Strawberries Home-Grown & Strawberries Farm-toxic

I used to walk past a strawberry farm on my way to middle school, just around the corner from my parents' house. I grew up in Garden Grove, a town in Orange County (but definitely not The OC land), where a Strawberry Festival is held every year.

Despite the strawberry farms I grew up around, I hadn't thought of strawberries as a plant for the garden, at least not until I saw an episode of Jamie At Home focused on them. My friend Mary Rose grew Alpine strawberries in her container garden last year and, a few months ago, gave me a plant that grew from runners. (Man, plants are so magical.)

I planted the little guy in my garden, and after a couple of weeks of hand-wringing that it might die, it began to grow new leaves and send off blossoms. Even though I grew up near strawberry farms, I didn't know that they sent up such pretty little white flowers. I suppose I hadn't paid much attention or thought to pay attention.

Say Peas // Google Cuteness, Again

I love it when Google is cute with food on their homepage. Today's graphic is in honor of Gregor Mendel's birthday. Remember learning about him and his peas in grade school biology?

Yeah, I don't remember much other than something about dominant and recessive genes. But I do like peas.  And I'm very fond of Jamie Oliver. In honor of Mr. Mendel, peas, and Jamie Oliver, I share with you this video from the 'Peas  &  Broad Beans' episode of Jamie At Home.

I would never have thought to pair peas with mozzarella before seeing this. Nom.

[There's an archive of all the Google Doodles! Of course there is. I didn't know they had different ones in each country... behind the times much? Yep.]

Stolen Fruit // Urban Gardening

Today I discovered that someone picked three of the first big, ripe tomatoes I grew.

They've been bright red and looking juicy for a few days, but I was waiting for them to spend some more time on the vine to get the best flavor possible (though this article suggests that's not necessary). When I went down to water the garden this morning, I was surprised to find three of these big ones gone. None of the smaller tomatoes were taken. It was upsetting at first.

I came back up to my apartment and wrote a note that said "Dear Tomato Thief, picking without asking is rude." After taping up the sign and returning to my apartment, I thought about how I've picked fruit without asking before from trees I've come across (though I've never picked vegetables from what I knew was someone's garden), and realized that I wanted to be kinder about the whole situation. I'm not the ten year old kid wielding a baseball bat jealously guarding against neighborhood kids picking from my grandmother's pomegranate trees any more. Or at least I don't want to be.

Yes, it was rude of whoever did it, but I can't know that it wasn't a visitor to one of the apartments, or even just someone in the building who hadn't seen me lovingly tending to the garden and thus didn't think much of it, so I took down the note and replaced it with a sign that says "Please ask before picking" with my name and apartment number, hoping that next time, someone will ask first. I can't be sure that anyone will actually ask, and the fruit is sitting there, ripe for the picking, but I'm hoping that they'll at least think twice before doing it. When friends have asked me before if I'm worried about people messing with the garden or taking fruit, I brushed off the idea and said I wouldn't care too much. Now I know that I do care... but not enough to be angry or frustrated with it. It happened, it's past.

I just Googled "gardening stolen fruit," and the first article listed said this:

Since nothing can be done about it, it is best to let it slide & try not to feel a blind grudge against an unknown invader. And consider. . . maybe that unfortunate felon was just that desperate for something good in their diet.

I'll agree. Grudge-holding is hard, and wearing. I hope the tomatoes were ripe enough, and that they were tasty.

Tobacco & Tomatoes Don't Go Together // Gardening

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where tomatoes are crossed with tobacco plants, creating an addictive, high-inducing fruit? 

In reality, smoking near tomato plants is highly discouraged because of something called tobacco mosaic virus:

Tobacco Mosaic Virus: There are actually several closely related viruses (the tobamoviruses) that cause the wilted, mottled, and underdeveloped fern-like leaves characteristic of the tobacco mosaic virus. All are spread by what are termed mechanical means: something or something that's been in contact with the virus touches an uninfected plant, and voila -- you've got an infected plant. Sanitation is therefore of the utmost importance, starting with never smoking near tomato plants, as tobacco can carry the virus. Infected plants should be destroyed. Back-yard plants purchased from a reliable nursery or grown from certified disease-free seed and handled in a tobacco-free environment by only one or two people, are unlikely to develop this disease. 

