This book has been on my list for a very long time. Glad I bought it, because I absolutely loved it and plan to start using it this year.

Mr. Coleman and his family run a CSA farm in Maine (USDA hardiness zone 5a, only one tick warmer than where I live in Minnesota), and they are able to deliver certain crops to their customers all year round with some pretty amazing techniques.

We’re not talking about tomatoes here, but certain cold-hardy vegetables — greens, carrots, turnips — are actually superior in flavor during cold weather.  Coleman breaks it down: the history of winter vegetable production, the maximum-yield yearly schedule, “cold” vs “cool” greenhouses, the basics of how he handles soil prep and pests, plus the very best cold weather vegetable varieties.

This book is written with the small farmer in mind, not the home gardener. If I bought a farm tomorrow, I would use this book as a guide. But most if not all of his ideas are totally adaptable to the home garden, and actually will end up being more fun for me to experiment with since my livelihood will not be dependent on the results.

Coleman’s major discovery that has revolutionized his winter greenhouse gardening is simply this: he creates two microclimates by doubling the layers of insulation over plants.  The first microclimate is the unheated greenhouse. But the second, equally important one, is a layer of thin fabric, draped over the crops inside the greenhouse, like this:

(From Amazon.com customer image gallery, click image for source)

On average, the temperature under the inner covers is up to 30 degrees warmer than the outside temp.  This means if it gets to -15 degrees F outside, it’s still +15 degrees F under the covers. So obviously you have to have hardy vegetables, but still: a huge difference!  (And this was the first part of the book where I squealed like a little girl.)

He also talks a bit about cold frames, which are very popular for small-scale winter vegetable production. They were not practical for his farm because of the volume of food they need to produce, but he got me thinking about where I might fit one in my yard.

I can’t stress enough how useful this book would be, to me anyway, if I was starting a small CSA farm.  He talks about tools, marketing, and growing vegetables that give you the most yield per square foot, and what’s worth your time or not, in terms of how successful he’s been in the past at selling various items.

Several things that I’m going to try that I learned from this book, in no particular order:

1. I’m going to build wee hoop houses for my new stock tank gardens in the back yard and try for a late fall/early winter harvest of carrots and greens, using Coleman’s schedule and methodology.

2. I’m going to try his method for planting leeks. Most people hill up soil around their leeks as they grow, in order to get that nice blanched stem. Coleman starts his leek in large 3-inch deep seed flats.  He lets them grow until they are at least 10 inches tall. To transplant into the ground, he first digs 9-inch deep, narrow holes with a tool he calls a “dibble,” then drops the leeks in so only 1 inch of the plant is above the surface of the soil. Then there’s no mounding necessary, and he gets beautiful leeks.

3. I’m going to start a gardening calendar here on the blog in the next few days. My plan: record the dates of every garden-related event for the entire year. I hope to experiment with planting and harvest dates year-over-year and develop a better system to maximize my yield from my wee 1/4 acre.  I hope you find it [marginally] interesting!

4. I’m going to work on convincing Adam that we absolutely must add at least 4 cold frames. This will probably be about as successful as my work in convincing him that we should get chickens.

This book goes on the HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and inspirational list, for sure!

Here’s another thing to know about the manna — it would be much easier to deal with during the summer.  We keep our thermostat at 66 degrees, almost 10 degrees colder than “ideal spreading temperature” for the manna.  So I had to heat it gently in some hot water, for quite a little while before it reached spreadable consistency:

Coconut Manna Muffins

3 T. melted butter
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1/4-1/3 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 c. whole milk
3/4 c. coconut manna

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup standard muffin tin.

Mix together dry ingredients in a medium size bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together milk, manna, egg, and melted butter.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until combined.

One thing that made me nervous was the batter got quite thick — thicker than standard muffin batter — due to the manna thickening when it cooled in the cold milk. But not to worry. Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.  Makes 12 good sized muffins.

These turned out great. Moist, just coconutty enough without being overwhelming.  With the amount of whole wheat flour in them, I was really happy with how moist they were.

And wow, just stumbled upon a whole collection of delicious coconut manna recipes.

Just kidding! We did enjoy an amazingly good soup this week, made out of more humble but delicious ingredients:

Christmas Lima Bean Stew recipe, which I followed verbatim from 101 Cookbooks. She’s right: don’t skip the toppings.

