Experimental vegetarian cooking and urban gardening in Ontario, Canada
It seemed like winter would never end — especially when we got snow in May — but the warm weather is finally here. And you know what that means: gardening! This is my second year with the same garden plot, so I’m off to a good start already. I created rows in the fall and amended the soil by adding compost, […]
So I’m a fan of cocktails (martinis especially), and I want to start making them at home. That may sound easy enough, but there’s a problem: Most cocktail recipes call for two or three types of liqueurs, and each bottle costs anywhere from 20 to 30 bucks. Is it really worth it to spend 100 bucks or more at the […]
I’ve had this project on my list for years. As a fan of DIY hacks, any sort of repurposed/reused doodads, AND gardening, how could I resist something as cool as a light bulb greenhouse? Any plants that you grow inside it will reuse the water supply, which is helpful if you forget to water your plants or go on vacation. Personally, […]
Are you looking to grow something different this year? If you’re anything like me, you want to break the monotony of growing tomatoes, carrots, basil, and other common vegetables and herbs. Or, maybe you’re thinking of long-term survival strategies. As a fan of “The Walking Dead,” I cannot help but imagine the worst and ask myself how I would feed […]
Somehow I never got around to posting photos of the harvest this year, so I’ll post them all now as a yearly summary. As you can see, my eggplants did the best. I finally got a watermelon to grow, although I think it was under-ripe when I picked it. I didn’t take photos of all the butternut squash, but those […]
Last month I volunteered with Hidden Harvest, an independently funded organization that harvests fruits and nuts from trees in Ottawa and donates a portion to local food banks. We went to Mooney’s Bay and harvested 197 lbs of crabapples. The camera on my phone unfortunately stopped working, so I don’t have any photos of the trees, but I did get […]
Can you believe that it’s almost October? It seems like the summer passed by so fast. With the nighttime temperatures dropping, it’s time to start harvesting the cold-sensitive plants. I decided to deal with the plants at home first. Although I didn’t do much with the front garden this year, I did grow a large basil plant in the yard, […]
Just when the weekly CSA produce was starting to feel monotonous, something changed: we got something different!! It’s a butternut squash!! Okay, so it’s true that we got more stupid cabbage and green beans and broccoli. But the addition of a butternut squash makes it all worth it. I roasted it and served it with margarine and corn on the […]
So for week number three, I turned to some old-school recipes for help. I’m not used to cooking with the same ingredients week after week! We were inundated with yet more broccoli and eggs. As you can see, we also got corn, yellow beans, cherry tomatoes, raspberries, onions, and potatoes. It was easy enough to deal with most of the […]
These CSA boxes remind me of Chopped, a cooking show where chefs are given mystery baskets with random ingredients, which they must use to cook a meal. Obviously, me receiving a CSA box isn’t the same thing as a televised cooking competition. However, I find myself saying the same thing that the chefs say: what the heck am I supposed to do […]
