Farmed, foraged, and Friended
Pictured here are flax seeded pita puffs, and crackers covered in cress seeds, topped with a cream cheese spread consisting of black pepper, grated cheddar, and mixed greens from my AeroGardens, and topped with olives that I picked from the tree on the golf course. I use whatever greens I feel like picking. Today I chose Bok choy, tomato leaves, and Holy Basil. At the moment I also have Genovese and Thai Basil, Shiso (Perilla), Swiss chard, Perpetual Spinach, leeks, oregano, pea shoots, string beans, celery, Kohlrabi, nasturtium, and 3 kinds of lettuce.
Lots of blooms
Guess which flower is not edible!
Right! The pink orchid is toxic and should not be eaten.
Green Spaghetti Squash
This winter squash is not only edible "green" but delicious eaten as a summer squash.
Barley Bread
I haven't bought bread in over 3 years and I am so grateful to have a really great bread machine. I almost always use the ferment cycle.
Until recently, I usually replaced the liquid in my go to recipe with pureed (cooked) spaghetti squash, which in addition to adding nutrients, acts as a natural dough conditioner.
However, after trying pureed fermented pearl barley water, I found that works just as well, and gives the loaf more flavor. I dilute the pearl barley 1:1.
Lamb Chops from Good Chops
Bone in, 4 hours at 135° F in sous vide water bath. I normally would have used my Neovide 100 bagless and waterless sous vide cooker for these, but I put them into the water bath that I was using to cook a couple pounds of bacon. I like to precook bacon for up to 12 hours and drain off the fat to use separately.
All of the meat I buy from Good Chops comes in sous vide ready packaging, which is very convenient.
After refrigerating the precooked lamb cops overnight I browned them for a few minutes on each side in the Crownful countertop air fryer. Tender and tasty.
Papilionaceous Flowers
Say what? According to the Grain Legumes Portal , plants that have "papilionaceous flowers and pods containing seeds" are grain legumes. That is where I first encountered the term "vetch" so naturally I had to go look that one up too, and this site helped:
Vetch Research
Although I was hitherto unfamiliar with their name, the purple-flowered vetch plants grow wild in the hills above our summer home in Northern California, and one of the most remarkable things I've noticed about them is the way the leaves fold up into cup-like circles that retain moisture well into mid-morning. Once I was hiking without bottled water and was able to collect 1/4 cup of dew drops from the vetch. The flowers were gorgeous, just like those pictured here: Purple Vetch.
We had several bags of dried soup beans around, and reading about the vetch, and particularly its butterfly-shaped flowers made me decide to sprout several different varieties of pulse:
In the center are fast-growing Anasazi beans and clockwise around the circle are mung beans in the nine o'clock position, then Adzukis, lentils, pintos, and finally kidney beans. PLEASE NOTE that although I show these in sprouters, certain bean sprouts are NOT advised to be eaten raw. The kidney beans, for example, will produce common snap bean pods which are delicious and nutritious when eaten at a tender young stage, but the adult beans must be thoroughly cooked to avoid toxicity.
Anasazi Beans
Vining (pole type) take 55 to 60 days to flower and produce green beans, bush type sooner. Bush grow up to 2 ft high and do not require staking.
Comparison of Indoors vs Outdoors Lettuce
Here is proof that the Aerogarden gives plants a headstart.