If there’s no financial apocalypse (I am skeptical at best), our finances should improve quite a bit when our kids go to Kindergarten in the fall and our daycare expenses evaporate (or at least go down substantially). So to prepare for that joyous (or scary) day and budget for groceries AND everything else, I’ve decided to start a Mint.com account. Will let you know how that goes…

My only other real resolution for this year is to bike even more — specifically to make at least half of all my grocery store trips by bike — this means I’ll have to bike more than half the time during the summer months to make up for the winter.  We have a cargo bike; time to use it for something besides hauling kids! If this winter continues as it has been, I’ll be able to start this week.

What about you? Any resolutions?

1 qt of hot cocoa (4 servings)
2 generous tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa
4-6 generous tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (optional)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (optional)

OR

1 single serving of hot cocoa in a mug
1 teaspoon unsweetened baking cocoa
1-3 teaspoon sugar
1 pinch sea salt (optional)
Couple drops vanilla (optional)

Instructions for either one:
Stir together sugar, cocoa, and salt in a mug or in a quart jar. Fill mug or jar 1/2 – 3/4 full of boiling water.  Stir well. Fill the rest of the way with milk. Add vanilla. DONE.  The less milk you use the hotter it will be. For kids, I usually go 1/2 and 1/2 with milk and boiling water so they can drink it right away. Or if I’m feeling like a really nice mom, I heat up the milk gently on the stove and use just milk.

Play around a bit with the ratio of sugar to cocoa — when I make it just for myself I like it a little bitter.

And now for the funnest part of making your own: the endless variations.

Super creamy and amazingly good hot chocolate in the style of Blue Moon Coffee Cafe in south Minneapolis (thanks for the recipe CJ!)
For a single serving in a mug, mix 1 teaspoon high quality Belgian cocoa and 6 teaspoons sugar (SIX!), then add steamed hot whole milk to fill the mug. Top with whipped cream (WOW).

Pre-mixed hot cocoa mix to give as gifts:
It’s all about the ratio: mix 1 part cocoa to 4 or 5 parts sugar. Place in jars, and instruct gift recipient to mix 3 teaspoons full with hot water and a bit of milk.

Other simple variations:
Replace vanilla extract with almond or peppermint extract.
Add some Kahlua, Baileys, or whatever you like.
Replace milk with egg nog.
Replace sugar with brown sugar, honey (use less), or maple syrup.

Can you think of more variations? Also: Merry Christmas, all of you.

Well, it’s here. Wintertime in Minnesota. (Yep, that’s me under there.) I’ve been out on my Nishiki (now converted to a single speed) at least 8 times. I only wear the goggles when it’s less than 10 degrees (F).

Here’s my winter biking get-up, for temperatures well below freezing:
- wool socks, under lightweight “walking” boots
- tights, under super thick fleece sweatpants
- wicking shirt + long sleeved t-shirt + fleece jacket
- balaclava
- thin gloves under awesome 80s chopper mittens that Adam found for me at Savers

Many people like to include windbreaking tops or bottoms, but I find that I get way too overheated when I do that — especially after a few miles of biking.

I have to be honest and admit that the start of this, my second year of really dedicated winter biking, has been uninspiring. Last year at this time I was all “yeah, I’m hardcore!” and “this is an awesome challenge!” and “I’m burning 8,000 calories right now!”  This year, I’ve been dreading it since early November.

I tried a few different routes the first part of December. Chicago Avenue was pleasant in the morning, but really busy in the evening. Bloomington Avenue was busy both morning and evening.

This week, I went back to my normal bike route –it involves mostly neighborhood streets — and it went better.  I see two choices in winter bike commuting:

1. Move slowly because of slippery conditions.

2. Move slowly because of slippery conditions and have cars rushing closely past you, scaring you out of your wits.

For me that’s a no-brainer, though I know other people feel differently.

The most important thing I learned last year was to slow down and embrace the fishtail. At first, every time my rear wheel would fishtail even a little bit, I would panic and put my feet down. An hour later I would arrive at work, totally exhausted.

You’re not going to wipe out every time you fishtail a little bit, and you will be much calmer when you realize this. Think of yourself as a cyclocross rider, or remember how it feels to drive your car fast down dirt roads. There’s a little bit of shimmying, but if you just roll with it you’ll be fine.

Oh and one more thing: I love my studded tires. They make a huge difference.

Anyone have advice for staying the course with winter biking? How can I get that hardcore feeling back?

Update, 12/28/2011: Lucky for me (but unlucky for my perennial plants), the little snow that we got in early December melted quickly.  It’s been dry and unusually warm and I’ve been taking my fixie bike, and wearing the same number of layers I usually wear in October. What a strange year! I’m sure it’s not likely to last…

As soon as I saw this mentioned on a favorite blog, I had to try it. It’s a Dutch Baby. I thought maybe it was another name for a pannekoeken, but apparently not. It is ridiculously easy.

