How does your garden grow? Seeds, seeds, and more seeds!

Spring! Really! It is!
I’ve been chirping that it should be spring for the last few months, but now I have backup.

However, still too cold to put seeds in the ground here in New York, and besides, the reason I got no chicory last year? Squirrels. Rampaging hordes of them. The bastids. Birds, too. Hungry and sharp eyed, and totally watched where I planted seeds and went and scratched them up, then gobbled them as Mark’s Mum Sue reported to me from the window. Grumbles.

So, the answer?

Seedlings!

Marinated Feta Cheese

Feta cheese is not something that is very often found in our household. My partner finds its taste too salty for him in raw form, and I have not had occasion to explore it too much in the last few years. However lately I’ve found myself craving it.
This week’s circular for a supermarket near me showed there was a sale on feta, and while it was not the lowest price I could imagine, it was low enough that I decided to indulge myself a bit.

I went out and brought home a 1/2 lb of the little white chunky cubes.

Anticipating the payoff for my week of dreaming, I popped one in my mouth.
Hmmmm. I can see why these were on sale. While fresh and firm, it nevertheless was lacking any robust flavors or the tingly creamy oomph I associate with feta cheese.

At first I was sad, but then I began to think of ways I could use this feta that would mask its inherent lackluster. But all of my thoughts left me thinking that in the end, the slightly raunchy feta-ness would be lacking, and it would sadden me.

So I says to myself, says I, why not recreate it? Without a goat on hand, I most likely could not give it back everything that it should be, but with the proper spices and herbs, and a bit of the magic that is soaking in olive oil, I could marinate these, and make of their blandness a canvas for my art.

And thus, I did.

Awesome “Peruvian” Garlic Lime Dip

There is a Peruvian restaurant by the name of Pio Pio in Queens, NY; I highly recommend this place!

It serves huge portions of really good food for reasonable prices [off the top of my head, I can say a table of 3 (one big eater, one medium to big eater, one small eater) shared a Matador special (roasted chicken [not having had Peruvian food before, the spices were not in a familiar blend but quite unique and tasty without being spicy (our guest has a very low spice tolerance)], avocado salad [fresh and yummy with a sublimely fitting light balsamic vinegarette], sausages [read:hot dogs, not very exciting but dry (not greasy) and good when dipped] & fries [typical, though not greasy, good for dipping] and fried plantains [also dry (not greasy) and rather bland by themselves but an amazing base for the dipping sauces]) for a hearty lunch, were stuffed, and had enough leftovers for two of the three to have lunch the next day at the least (we may have stretched it further than that I cannot now recall) and this came to $30 I believe, with at least one drink or extra but I cannot recall what the extra was].

However, it is a bit out of the way for me (and includes at least $8 in tolls). Also, we are trying to ever-shrink our expenses so as to be able to save some for future land purchases (even living as far from NYC as we do, cost of living here is rather more than comfortable), and thus restaurant expenses were one of the first to get chopped back.

Living as we do so close to so many amazing restaurants, this is rather saddening for me, and I have been trying to make high quality food to keep myself from feeling deprived.

While everything I had at Pio Pio is tasty and interesting [and I am told the fish is out of this world, but not being a fan of cooked fish I cannot say for certain] by far my favorite thing about this restaurant is its two dipping sauces.

One that I have successfully [at least in my and my partner's opinion] reproduced is the Garlic Lime Dip and is posted here.

Once avocados are on sale and ripe again I shall begin to poke at the other dip–which I am certain includes avocado and jalapeño, but I am not sure what else.

But until then we have been thoroughly enjoying this dip and I hope you all do as well.

Strawberry Wine

Strawberry Wine!

I’ve been brewing mead for about 2 years now, and have been aching to branch out into wine. Carrado’s of New Jersey, a really nifty brewing supply store nearish to my locale, is going to begin selling crushed grapes by the gallon this year [in grape season ~September] as opposed to by the 6 gallon. I’m tremendously excited by this. Most likely it will not be economically feasible to do more than a 3 gallon of so, but it’ll still be a lot of fun.

And I wanted to do some experimenting before I shell out the big bucks for wine grapes.

Enter Strawberries. Over the last few months I’ve been slowly buying frozen strawberries as I see them for as good a price as I have found locally [roughly $2.50/lb], and the other day I found I had accumulated 6 pounds of frozen strawberries. Definitely enough to make 5 gallons of wine out of, thought I. So I set out to make an attempt.

Introduction and Welcome

My name is Karen and I am very interested in sustainability, homesteading, and permaculture.

One of my dreams/goals is to [hopefully in the next 3-5 years] buy land [hopefully with loved ones, but if that does not pan out, then...well, then we shall see what we can manage to scrape together of the original dream and work out with less people than the ideal...] and go out and build a sustainable life/farm/eco-village/education center/community off the grid.

Currently I reside on the 2nd floor of a two family house in New Rochelle, NY [30 minutes MetroNorth train ride from grand Central Station in New York City] with my partner, Mark. The house is owned by his parents who live downstairs. This has its perks, as I can easily negotiate garden space and whatnot with them.

I am doing what I can in the suburbanish area I live to homestead, learning and hopefully honing skills for use when we do go out onto wilder pastures. I am also taking this time to attempt to educate myself more about these topics so I will be better prepared. I am hoping to share my thoughts on this process as well as useful tips and recipes/methods/skills to aid others in their similar [or dissimilar] paths.

Welcome to my blog. I intend to keep records of various experiments I’ve tried, recipes, notes on my garden adventures, thoughts from my wanderings, and hopefully relevant book reviews.

I would love to meet [in real life or cyber form] other people with similar interests and would welcome any input/commentary here as well as in email. My email is kiarrith at gmail dot com.