Tuesday, 23 Oct 2007

One thing I've always believed that Minnesota has over the UK is sunny days -- particularly in winter. It may get to a thousand below and occasionally dump immovable mountains of snow around here, but at least you can enjoy blazing hot sun streaming through a window, even in the middle of January. It might not be the dead of winter yet (or even close), but we're starting to get into the groove of cold-air-bright-sunshine. Yes!

I had two thoroughly brown bananas in the freezer, and I was feeling pretty torn about how to use them. Banana bread is just so predictable, no? I wanted banana scones, but I don't really go in for all the butter/fat that scones require. So instead I made banana bread in little pyrex dishes, so they would feel more bun-like. I tweaked this recipe -- omitting the walnuts, substituting two Tbsp of oil with two Tbsp of yogurt instead, and adding my second banana at the very end, only slightly mashed, so it remained chunky. I mixed until juuuuust combined, and they came out wonderfully light and moist. There. Bananas out of the way.

I think I finally picked the chard plants bare yesterday. I read somewhere that you can keep chard going over the winter; that it actually likes the cold. I suspect this means 'cold' as in '40F', not sub-zero. I cooked these leaves as I usually do, and it was only when I was eating them that I realized they'd have been better raw, like baby spinach. Live and learn.

The sky! So full of blue! That's the back of my little house there, along with the ash tree that has lost almost all its leaves already. I don't know why the tree gave in so easily -- I've still got tomatoes going strong, and nothing can stop the broccoli from producing. Now there's a plant I wish I would keep over winter -- they've been such hard workers.

And this is from the early evening, just as the last sunlight was hitting the neighbour's tree. They've still got leaves! I've decided that I'm going to give over almost half my backyard to the vegetable garden next year. I want to have proper rows of plants. I didn't like the thought that this year was going to be something of a trial, that there might be a lot of waste -- but I did learn quite a few things.

Next year, no cherry tomatoes. The variety I planted grew and produced like mad, but they were sour and of no interest to me. I think I'll have four slicing tomato plants next year -- two red heirloom varieties, maybe a fun stripey heirloom, and something more standard, as the heirlooms seemed prone to rot.

Four broccoli plants seemed like the right number, and although the two zucchini plants drove me crazy during their peak, I think I'll keep that the same and make a bigger effort to grate and freeze the excess. I'll only have one red pepper plant, but I definitely want to try a few varieties of hot peppers next year. Lots of chard and kale -- maybe even lettuce. I didn't do potatoes this year, though I wanted to, so they're definitely on the list. More squash. Onions, garlic, various roots.

This past spring, I was really hesitant to drop the necessary money on all the vegetable plants, but now I know what the return is. After all, I think I spent $3.99 on the four-pack of broccoli, and I didn't once have to buy it from the store from about mid-June to mid-October. Four months of free(ish) broccoli! And you can't beat a plant-to-plate time of under ten minutes.