Ultimate Dutch Baby
1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. milk (preferably whole milk)
4 eggs
3-5 slices bacon, chopped (or a chunk of bacon ends)
1/2 c. shredded gouda cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spread out bacon in a cast-iron (or any heavy-bottomed oven-safe) 8-10 inch frying pan, and place in the oven while it heats.

Meanwhile, whisk together eggs and milk until well blended, then add it to the flour and salt a bit at a time. Mixture will be a very thin liquid. Stir in shredded cheese.

When the oven is hot, get the pan back out. If the fat from the bacon does not cover the bottom of the pan, add a bit of butter to make sure the entire bottom of the pan is greased.

Pour in the batter, place back in the oven, and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Serve immediately — the longer you wait the flatter it gets. Top with a bit of powdered sugar, maple syrup, and/or plain greek yogurt.

Variations:

Simplest Dutch Baby: omit bacon and cheese. Place 2-3 T. of butter in pan as it heats. Still really great, especially with maple syrup.

Bigger Baby: increase to 3/4 c. flour, 3/4 c. milk, and 6 eggs. We’ve made the bigger version a couple times but recently decided it’s a bit much for our 2 adults + 2 small people, especially if we have oranges or anything with it.

My Dutch pre-schooler with a rather large Dutch baby. I could eat this every single day.

It started with a snowy day last weekend — the perfect kind where you get a nice cozy day by the fire and then it all melts within 2 days.

Bacon ends — I love it that my favorite grocery store carries random, value-minded stuff like this. Cut up into small chunks and frozen individually, these will add a bit of glorious bacony flavor to many dishes in the next few months.

My first batch of kombucha turned out! (As did the pumpkin pie in the background.) That white part on the top is the “SCOBY” (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast). It started out as a film, but slowly grew into a solid mass reminiscent of soft beeswax. My kombucha is not as fizzy as store-bought, but it has a good flavor.  And now I have extra SCOBY to share with friends.  Locals, let me know if you want some.

Cleaned the last of the lacinato kale out of the garden today.  We’ll use a lot of it, and I also gave a rather large bag full to a friend for her pet rabbit.

And finally, the reason I pulled those last few kale plants: so that I could spread these 5 glorious bucketfuls of chicken manure/used bedding on the garden.  Friends with chickens are great friends indeed.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Urine samples taken during each week of the experiment found that BPA levels increased by 1,221 percent during the week that the participants had canned soup for lunch.

“The magnitude of the rise in urinary BPA we observed after just one serving of soup was unexpected and may be of concern among individuals who regularly consume foods from cans or drink several canned beverages daily,” said Karin Michels, senior author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard, in a prepared statement. “It may be advisable for manufacturers to consider eliminating BPA from can linings.”

(Read the whole article on MinnPost.com)

Now, I posted this article on Facebook and a friend pointed out that an increase of 1221 percent is meaningless if you don’t know the base number.  He’s not wrong, but what concerns me is this: BPA is one of *many* toxic chemicals that are now in our food and water supplies.  Measured individually, each one might come in at a safe/acceptable level, but what about when taken altogether?  No one is studying this, because it would be absolutely impossible to study scientifically. Your research subjects would have to live in a bubble.

Control is such a hard thing. We want to control every aspect of our existence, but we simply can’t. Accepting that can be so hard. I want to follow steps A, B, and C and then get result D. But life has never, ever worked out that way. I can’t do much to control the toxins I take in through the air and even to a large extent, the water.  Food, then, is one of the few areas where I do have a choice.

The study specifically mentioned canned soups; I can’t think of a easier thing to phase out.  I am not much of a cook, but soup is pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make.  Take a crockpot.  Add some water and some veggies, legumes, meat, and/or herbs.  Turn it on and leave it for 8 hours.  Done.  Every time I make soup, I double the recipe and freeze the leftovers in glass pint jars. Fast, BPA-free food.

What do you think, gentle readers?  Are you taking steps to avoid canned food?