Source: here.

I'm not sure whether to really worry about this or not. Well, I really have no choice about it since there are many smokers in my apartment complex, and I don't think I can keep everyone from smoking near my plants, let alone not throw their cigarette butts on the ground (though people are considerate about my garden, which has been mostly butt-free).

What is confounding me, however, is how the rogue tomato plant that grew from a few tomatoes carelessly tossed into the succulents (and promptly forgotten until the yellow blooms were spraying all over the place) seems to be doing so well, setting more fruit than any of my lovingly-tended plants despite practically growing in an ashtray.

Crispy Potato Roast // Don't Stress Out

I like to use recipes more as a starting point and technique guide than as instructions or rules, and fitting them to what I have and not stressing out too much about exact ingredients or quantities. This is why I'm not big on baking like my friend Kim, who is a baking bad-ass. 

I saw this post on Smitten Kitchen for a gorgeous sorta-not-really gratin potato dish and had to try it. Had to. But didn't. For months. Until my friends and I had a steak night. Steak is a great reason to make delicious things happen with potatoes. 

Pictured are russet potatoes with red onions crammed in between them, and butter shmeared over the whole thing. The recipe didn't call for it, but I added a splash of milk to the bottom of the baking dish. It just felt right (and it was-- the milk made the potatoes soft and creamy). I used rosemary instead of thyme because that's what I had on hand. I think thyme would have been better, but my thyme died soon after my third move last year. Alas.

Swiss Chard & Radish Greens

Some of the very first bounty from my little parking lot garden were radish and swiss chard greens.

Radish sprouts just beginning to get their first true leaves

I'd never had swiss chard before I volunteered at Community Services Unlimited in 2008. Neelam introduced me to the greens and I fell in love with their earthy flavor and texture. Aaaaand they're wonderfully easy to grow. So you should go buy a packet of seeds, find some dirt, and plant them. Now.

Baby Swiss chard

These are the Ruby Red variety. I have some yellow, pink, and white ones starting as well. 

Both the radish and chard are so easy to grow and grow quite fast.

Becoming The (Grow Your Own!) Grocery Fiend

I started this blog five years ago while I was in college, on a budget, and loved walking every single aisle of the grocery story. Now I'm out of college, still on a budget, still love walking the aisles of grocery stores, and in love with the magic of gardening. So I'm going to document my own growing here, not just my parents' awesome garden. I didn't think to share in this space before because my little experiments often turned out fruitless (literally, har har) and I rarely actually got to eat or use the things I grew.

Because they died.

And while I am sort of guilty about killing probably a dozen different plants over the years, from herbs to tomatoes to squash to lettuce, the magic of watching things grow is just irresistible.

When You Can't Have Coffee In The Morning // Spice Appreciation

A couple of months ago, I went to see a homeopath and he prescribed a remedy for me during which, to my horror, I had to avoid coffee.

My first thoughts: This is wrong. Terrible. Inhumane. Many synonyms for those words. But not really. But kinda.

I love coffee. Nothing excessive (anymore). My morning cuppa. Setting the water to boil, grinding the beans, choosing one of my handful of "favorite" mugs, stirring together the grounds and hot water with a chopstick, wrapping up the french press with a tea towel to hold in heat, the waiting, the gentle pushing down of the screen, then stirring in a spoonful of condensed milk or half and half and brown sugar... the body of the Trader Joe's Sumatra roast I use, the grittiness of the coffee (since I like to grind it a bit finer than is usual for a French press), the steamy aroma of it.

I haven't made my morning cuppa since that first visit back in March. How did I cope?

More Snapshots of Where the Grub Comes From

It's been a while since the last time I showed what my parents' backyard looks like. I love strolling through it during my visits and marveling at how they can get everything to grow so damn well. I have my own little 3' x 6' plot going in my apartment building's parking lot, and I would be eversojoyous if  my haphazard gardening technique yields... anything. Okay, to be fair, I've been able to snag a few arugula leaves, my swiss chard is coming along nicely, and a couple of my tomato plants are budding, so I guess I'm doing alright.

