It was a nice sunny day today.  It started out by biking out to SEEDS Farm at 8:30 to meet up with Becca and Abby where we transplanted our cabbage plants for a couple of hours, just pleasant and a great start to the day!

I was veeerrry hungry when I got back to the house so I made a delicious breakfast with a couple of sliced hard boiled eggs, kimchi, and microgreens from the garden.  Yum, filling and satisfying. 

After this there were just a variety of errands and tasks to get done, Daisy did get to the dog park down in Faribault where she enjoyed traipsing through the mud and pond... dirty but happy dog. 

And then there was some work outdoors to get done, Dan and I met with a  hops-growing-home-brewing extraordinaire yesterday, we toured his hops and brewing area and he sent us home with four plants he dug up (& a few bottles of his really good beer).  Anyways, we planted them yesterday and had to figure out some trellising today so I worked that one out. 

Then we built a compost bin!  At the junk yard there was a whole mountain of old pallet and pallet pieces so Dan picked up a bunch recently, these were perfect for a compost bin.  They were all the same size, we just had to remove nails from them, when we nailed our compost bin together we even reused the nails (we just had to hammer some of them back to straightness).  My goal is to build two more so we have a series of fresh, medium, and new compost always going.  Today we built the main structure, now I've put an email out to local freecycle folks for some old chicken wire.  I will nail this on the interior of the structure to help keep the compost in the bin and then cover the top up with some type of tarp. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning the house and reading and writing outside on our deck (and enjoying watching the cat and dog mosey about the backyard, here's a picture of the cat hanging out in the back of the truck, a spot usually reserved for Daisy...).  We made a yummy pasta dish for supper with spinach and green garlic from the farmers market and hydroponic tomatoes (it won't be long until tomato season is upon us!).

Now we're having fun reading the "Joy of Homebrewing" and drinking some Mead from Cannon River Winery, just perfect.

Today was a wonderful day, last night and this morning it just stormed outside, one of those beautiful heavy spring storms that keep you indoors guilt-free.  I hung out in the kitchen and watched a couple of documentaries to celebrate the rainy day.  Then the sun came out, the sky still threatened with big poofy white and stormy gray clouds, but the temperature was just glorious.  I decided to make a trip to a local county park with Daisy to enjoy the afternoon, check out to see if the river was roaring, and do some morel hunting.  No luck on the morels, but the hike was great.

It's time for all things rhubarb.  My first foray into cooking it this season is in the form of rhubarb sauce.  It's delicious, tart and sweet and a perfect topping for just about anything.  Oh yea, and it's really easy to make... in it's most basic form it's simply chopped and simmered rhubarb mixed with sugar.  I attempted to omit the sugar and use honey instead, it was good but not quite sweet enough so I just added a couple tablespoons of sugar to get it to just the right state, not too sweet but juuust right.  Once again, I just threw everything together so I'll try to get the meausurements right here, but just add, taste, add, taste..!

Simple Rhubarb Sauce:
~1 lb rhubarb
-1/4+ cup honey
-2 Tbsp sugar
Chop rhubarb up and put in pan with a few Tbsp of water.  Heat over medium heat until it becomes nice and mushy (~20 mins), stir occasionally.  Add honey and sugar to taste.  Remove from heat and jar.  Keep one jar in refrigerator and freeze or can the rest.

I grabbed some free old pears from the co-op today so I also made some pear sauce at the same time.  We actually can grow pears here in Zone 4, ready for harvest in the fall.  They're smaller, harder, and very sweet and tasty. 

Pear Sauce:
Chop up pears and place in pot with a couple of tablespoons of water.  Heat over medium heat until soft (~20 mins), stir occasionally.  Mash with a potato masher.  Put in jar and refrigerate.

