How to Garden in a Swamp?

By Administrator on June 27th, 2006
Posted in Organic Gardening | No Comments »

I’ve been MIA lately due to all the other things I have to do which have taken priority. One of these is my organic veggie garden. I’m afraid it’s looking pretty dismal out there these days due to the inordinate amount of rain that we’ve been getting here in the Northeast.

I had to re-plant my bush beans as the first planting was pretty much wiped out by a combination of the rain, lack of sunshine, and some critter or other that’s been taking advantage of the situation to chomp the leaves right back to the stem. I’m wondering if it might be slugs as this weather has surely been to their liking and I’ve found a few on the lettuce and elsewhere. At any rate, it’s been impossible to try to control insects by spraying Neem oil on the plants as it would just wash right off again. This is extra annoying as I’ve just bought myself one of those four gallon self-pumping sprayers and haven’t even had a chance to try it out.

The straw that’s meant to serve as mulch on the garden is still sitting in bales, killing the grass as I haven’t had the chance to get it spread around yet. Of course this also means that the grass and weeds inside the garden are going great guns. THEY don’t seem to mind all the rain at all!

To top it off, I have something kind of weird looking growing along one of the rows. It started out as a neon yellow something that almost looked as though it had been splattered there (like a paint splatter). Next it seemed to swell and solidify and turned a nasty light brown color, and now it has gone to a rusty brown. I’m wondering if it might be some kind of slime mold. When I came across a description of this creature that seemed to span the border between the plant and animal kingdoms in an encyclopedia as a kid, I was absolutely fascinated. I have to say I’m not feeling all that thrilled about it now!

Well, on the brighter side, a few of the tomato plants are blossoming despite the less than ideal conditions and some of the mixed flower seeds I keep throwing into the far back of the garden seem to be providing some color finally. Guess I’ll just have to grin and bear it. Happy gardening to all!

Lamb loin

By Administrator on June 7th, 2006
Posted in free recipes | No Comments »

Okay, this isn’t so much an actual recipe as it is part method and part moan! I was feeling kind of sick of our usual chicken/fish/93% lean hamburger diet and saw in the newspaper ads that a local market had whole lamb loins on sale for $3.99 per pound. That sounded pretty good so we went out and bought one.

I did some research on the Food Network for recipes, but most of them called for exotic ingrediants that we don’t have on hand. Most of them started out by saying “trim the fat and silverskin and de-bone the meat”. Okay. I got out one of my good knives and started to “have at it”. By the time I’d “trimmed” off fat weighing about half the total weight of the piece, I was definitely re-thinking this “sale price”! I probably won’t be in any great rush to buy this cut again; however, I browned the bones with the accompanying bits of meat and now have a nice lamb stock to use some other time. I gathered the remaining strips of meat and rolled them with a paste made of two garlic cloves and about 2 to 3 tsp. dried rosemary ( ground together with a mortar and pestle) in the middle. I tied it with kitchen twine in several places and put it in a small roasting pan greased with cooking spray. I then poured the juice of a lemon over it and sprinkled with salt and freshly ground pepper. I roasted it uncovered in a 425 F degree oven for 30 minutes, then let it rest for about 20 minutes. Although it registered 135 degrees internal temperature on the meat thermometer, I thought it looked a little too rare to be safe, so I zapped each portion for 1 minute in the microwave before serving. I have to say that it was a bit more work than I’d planned on, but it sure was tasty! My husband didn’t even miss his customary mint sauce.