But it's nothing compared to my parents' yard:

Papaya!

Mustard greens, I think

I'm Growing an Apple Tree

About a month ago, I ate a baby Gala apple and was surprised to find that the seeds within had germinated. (Due, perhaps, to refrigeration during transport?)

Like my aunt, I couldn't resist planting it. In a tiny, tiny pot.

Fortune-Ate: Yogi Tea Edition

This edition of Fortune-Ate is a departure from the first and second ones I posted because I realized that fortune cookies are no longer the only food items that come with unsolicited wisdom/advice/absurdity. Yet another contribution of Asian Americana to mainstream culture!

Exhibit A:

The spicy ingredients in Yogi Cold Season tea intrigued me and I bought a box. When I went to brew the first cups for my friend and myself, we discovered that the little tags had messages on them.

This one was Allison's (who took these photos with her iPhone 4, which takes ridiculously high-res images):

This one was mine (please note the neat composition of these photographs-- the persimmons, limes, cherimoya, and torn packet):

Looks like I'll be expanding my "Fortune-Ate" series.

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835. Just in time for the tail end of cherimoya season (the fruit he and I both love). My parents sent me home with three of them after Thanksgiving. One of my roommates had it for the first time a few nights agoand described the texture as "buttery."

Creamy, tangy, and sort of chewy all at once. Kind of like Mark Twain's writing. At least what I've read of it.

I confess: I've yet to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer all the way through. Maybe next year. Maybe I'll venture to one of my favorite used bookstores the next time I go down to Orange County and pick up a copy of my very own. Or someone could lend it to me. Or I could pick it up from the library.

Aside: I think it's time for me to finally become a Friend Of The Library. The library system is seriously suffering these days. From being ignored. Around my last year of high school, I started going to Barnes & Noble to study. I slowly forgot about the library as a resource even though I was practically raised in libraries (mostly Santa Ana Main & Brakensiek Branch). Support your local library. In all likelihood, it's in trouble.


Again, happy birthday, Mr. Twain. I hope you're getting all the cherimoyas you could possibly want in whatever life you're living now.

Google, You're So Cute

Did anyone else notice that you could hover over each of the dishes on the Google homepage and click for recipes of each of the items?

Nicely played, Google. I like ya. Now, please, be good. You know everything about me.

25 Foods I'm Thankful For

Thanksgiving falls on November 25th this year. It's been a while since that 25 Things meme came around. Let's go!

In no particular order, 25 Foods I'm Thankful For and probably could not (and/or would not want to) live without:

1. Condensed milk. In Vietnamese iced coffee, of course. In any coffee, really. It was a revelation the first time I had shaved ice with bits of fruit, served with a squeeze bottle of condensed milk. Genius. Perfection. I could eat it by the spoonful. Sometimes I do. That's why I haven't opened the can in the cupboard yet.
2. Almond Butter. Creamy. Lightly salted. This, too, I find myself eating by the spoonful. I like foods that fit in spoons. I also like foods that lend themselves to both sweet and savory dishes. Sweet? Spread over toast, sprinkle with cinnamon, add a dollop of blueberry preserves. Magic. Savory? Cook spaghetti noodles. Or any kind of wheat-noodle. While the noods are hot, add big helping of almond butter and soy sauce, and a not-too-conservative dash of sesame oil. Follow with your Asian (or not) pepper sauce of choice. Dinner.
3. Half & half. Another item that lends itself to coffee augmentation. I can't help it. Since it's hard to eat by the spoonful, I don't. Sometimes I'm tempted to drink it by the glass. Shots of it would be nice. But I stick to coffee. I should become an athlete again. So that I can drink it by the glass without feeling guilty.
4. Pomegranates. They're pretty. They're sweet. They're sometimes tangy. They're mysterious-looking. They're the stuff of myth and legend (literally). And after a day of cream puffs, rich potatoes au gratin, and general glut, they allow me to forget for a minute that I've devoured a week's worth of calories within a few hours. Almost.
5. Black Pepper. Or, really, the four-pepper blend that I put into the peppermill a good friend gifted me a few years ago. I love being able to regulate the grind. I love the heat. I love-- I don't know. Black pepper is so ubiquitous that it's hard for me the describe the flavor. It's an earthy kind of fire. 
6. Red Pepper Flake. It's not just for pizza. I don't feel right making any Italian pasta dish without a pinch of this in the oil along with the garlic and onion. A few weeks ago I forgot that my shaker was broken and accidently dumped 2 tablespoons into one serving of pseudo rice pilaf. I fed it to a gal with Louisiana blood. It caused her pain. She approved.