Ahhhh.... so many spring veggies are popping up.  Our local farmers market on 7th St started up again last week and Daisy (the dog) & I made our first weekly trip there last Tuesday (a lovely 3 block walk).  We went home with asparagus and a bag of spinach.  The FIRST asparagus of the season (a great day).  Of course we ran into some friends there and Daisy got obligatory pets.  I also picked up some green garlic and pea shoots from the co-op, fresh from our amish friends across the border in Wisconsin.  Needless to say, Dan and I have had some great suppers the past few nights.  On Tuesday we had a fresh salad from the garden (with spinach and pea shoots) and some chicken sausages stuffed with feta and spinach and roasted asparagus on the side, oh my, it was soooo good.  Spring asapargus is sweet and has so much flavor, I don't even buy it during the off-season from far off lands, there's no comparison!
On Tuesday I also stopped by my friend, Gaelyn's, place to check out her secret garden.  It's amazing, from the outside she has a lovely house and when you enter the high wooden gate into her backyard you're transformed into a different world, it feels like England in the 19th century, just lovely.  Her little beagle was rolling around the yard while she identified numerous perennials and herbs and explained their properties to me.  We had cherry juice in her screened-in porch and talked about our upcoming vacations.  She also sent me home with a wagon full of perennial flowers and herbs for my garden.  It was a grand time:) 
Yesterday when I got back from work Dan and I worked hard in the garden until the sun went down.  We finished filling all of our beds and started putting mulch around the beds (free from the county dump).  We have made A LOT of trips back and forth to the compost yard and the county dump..... soooo much shoveling!  But it's worth it, and it's free.  We also made a trip to EcoGardens and spent my gift certificate on some flowers to mix and match in hanging baskets and ceramic pots for our outdoor porch.  I love this town, seriously, it's a real town where you know all your neighbors and are genuinely glad to talk to folks, etc, etc.... we were anticipating being there for about 10 minutes and were easily there over an hour... We ran into the Rileys and chatted with them for awhile, they have two adorable toddlers who I talked with, we ran into Jim, Melissa, Jenny & Howie of course, and on and on.  You can't rush any errands in this town, anticipate a true trip where you connect with others:)  Poor Daisy was tied to a post there for quite some time, but, once again, she received a lot of obligaotry pets.

After all that yard work we celebrated with beer and we grilled some burgers on home made bread with asparagus mixed with chopped green garlic and spring onions.

Grilled Asparagus:
Make a foil packet and fill with asparagus spears (make sure to snap off the woody ends), sliced green garlic, sliced spring onions, then drizzle with olive oil, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and salt and pepper.  Place packet on grill and heat for about 10-12 minutes.

This afternoon Dan made a couple of trips to the junk yard for mulch while I was at work, and then him and I made another trip to the compost yard (will it never end?!).  We did more garden work (surprise) and we also made a trip out to Cannon Falls just 15 miles east of here.  We met a local farmer out there and I picked up a 4 gallon bucket of her homemade kimchi kraut from her farm (at just $1.50/lb and 27 lbs it came out to a great price of $40).  We now have the most deeelicious kimchi that I'm sure will last us until this time next year! 
Kimchi consists of fermented vegetables, in her mix there's: organic green cabbage, organic carrots, organic onions, sea salt, organic diakon radish, organic ginger, organic pepper, and organic garlic.  They pound the veggies and ferment them in oak wine barrels.... and it is amazing. 
Kimchi is considered a "living food", it is extremely good for your digestion, low in calories, and just full of vitamins and minerals.  So, we may potentially be having this kimchi kraut almost everyday for the next year!
We also stopped by Cannon River Winery, an amazing local business that makes award winning wine from local grapes, apples, and honey.  We picked up a bottle of mead (fermented honey) and a bottle of Mill City Red wine.  For supper tonight we had a garden salad, pork sausages with our kimchi kraut, and we're still working on that bottle of red wine:) 

One of the perks of working at a food co-op is that I'm able to take home healthy expired food (I mean milk and yogurt are good for a few days after the exp date, right?  & all you have to do is cut off that moldy spot on the cheese or bruise on an apple...!).  Anyways, I scored a couple bags of apples and decided the best thing to do with old apples is dehydrate them!  They're from the west coast right now but when they're in season here I need to dehydrate A LOT more to last the year... they're just so good, it's hard not to eat 'em up quickly!  Dehydrating is easy and a great way to preserve seasonal fruits, herbs, and vegetables.  Here's the process:

I saved some apple chips for snacks and used some as an addition for my homemade local granola.  I just guessed on the quantities but this is approximately how I made it:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
In a baking sheet mix together approx:
-4-5 cups of rolled oats
-1/2 cup sunflower seeds
-1/2 cup flax seeds
In a small saucepan mix together approx:
-1/2 cup maple syrup
-1/4 cup honey
-1/4 cup sunflower oil
-pinch of salt
Bring the liquid mix to a boil in the saucepan on a burner.  Then mix the liquid thouroughly into the dry ingredients.  Put baking sheet in oven and cook ~1 hr, stirring every 15 minutes.  At about 45 minutes stir ~1 cup chopped dehyrdated apples into the pan.  Remove and cool.  Then enjoy!  You can make a lot and store some in an airtight container in your fridge or cupboard and freeze the excess (it freezes very well).

