Tomatoes hate kale.

I started a new gig around town. I'm a Garden Apprentice. Pretty sweet, right? I'm volunteering some of my time with the Urban Farm Collective at their Turner Garden. In exchange I get produce at a market each week containing veg and herbs from all their gardens and, even better, I get a crap-ton of knowledge. I've been working with them for the past month or so but I have already learned a lot and have regretted a lot of my garden techniques and planning for this season.

The most recent discovery is that kale and tomatoes don't like each other. I had no idea. I at least had no idea how much they don't like each other. I have two sections of tomatoes this year. One section is planted in 'virgin' soil, one of the new beds. I also did some good companion planting here and put carrot rows in between my tomatoes. They are both doing amazingly well! I've got a few basil sprouts coming up in there too (plus some leeks).

The others are planted where I had my kale last year.

I blamed the poor tomato growth on my lack of fertilizer and amending soil from last season, which I am sure is a large contributing factor. But, I think the shoddy growth has a lot to blame on the previous tenets of kale. In fact, I put my spring kale this year in the bed where I had my tomatoes last summer. What do you know, we didn't have any spring kale. It grew to about three inches tall and never progressed. I'm blaming last summer's tomatoes. I finally pulled up the little baby kales that never matured and put peppers in their place. Hopefully they will fare better.

Tomatoes love carrots and they hate kale. Duly noted.

Finally a decent harvest.

Harvested yesterday:

• A few shelling peas
• A lot of snow peas
• A lot of sugar snap peas
• 1 head lettuce
• A bunch of onion scapes
• A large bunch of garlic scapes

We had a big salad for dinner last night; lettuce, radishes and scapes from the garden. Plus homemade flour tortillas with red chile and cheese on the side.

Florist.

We have some lovely roses on the kitchen table, fresh picked from the front yard.

Best tortillas yet.

Have you ever cooked lettuce?

I found myself with my weekly grocery budget spent. There were a lot of household items like toilet paper and toothpaste and aluminum foil this week, which didn't leave a lot leftover for food. I also found myself with two heads of lettuce left in the fridge and another two heads starting to bolt in the garden. Our lettuce queue was stacking up. So, what's a girl to do? I got creative.

I have seen some recipes for cooked lettuce around and I can only assume these recipes are born of necessity. If there is anything a gardener knows it's that you always end up with too much lettuce. I've seen lettuce and pea dishes (which I will try as our pea queue is stacking up as well) and lettuce soups (I think I'll pass on that one), but I found this little gem the other day and it looked really good! Grilled lettuce.

I took the above as inspiration, but used what we had on hand. We had a few mushrooms leftover that were getting wrinkly and some celery, onion and garlic. I sauteed those in some butter with a splash of red wine and balsamic vinegar.




I got the cast iron pan for my birthday and this is the first time I've actually cooked in it (I've done some baking, but that's it)! It really distributed the heat well and it made me feel pretty fancy. I let that all simmer for fifteen minutes or so, then I scooped the veggies out and set them aside. In the still hot pan I put in both heads of lettuce cut in half and grilled each side for about 30 seconds.

I served the lettuce over some homemade bread (Almost No-Knead Bread) toasted with butter with the sauteed veggie mixture and some crumbled gargonzola on top. We were a little apprehensive - I mean, cooked lettuce? But the verdict was good! It was a great way to use up some extra lettuce and some extra veg we had lying around. Success!

Spring's first harvest.

Even though it's high summer for most of you, up in these parts we are just now starting to get Spring. I can't believe it's already June! The weather here is more like early April. Last week we had our first harvest of this year's veggies:

• Two full bundles of radishes
• Three full heads of lettuce

The center bed is simply not producing much of anything. Terrible, terrible soil management on my part. Though I read over and over again about the importance of soil quality and fertilization I've been slacking in that department. I think in the back of mind I figured I would go on what I'm doing until it doesn't work anymore. Well, it only took a year. It doesn't work anymore. Here's to some dedicated studying of soil fertility...

