IPCC Mitigation Report

April 5, 2022 Elizabeth Boegel

A wildflower ‘meadow’ in Skyline Wilderness Park, Napa, filled with native Goldfields and Purple Owl’s Clover.

My news feeds are full of commentary on the IPCC’s release of their mitigation report. Of course, since I have long been a student (formally and informally) of environmental issues, this is the kind of news I look for - maybe you haven’t been reading as much about it as I have. Plus, I do find these reports confusing for the average layperson. So imagine my delight when I came across a great eight-minute video, summing up the report.

This video was recommended by Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist, University professor, and recently-named Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. I have read several of her books, and she has a unique take on environmental issues, being both a Christian and a scientist, and someone who believes in active faith and hope. She is a good resource for scientific facts, but also for a positive outlook in the face of very frightening information. So, I knew this video would be helpful and I feel confident recommending it. I hope you enjoy it too, and are able to learn something from it - I sure did.

Spring Salad

March 26, 2022 Elizabeth Boegel

Oh yes, it’s salad season. Tender, fresh lettuce leaves, mixed with all kinds of spring veg like snap peas, shelling peas, pea shoots, asparagus, and scallions. Add some salty aged cheese, a chewy whole grain like farro or bulgur, a dressing of lemony garlicky olive oil, and maybe even some grilled salmon or chicken, and you’ve got a great meal. How about a side of focaccia? I mean, what could be better?

Recipe for a spring salad, adapted loosely from Bon Appetit:

1 cup semi-pearled farro, boiled in salted water for 30-ish minutes, drained and cooled

8 cups of lettuce leaves, whatever you’ve got in the garden

2 cups of pea shoots (the tender new leaves and tendrils)

1 cup of sliced snap peas, or shelled peas, or sliced asparagus, or scallions, whatever is fresh from the garden, or a little of everything

Shaved aged parmesan

Dump all of this in a huge bowl.

Make a dressing: Grate a garlic clove or two into a mason jar, then add 1/4 cup-ish each of olive oil and lemon juice, plus some salt and pepper. Put the lid on the jar and shake shake shake.

Toss everything together. Add a protein if you like.

Easy Focaccia: For this, I use the recipe from Alexandra Stafford on her site Alexandra Cooks. I use the yeasted version, and I follow it to the letter. Trust me, it’s foolproof. It also works as a fabulous pizza base and we often use it for this purpose.

You can watch her make the bread on YouTube, below:

Enjoy!

Roasted Carrots with Honey, Garlic, Butter, and Thyme

March 8, 2022 Elizabeth Boegel

For many winters now, I’ve been growing fava beans in the hop containers on our patio, but I recently had a flash of insight. We’ve had very few hop cones develop the last few summers: Could it be that the beans were providing too much nitrogen to the soil? If so, that could cause the hops to spend more energy making leaves, rather than fruit. Well, my M.O. is always to experiment, so this past winter I grew carrots in the hop containers instead.

I chose a mix called ‘Rainbow,’ because I like having the different colors to eat. In nature, carrots were originally white or very pale yellow. 5,000 years ago, yellow and purple carrots were developed in the Persian plateau. Then in the 1500s, orange carrots were hybridized by the Dutch. According to LiveScience, “Flash forward a couple of centuries and the Dutch were one of the main agricultural forces of 16th-century Europe. This know-how allowed them to propagate orange carrots in large quantities, which seemed to thrive in the Netherlands' mild, wet weather.” However, they were not grown to honor the Dutch royal family - that’s an urban myth.

The purple color is an anthocyanin, which has antioxidant benefits. The orange color is a carotenoid, which has heart benefits. So the mix of colors is great for your mood and your health.

Today I noticed that the hop bines (hops are not vines, but bines) are starting to sprout, so I knew that it was time to harvest the carrots, even if they were smaller than I would like. I hoped that the carrot roots would break up the soil in the containers a bit, allowing for better airflow to the hop roots. I can only imagine that this happened, because I had a great crop of baby carrots, in a lovely rainbow of color. I gave their greens to the chickens, who adore them.

Roasting the carrots (about two pounds worth) in a honey garlic butter sauce, with thyme, in a high-heat oven, truly couldn’t be any easier, and the honey, garlic, and thyme are all provided by the garden.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt half a stick of butter. Add three cloves of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons of honey, and some salt and pepper. Let that meld while you trim the carrots and add to a cookie sheet, attempting to make the carrots roughly the same size. No need to peel them - that skin is a great source of fiber. Toss the carrots with the butter sauce, and sprinkle some fresh-chopped thyme over the top (1-2 tablespoons, depending how much you like thyme!). Very fresh carrots won’t need as much roasting time as older, store-bought carrots will, and of course the size will also dictate how long you leave them in the oven. Aim for a caramelized appearance, with some browning. Leftovers can be popped into glass containers and stashed in the freezer.

Gratin made with any Green

March 7, 2022 Elizabeth Boegel

Tonight, as a side dish to some tender Flat Iron steaks from Butcher Box (marinated in olive oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, a little coriander and smoked paprika, a couple of smashed garlic cloves, and plenty of pepper) seared in a hot cast iron pan, I made a gratin with fresh cabbage. It was delicious, and it occurred to me that you could use this recipe using any fresh greens from the garden or the CSA box.