Yep, now that ramps are withering away lovely morels are starting to spring up on the forest floor.  What pretty little mushrooms.  I was fortunate to have a very caring and sharing friend give me some this afternoon that were foraged this morning.... soooo... 'twas time to make a fancy supper!  It worked out wonderfully because today is Dan's and my anniversary, I came home to a nice card, gift certificate to EcoGardens (he knows me too well:), and a silly balloon, how sweet!  For supper we had:

It was very delicious, but I did have a heavy hand with the salt by accident (oops!).  I first heated some sunflower oil in a heavy large cast iron skillet in the oven at 425 degrees.  I then seared the shanks (1 1/2 lbs) on both sides and then added a mix of:
-Approx. 4 cups vegetable broth
-Approx. 1/2 cup dry sherry
-1 bay leaf
-some chopped fresh rosemary
-chopped ramps
-chopped morels
-salt and pepper
Then I cooked them for a little over an hour, stirring about every half hour.
I also made some buckwheat groats, for this I simply put 1 cup of groats, 2 cups water, and a pinch of salt in my rice cooker and turned it on.  When it was cooked I stirred in about 1 Tbsp of butter.
For the cabbage I panfried chopped cabbage in bacon fat (yep) with salt and pepper on medium heat.
To assemble, spoon everything on a plate and then sprinkle with microgreens from the garden...voi-la!

For dessert we had some home made applesauce mixed with rhubarb sauce from a friend (it's reeeaaally good).  Yay, for rhubarb season! 

Here's my cold frame one week later, I'm now able to harvest greens, spring onions, microgreens (in the tray all the way at the back) and almost radishes (I pulled up a couple today and they're still pretty small).

Here's my breakfast!  All harvested from the cold frame:

I just drizzled some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and cracked black pepper on top (classic flavors, not minnesotan but I still consider them kitchen basics).  Although, there is an native herb that I wish to grow called "Poor Man's Pepper" and it is possible to grow dwarf lemon, lime, and orange trees up north indoors or in a greenhouse... future endeavors!

Yesterday I planted two of my raised beds.  One contains greens: Mesculin Mix, Spinach, Head Lettuce, Kale and Chard and the other has 4 rows of various radishes, broccoli, and celery.  I've heard that marigolds help deter bunnies so I planted 4 in each bed... we'll see if this works or not. 

Today was in the high 80's and very very muggy.... it felt amazing but odd!  I was fortunate to be outside aaalllll day, amazing.  I started out the morning by harvesting what will probably be the final ramp harvest of the spring.  All of the leaves are starting to wilt and die down, all good things must come to an end (or do they?  I have frozen ramps, ramp pickles, compound butter, and pesto to last the year!). 

After this I headed home and Dan and I made a hearty and delicious local breakfast that consisted of multi-grain pancakes with frozen blueberries (I cheated and used a bulk mix that's available from Whole Grain Milling Company, all ingredients are grown and milled on-site in Welcome, MN), scrambled eggs, and Maple Syrup that I made from our backyard maple trees (it's sooooo delicious, more on that process another time:). 
Then it was time for some serious gardening!  I spent the entire day constructing 5 raised beds and cleaning up the yard.  Dan took a break from his studies (finals week for his first year of Law School, ugh, I feel very very sorry for him) and drove with me to the county compost yard where we dropped off several bags full of leaves and then shoveled our pick-up full of free compost.  In fact, the wood for our raised beds was scavenged, the cardboard I placed at the bottom of the beds (to suppress weeds and it will compost and eventually become a part of the soil) was free, and the compost was free... it's a lot of hard-work but is well worth the price tag for all of the vegetables we'll be getting out of them this season!