The Goodness of Jamie Oliver

Now a decade beyond his days as The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver is still at it, at as ambitious a pace as ever.

He has been criticized for all of his branding, his restaurants, his seemingly gimmicky product lines. I'd have lost respect for him if much of the work he's done didn't seem motivated by a genuine desire to help people eat better. And by "better," I don't mean lavish meals or making exact measurements or finding the exactly-right gadget-- I mean helping people learn about food and to build a real relationship with food beyond intake.

I don't just like Jamie Oliver for his catch phrases or his blond hair. I like him because he seems truly excited about food, about showing people how accessible it can be, and doesn't make too much of a fuss about cooking. While I can appreciate the exactitude with which some cooking shows demonstrate recipes, it doesn't strike a chord with me the same way at all.

He's done a lot of shows since The Naked Chef. He has a veritable empire of products, books, shows--even a magazine. His Wikipedia entry is extensive.

Yet the theme from the very first Naked Chef still resonates in everything that has come since. The title sequence of The Naked Chef has him as a rascally young twenty-something with a big mop of blond hair laying on a sofa rather indolently saying "Naked's what I call my way of cookin'... It's gotta be fresh, it's gotta be fun, it's gotta be fast, it's gotta be tasty.--It's not me, it's the food!" Each episode of practically every show of his that I've ever watched (and that's nearly all of them) is bent on making cooking seem like just that-- fast, fun, tasty.

The best way I can think to describe his way of cooking and teaching is that it is just utterly no-stick-up-yer-ass methodology. His hands get dirty. He never makes things seem complicated-- he just does them, maybe says something is a little tricky, but he never, ever makes cooking anything but accessible. At least for me.

Fortune-Ate: How you look

Sometimes fortunes don't make much sense. That's one of those things about life we just have to accept. And love. Because they came out of a sweet, crunchy cookie.

Well, yes, how I look does depend on where I go. Literally and figuratively, I suppose. Since it's a hundred degrees in California, I look pretty wilted and scruffy.


I thought the intense heat would come in August. It waited until October. That's alright. I can't stop thinking about fudge pops. Maybe I'll try out this recipe.

It Ain't Pretty, But It's Tasty: Avo Toast

Sometimes, food looks as gorgeous as it tastes.

Sometimes, food doesn't look all that special, but once it's in your mouth, it's undeniably special. Case in point:

Trader Joe's Ciabatta loaf, split and toasted (at "4" on our Star Wars Darth Vader Toaster-- no joke). Ripe avocado, sliced rather un-carefully. (I roughed up the avo on the left a bit to see which texture I'd like better. I think I liked the feel of my teeth sinking through the slices more than the chunks.) A little sprinkle of kosher salt. That's it.

Maybe you're wondering why I didn't butter the ciabatta instead. Gasp! Has the Fiend acquired anti-dairy sentiments!?

Well, hell hasn't frozen over yet, so--no. 

There are a couple of reasons for swapping avocado for butter:

1. My mom (you know, my CSA) gave me avocados that I needed to use up before they became dry, hard shells of what they once were, or worse-- mushy, decomposed blobs of once-loveliness.

2. The texture of the ciabatta (crisp crust, chewy, lots of air pockets) was dying for something a little more substantial than butter, and since avocado has a super high fat content-- well, it just felt right. And I'd seen the combination on simply breakfast back when I used to prowl around there a lot, so it was worth a try.

It was oh, so good. Hot, toasty bread. Cool, smooth avocado. The tiny bit of kosher salt makes the tastebuds tingle and provides a contrast to the mildness of the avocado (gotta love those ionic bonds). 