This year I really wanted to get into growing my own herbal teas. So to that end, I planted significantly more mint in the shady area on the north side of the house. I’m not sure whether that long-term strategy is going to pay off because the mint just does not grow very enthusiastically in the deep shade. I may try more mint elsewhere in the yard next year–avoiding full sun so that it doesn’t get completely out of control. So here’s my respectable (in my opinion) first-ever herbal tea harvest for 2011:

Left to right: foraged banana mint from a neglected garden (strange but good), peppermint from a neighbor, chamomile from our garden (we’ve already used more than half our supply) and chocolate mint from our garden. These make FANTASTIC teas. We usually just make loose-leaf tea in one of our french press coffee makers.  I love growing plants for tea — especially since so many are perennials.  Here are some tea plants you could grow:

German Chamomile: technically an annual, but I’ve had reports from other master gardeners that it re-seeds itself readily. It definitely needs full sun, and an open, breezy spot would suit it well — I’ve had mine fall victim to powdery mildew a few times.

Mint: there must be 4,000 varieties of mint, and all are perennials that do well in MN. Be aware that mint can become invasive in full sun. Better to plant it in part (but not full) shade to keep it under control.

Feverfew: looks and acts a lot like chamomile. Can be used medicinally for migraines. On my list to try for 2012.

Lemon Balm: another one with many varieties. Useful in salad dressings, too. Also on my list to plant in 2012.

Anise Hyssop: a midwest native that will tolerate part-shade. Licorice-flavor tea. On my 2012 list.

Valerian: gets four feet tall! Root is used as a sedative.

Well there you have just a few, but there are many, many more. We’ve also made tea with sage and raspberry leaves, since we usually have them in ready supply.

Here’s some more of our dry harvest:

1/2 pint (packed) rosemary, a bit of oregano, Christmas lima beans and Cherokee Trail of Tears beans. I know that dried beans are super cheap to buy, but you can’t really buy the heritage ones anywhere. They are super fun and easy to grow, so why not?! Unfortunately many of us in the Twin Cities had uninspiring bean harvests this year, but… well… there’s always next year.

Finally, sage and garlic in a very inspiring picture, photographically speaking. Good grief. Anyway, you get the idea. This will be the first time ever that we might just make it until next year without having to buy garlic. The sage should be dried out in another week.  It’s so great having some of our harvest put-by with minimal effort — drying could not be easier or less resource-intensive.

Here was one small accomplishment for early October: my raspberries needed a little TLC. Our raspberry harvest this year was 1/4 of what it was in 2010. This was partially due to the weather — we had a horrendous July in which the weather was evenly split between torrential rains and tropical heat/humidity levels. But I also haven’t amended the soil underneath the raspberries at all since Adam planted them in back in 2007 (I was 32 weeks pregnant with twins, so it was all him).

So to give them a little bit of care and feeding, I bought a bag of blood meal and topped it with 4 bags of compost. This was enough for approximately half of my raspberries.  I spread out the blood meal as best I could — that stuff’s expensive — and got compost out of my own compost bin for the other half.  There’s a little more square footage there than I always think.

Anyway here’s how it looked, completely composted:

I then gave them several good waterings over the next couple weeks — as you can see our lawn was (and still is) completely dead. It is very dry here right now.  Now this week our maple tree unleashed all its leaves, so we are piling them at least a foot deep on the raspberries.  Leaves are mother nature’s free mulch — don’t waste your time and energy bagging them when they could be protecting and nourishing your plants!  Hopefully 2012 will be a better raspberry year.

It wouldn’t be fall in our kitchen without a couple bags of pumpkin in the freezer. Here’s how we do that.

I am also brewing my very first batch of kombucha! I’ll let you know how that goes — should be ready around Thanksgiving.

The other day I went out to see if there were any carrots left in the garden, found a whole soup pot’s worth, plus a bonus turnip.

I finally got around to planting my garlic yesterday. Unlike last year, I have not the faintest idea yet how I want to structure my garden for next year, so I just threw these in on the far east (right) side, three rows all in a row.  I am definitely going to regret not giving this more thought, but at least they’re in.

Final task: getting our third stock tank into place for our back yard garden. I received two of them as birthday presents this spring from my parents, and a few months later I found a really nice third one to add for next year. Aesthetically, we really needed three of them to complete the landscape I am envisioning.  Poor Adam had to shovel most of the dirt out of Rowan’s tank to move the new one into place — since it’s larger, it looks better in this larger area of the garden. But it didn’t take that long in the end.

There you have it, two small and one large tank in place and ready for next year. The middle one (Anneke’s) is still FULL of swiss chard, going strong. That along with parsley and kale in the regular garden means we might have a couple more weeks yet of from-the-yard food. In November! Amazing.

We’re also going to build a hoop-house (something like this) this winter to put on top the largest of the three tanks — it creates a mini-greenhouse and means we could be eating lettuce and baby greens in April or May instead of June.  Yes, please!