On Frugal Groceries...

A few weeks ago a co-worker came into my office and started complaining about the high price of her lunchtime grocery run. She went to New Seasons, our local organic-type-healthy-grocery, and got a few things for dinner. Her bill came out to $45 and she was appalled. She starting listing off the things she bought and I was appalled. There was out of season produce on her list, buying chicken stock off the shelf, and judging by her reaction I'm sure there was no mind to actually looking for the best deal while she was there. She and another co-worker commiserated and talked about how expensive it was to shop there and how they prefer to do their shopping at Win-Co. I'm sure the produce there is very high-quality....eh-hem.

My goal is to spend about $50 per week on groceries for our house. I usually come pretty close. Clearly shopping the way my co-worker does I couldn't do this. One meal for $45 is not going to get me in under $50 for the week! It can be done though - even shopping at the store they consider so ridiculously spendy - I just got back from a lunchtime New Seasons grocery run and I spent about $55 and I got a lot more than food for just one meal.

First of all, I spend a good chunk of time when I sit down to make a grocery list. I will get out my cookbooks or open up my browser and start looking for things to make. When I find something that 1) calls for ingredients I already have 2) is seasonal and 3) sounds good I'll start my list there. Then I have a base list of ingredients and I try to find other recipes that will use the same things. If I decide to make a soup that calls for celery, I'll also buy tuna to I can make tuna salads. If I buy mushrooms for a pasta, I'll be sure we have eggs so I can make a quiche. If I buy broccoli for a veggie side with fish, I'll be sure to find a casserole that takes broccoli too. I keep doing this until I have about five meals worth of food on my list. The goal of the game is to have as few ingredients with the most dishes available. By the time I'm done there has been a fair amount of crossing out certain items when they didn't fit in, or modifying recipes slightly to fit better with my grocery list.

I will also group my shopping by store. If I have a lot of household items I need that week, like toilet paper and toothpaste then I'll adjust my shopping list to cater to a bigger grocer like Fred Meyer and try to limit my produce. If I'm buying a lot of produce I'll go to New Seasons, but I won't get my aluminum foil that week.

Most importantly is that I rarely buy pre-packaged food. I try very hard to only buy ingredients. It's so much cheaper that way - and healthier! I also always buy seasonally! There is no reason to need zucchini in early spring in Oregon. It's just not natural and your wallet feels it. What would be $6 a pound and of inferior quality in March will be $1 a pound and delicious in August.

Other things I do to cut down on money spent at the grocery store is that I make things myself. I would never buy chicken stock off the shelf. It's a few dollars per quart. I use bouillon paste as a substitute, and for special meals I use homemade chicken stock from spent bones and veggie ends. I make yogurt from aging milk. From this I can have a pint of Greek yogurt for about two dollars. Off the shelf it costs at least four times that. I don't buy bread. I have a loaf rising at home right now, artisan crusty-type bread. If I had bought this loaf at the store today it would have added $4-5 to my bill. Instead it's free if you say I already had the ingredients and even if you add up the cost of those it's about a $1 loaf. I also have a garden. Though it's not producing as well as it should be, come summer our produce bill should shrink down to almost nothing.

When I went to the store on lunch today I didn't have a list. I just haven't had the time to sit down with my recipes around me and figure out a meal plan. So that is strike one against me. I was also buying for a guest coming into town tonight, so I had beer and wine in the cart. Strike two. It was also my lunch break, so I got lunch at the deli, onto my weekly grocery tab. Strike three. In the end I walked away with onions, garlic, celery, bananas, mushrooms, 5 pounds of potatoes, asparagus, apples, tortilla chips, 2 six packs of beer, a bottle of wine and a grilled salmon Caesar salad with a root beer for lunch all for $55.

If you take the time to check the price, look around for a better deal and know what is in season it can be done!