Yeah, we can talk about how avocado is great for the skin or cholesterol levels, what with all its monounsaturated fat, but really, the point here was pleasure. It tasted damn good. And it felt good: the avo provided better protection for my mouth from the delicious, pointy parts of the ciabatta than butter could have. And, really, it's kinda pretty, too (and I love commas).

I don't care what kind of eater you are--herbivore, omnivore, locavore, vegan, macrobiotic(-ist?), raw foodist-- please, enjoy what you eat.

Eating Fat Doesn't Make You Fat

"...Eating too much makes you fat!" - Common sense from Michael Ruhlman in his TEDxCLE talk (below).

Ruhlman discusses the importance of cooking in this TED Talk organized independently in Cleveland. I liked that when he talked about it shaping division of labor between men/women, he added "for better or worse"-- mindfulness of possible problems with gender binaries is a plus.

"When you buy crappy food that's been cooked for you in a factory, you're asking for more of it. When you buy good food, food you need to cook, you're asking for more of it."


Voting with your dollars is not a new concept-- the old rule of supply and demand. More people want to buy hybrid cars? More companies start manufacturing hybrid cars. More people want to buy organic food? Wal*Mart, of all places, starts to sell organic groceries. (Though "organic" is a totally loaded term.) More people want to shop at farmers markets? More farmers markets are organized in our communities.


Prioritizing cooking is not easy. Being able to afford organic or locally-grown groceries is not easy. But in this time when we have to worry so much about health care, isn't eating well part and parcel for health? To ignore the link between health problems and the amount of fast food, sugary soft drinks, and salty snacks we consume is egregious negligence.

The old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" comes to mind. Would I rather spend time and money now on real, good food, or would I rather spend it later on hypertension meds or insulin shots? When I think of it that way, the extra time and money doesn't feel quite so inconvenient.

Fortune-Ate

My great appreciation for the whimsical is even greater when the whimsy is wrapped in something sweet and edible (even when it might be cheesy, strange, or in Engrish) like fortune cookies.

I used to crack the cookies open for the fortunes and leave the manila-folder-colored shards on the table, usually only taking a nibble or two. The problem, I didn't realize until later, was that the cookies were often stale.

A stale fortune cookie is even worse than a stale fortune. When they're fresh, though, fortune cookies can be a pleasure--light, crisp, gently sweet.

Truth be told, though, I'd rather have chilled orange slices. The problem with those is that rarely are enough served for each person at the table to get more than one or two slices.

I have a deep, deep love of citrus fruit. Mmmmmmm.

Okay, back to fortune cookies.

I've always had a fascination with the fortunes, with the ways they might resonate with my life, even when they are ridiculous. At some point, I decided to start keeping the fortunes in my wallet. Because they were good reminders, or because they made me laugh, or because I'm just a sentimental fool. Since I don't have Chinese (or insert-Asian-ethnicity here) take-out very often, the fortunes are a rare treat.

Except I've gotten two in the last week because my roommate came home with about a dozen fortune cookies which she'd scavenged from work.

This was a long way of saying: I collect fortunes from fortune cookies and I'm going to start sharing them here.

This is one of the first ones I ever kept:

It's one of my favorites. You can tell it hung out in the little driver license window in my wallet for a while.

Until next time. Make big plans.

How My Mother Got Me To Like Walnuts

Out of all the nuts, walnuts have always been one of my least favorite. Okay, my very least favorite. Okay, I actually kind of have an aversion to them, generally. Okay, "aversion" is too strong a word, really. I tend not to really avoid any foods; there are just some foods that I take much, much less pleasure in eating than others.

So you won't find a small pile of raspberry-vinaigrette-doused walnuts left in my plate after eating a salad or anything. I can't make any promises about a can of mixed nuts, though. Something about their bitterness has always turned me off.

Walnuts have never been something I've ever eaten for the mere pleasure of eating them. I devour cashews and chocolate covered walnuts ravenously. Walnuts? No, thank you.

Except, well, my mom. Mothers. They're sneaky.