It’s not even a recipe, really, more like a guide or a ratio. Take the fresh leaves of some sturdy green (cabbage, kale, chard, spinach, collards), remove the center ribs (feed those to your chickens or your compost pile), and slice the leaves into fat ribbons. You need about six generous cups of sliced greens. Boil a couple inches of water in a large pot (I use a Dutch oven). Add the greens and cook for a few minutes - cabbage needs about six minutes, spinach probably a scant two - until bright green and just wilted. Drain and set aside. Wipe out the pot, and heat it up again on medium. Add a splash of olive oil, then some chopped bacon (or pancetta, or Canadian bacon) and fry until crisp on the edges. Add 2-3 minced cloves of garlic and stir until just fragrant. Then add a cup of heavy cream. Lower the temp and add a cup of grated parmesan (or gruyere, or Swiss, or whatever) and then add back the greens. Cook over low heat until thickened a bit, 5-8 minutes. Add a little salt, a little pepper, and a grate or two of nutmeg. Sprinkle fresh breadcrumbs over the top, as much as you like. Then stick it under the broiler until brown and toasty on the top.

This would also be a fabulous main dish with a fried egg on top (and a runny yolk, natch).

I always have fresh breadcrumbs in the house these days, because I’ve been baking again. I got a book that I absolutely love - Bread, Toast, Crumbs by Alexandra Stafford - and it’s gotten me back into making bread. This isn’t the fancy (and difficult) sourdough that I made for years. This is simple yeasted bread, and it’s super easy. The recipes make two small loaves, generally, so we have enough for several meals. The cookbook is in three sections; the first part is dedicated to breads of all kinds, the second part consists of recipes to use the stale slices of bread, and the third section is full of recipes for the breadcrumbs. We’ve had some excellent things from this cookbook, like white bean gratin with sausage, which is what got me thinking about gratins made with greens.

I’ve been baking the loaves in two clay bread bowls from King Arthur flour company. They’re great.

We still have a lot of cauliflower yet to ripen in the garden, so soon our dinners will be full of that, I imagine. What are you cooking from your garden?

the Garden in March

March 2, 2022 Elizabeth Boegel

South Garden, from the sidewalk, with the pollinator garden in the forefront

As you know, I’m teaching an Urban Agroecology course this Spring at Merritt College. Part of this course is a lecture, where we are learning the theory and ideas behind different kinds of agriculture/methods of growing. Part of it is hands-on, learning these concepts physically in laboratory. For this portion of the course, I decided the students and I would rebuild an abandoned garden on the property of the Environmental Center at the far end of campus. This whole area was neglected for years, but slowly and surely my little team is making an enormous difference in the space. Today was a banner day, as we finally got three cubic yards of soil delivered, and were able to fill all our raised beds and transplant all the seedlings we started back at the beginning of the term.

As we were happily planting (why is planting so much fun? why does it make our hearts so glad? There is a mystical side to gardening which is hard to quantify), some of my students were asking questions about how certain veg grows, particularly heading vegetables. (Some of my students have a lot of gardening experience, and others have none. This diversity of knowledge is one of the strengths of our group.) In the course of our discussion, I promised to take some pictures of my little farm to share; then I realized that I haven’t shared this kind of thing here on the blog in ages, and maybe my readers would also be interested.

Top row, left to right: Fennel growing through the fence, cabbages which we have been shredding and sautéing like greens, cilantro growing everywhere, and rainbow Swiss chard.

Middle row, left to right: The last of the broccoli going to seed, shelling peas, Russian Frills kale, and one of the garlic beds (with cilantro).

Bottom row, left to right: Oregano starting to regrow, rosemary blooming, the artichoke plants getting big, and the carrots nearly ready to harvest.

In the North Garden, where I plant tomatoes every year (it being the sunniest space I have during the hotter months), I decided to have a cover crop over the winter, to improve soil tilth, water-holding capacity, available nutrients, and soil biology. I seeded (in October) a mix of rye and crimson clover. These are going gangbusters, and many other interesting plants have also germinated here - the ubiquitous cilantro, but also blue flax (Linum lewisii), common speedwell (Veronica persica), and borage. Every so often I tear some of this out to give to the chickens, and in a month or so I will chop it all down, taking care not to disturb the roots (letting those rot in place), and use it as mulch for the tomatoes. If it regrows, so much the better, as it will provide a living mulch. I doubt it will last long, though, once the weather gets hot. Tomatoes go in the ground the first weekend of May, so I’ve got time to let it grow yet.

The flowers that are blooming are mostly native, things like ceanothus, ribes, and manzanita. The verbena ‘de la mina’ is getting ready to bloom, too. Bulbs are popping up all over the place, and my pansy ‘wall’ has looked great all winter.

The fruits are starting to wake up. Quince blooms earlier than the other fruit trees, and provides a beautiful and leafy cover for the chickens in their run. Huckleberries and blueberries have put out their bell-shaped blossoms, and remind us that berry season isn’t far away. And this photo of the lemon tree is reminding me to put up juice before the fruit rots on the tree!

I started my pepper seeds late though this light rack has been in use for a while now - first it was warming a batch of peppers for the school garden. Now it’s finally got ours, and as soon as they germinate and get potted up and out in the greenhouse, it’ll be time for tomatoes!

The chickens are doing great, all are laying well, and are providing us at least one dinner a week. Below you can see the makings of tonight’s meal - an egg salad on homemade pita bread.

I’d love to know how your gardens are doing. It finally feels, here in California at least, like spring is well on the way!