So the pickled ramps turned out great!  They're a sweet pickle, I'm going to experiment with a less sweeter version tomorrow.  As promised, here's the recipe (it's adapted from a Tom Colicchio creation):

3 bunches of ramps, white parts only
1 cup distilled vinegar
1 cup bottled water
½ cup sugar
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon coriander seed, mustard seed, black peppercorns, fennel seed

1. Cut off and clean white bulbs, saving leaves for others use (...pesto!)

2.  Prepare brine bringing vinegar, water, sugar and honey to a boil for 1 minute. Add dried spices and remove from the heat after 1 minute.

4. Blanch ramp bottoms in heavily salted water for 1-2 minutes until the remaining greens on the ramp bottoms turn very bright green. Drain and cool quickly in ice water.

5. Pour brine over ramps and let sit for 3 to 5 days in refrigerator, for those that will be used within a few weeks. To preserve some for later use, seal the jars and  process them in a boiling water bath.

This afternoon Dan and I drove out to his brother's place (Alec) and picked up a bunch of wood he had out there that we're going to use to construct several raised garden beds.  His brother lives out in the country so we let our dog, Daisy, run free for a long time, she needed it- it's great to see her run free and flush birds out of the marshes there.  We then stopped by our buddy John's place to say "hi" and check out his place.  (I'm happy to say Daisy romped free there for awhile as well~).  He's got a great garden set-up going on and we are going to help him plant 2 acres of Cherry trees this spring, I'm excited to see his orchard when it starts producing!  For helping him out we'll get free cherries for life- yay!
After John's we headed home and began constructing our new raised beds, I'm very happy to say that I have the whooole day off tomorrow and it's supposed to be 80 degrees here (crazy!) so the day will be spent working in the garden and harvesting and cleaning up ramps.  Ahhhhh... heaven.

We made some loaded baked potatoes for supper, everything was from Minnesota (except for the potatoes!... next year hopefully I'll have some still lingering from the fall).  Local toppings included hydroponic tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce, green onions from our cold frame, ramps, chives from Alec's yard, cheddar cheese, butter, and sour cream for Dan.  Not bad for early May in Zone 4.

Then I made some ramp compound butter, I've never made this before but it sounds really good!  Basically I just blanched a bunch of ramps (dropped them in salted boiling water for ~30 seconds and then put them in ice water immediately), chopped these up and then mixed these with salt, pepper, 1/2 lemon juiced and zested (not local, I know), and 1 lb of unsalted room temp butter.  I then rolled this out on parchment paper and put this in a freezer bag with the air removed.  Later on I'll take this out and cut up medallions of the butter to put in pasta, on top of chicken, on baked potatoes, etc... mmmm....

Today was a very full day!  I worked in the my garden a bit, went on a nice long walk, met with a friend this morning, cooked good food, and planted A LOT of potatoes.
Last season me and Dan operated our own small farm, Daisy Dog Farm.  We had a 10 member CSA and sold some retail.  It was a lot of work, very rewarding, and very very hard!  Dan is now in the middle of Law School and does not have the time to farm this season so I decided to avoid the pressures of farming all on my lonesome and help out with another start-up farm in the area.  So I've been organizing with SEEDS Farm (Social Entrepreneurship, Environmental Design and Stewardship), it's a community-based farm that is comprised of several components this season, there is a 20 member CSA, 20 member communal farm, 20 plot community garden, and a large plot dedicated to producing food for our local food shelf.  There's a lot of great energy going on there and it's just outside of town, I'm able to bike the mile or so down the street and work, it's great!  So today we finally planted our potatoes, all 180 lbs of them, I think in the end it probably equated to around 4000 row feet of potatoes.  Varieties included Russet, Red, Yukon Gold, and All Blue.  We had a group working on it, volunteers and community farmers, 'twas a great rewarding time!  I can guarantee that we will all have enough potatoes to last us all of next winter~

Today I made a goal of eating 100% Minnesota food and I did it!  (It was a little heavy on the meat, I'll eat all vegetarian tomorrow:)
Breakfast: scrambled eggs from down the road with ham and ramps
Lunch: Beans with ramps sauteed in bacon fat
Supper:  Taco salad- hydroponic lettuce and tomatoes, cheedar cheese, ramps, beans, and beef
Dessert: Applesauce that I canned last winter and a spoonful of honey