . strawberries and kale ready for the picking!

Although I hardly think our investment in the garden and backyard project will pay off in the foreseeable future, I think it good for our Happiness Index. Watching the chickens and bees is far better than watching the tube on some giant TV and eating these fresh picked fruits and veggies can't even compare to cardboard crap from a fast food restaurant. So, after an amazing 11 days away and returning to a yard full of life, I would say our Happiness Index is on the rise.

I still don't miss my TV - not even during the Stanley Cup playoffs!

Four Flounders

This year we signed up for a fresh fish CSA from Cape Ann Fresh Catch. For those of you not familiar with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), they are a way for an producer of agricultural goods (think farms) to connect directly with their consumer by selling 'shares' of their products. So, we pay an annual fee and get a weekly distribution of food. We have a vegetable share, a meat share, a fish share and a wheat share.

In this case, we pay a group of fishermen to deliver a fresh catch of fish every week. Cape Ann Fresh offers a fillet or whole fish share. So, being the overly ambitious (or stupid) people we are, we, of course, must have the whole fish share. Because filleting your own fish is the hard core way to go, right? Plus, we get the bonus of carcass to make some delicious fish stock - nevermind we will have so much that we will need to bathe in it. We only started this last month, but so far we have had the pleasure of filleting a cod, scup, hake and this week, flounder.

And that's where we begin - four flounders, whole, with heads and guts. These pupies were swimming in the Atlantic this morning and they will be dinner tonight. That is fresh!

Thanks to this wonderful video by Chris Parsons the owner of a killer Winchester restaurant, Parson's Table (get there, you won't regret it and yes, the burger is so worth it.), I quickly became a flounder filleting machine!

That's right, four flounders produces sixteen beautiful fillets.

After a little thought, I decided to steam these over a little red sauce and pasta. All I did was reduce down a big can of diced tomatoes with a splash of balsamic, added a spoonful of basil pesto (from our reserves from lasts year's freezing) a couple of garlic cloves and some broccoli. After adding the cooked pasta, the fillets sat on top steaming for about 10 minutes.

The flounder was fresh, but it wasn't my favorite of the bunch. It didn't flake in nice chunks and the texture wasn't really firm. Good thing I have 12 more fillets to perfect my technique. The thing that always fixes up a fish is pan frying it in a lot of butter.

Out of the fish we tried so far, I think the hake tops my list, but the really, really fresh cod cannot be underestimated. I am definitely looking forward to summer.

Early Season Photos

So, I am not so sure about this whole blogging narcissism thing. I find it a bit awkward to write stuff assuming someone in the ether gives a shit about any of it. However, (and here's where I fly my hypocrisy flag really high), I do think we do some weird shit and I actually feel like remembering some of it as I go along my way. Being unable to keep a written journal that doesn't spiral into little more than "woke up, at breakfast. . . ", I decided to try this out. Perhaps I will maintain some interesting stuff, or maybe it will just fade away only to have it quietly archived into a mass of information. Here goes. . .

I thought photos were a good starting point for easing my way into this journal. As an early birthday gift, I got a new wide angle lens for the camera. So to kick things off, let me introduce you to the happenings and the cast of characters in the backyard.

This trusty stead is our 'guard' dog, Shaft. Not nearly as tough as he looks.

These are the ladies. . . Ricki, Sally, Oprah and Ellen!

The hive! Our Georgia queen, Queen Peaches, is hiding in there somewhere.

Oivind is trying out the new camera remote!

That's me. The beekeeper, by default because I didn't get stung on the first day.

And finally, the backyard. We recently took down the chainlink fence of imprisonment and are happily beautifying some public land that lines our property.