OMG a Recipe: Summer-Greens... Make Me Feel Fiiiine....

I must be crazy from the heat, giving all the post titles musical themes. I blame you, Blazing Orb of Fire in the Sky. I BLAME YOU.
  When I'm not completely losing my shiznit over how hot it gets, I put my braincells to work, trying to make meals that take advantage of the abundance of garden greens. And note, none of these are salads!

Carrot "bolognese" with spaghetti. And yes, kale. - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Summertiiiiiiime.... and the Livin's Easy....

I don't know about you, but Summer Lovin's got me lazy as hell. The heat doesn't help inspire energy, but even when the blessed mild summer days (and by mild, I mean mid 70's -- anything beyond that, and we all turn into big PNW crybabies, myself being the crybabiest of the crybabies.) I'm still keeping up with our weekly produce delivery, as well as our happily flourishing herb garden in the backyard. So the menu this summer has been fresh stuff, grilled stuff and anything you can enjoy while sitting outside.

Summer pizza? Why not, especially when you've got fresh herbs aplenty - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Holi-DIY and Resource Guide

Well, it's official - it's December and you just can't escape the fact that THE HOLIDAYS ARE TOTALLY EFFING HERE (and they're calling from inside the house!). Nevermind the fact that Costco has been selling Christmas wrapping since August. I'm here to help you on this whirlwind of Holiday Madness by sharing my Jedi Master Wasabi DIY Gift-Making Tips, as well as a resource guide for where I purchase a lot of the base materials on the cheap. (Hint: the Interwebs.) So let's get crack-a-lackin' my little Elves and Elvises -- there's gifts to be made!

Gift wrapping - brought to you by Pinterest and being a scrap-hoarder - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: The Meatball Strikes Back!

I'm back! I'm alive! And I'm definitely looking to ease back into cooking after a fun, but busy vacation. Be patient, I promise to share my adventure soon enough, but until then, I need to cook up something quick, simple and delicious. It's certainly not news that I'm an avid fan of the Meatball Craze that's been hitting the Food Trend World. They're so simple, you can make them with any ground meat combination you like, or even no meat at all, you can do vegetarian versions like my favorite chickpea/quinoa combo that are plenty tasty. We recently got our share of a cow -- we got a quarter of the delicious beast -- and so we've got a hefty supply of hamburger to last us the winter and then some. Meatballs of all shapes, sizes and ingredient combinations - ONWARD!

Meatball craze in full effect, but don't forget a crucial ingredient... - Photo by Wasabi Prime

OMG a Recipe: Farmers Market Finds and Yes, Everything's Better With Butter

Farmers Market Fever is in full effect, yo. Which is to say, you may spend several trips to the market, fully bedazzled and bewildered by all the amazing fresh, local produce, and somewhat stymied over what the heck to do with a bouquet of baby artichokes, or a bag full of doughnut peaches. At least, that's how I roll when I visit the market: Dazed and Confused. Seriously, I can't decide what to get, because it all looks good and I know it always comes down to too much culinary potential, too little shelf-life freshness. But a recent trip caught me on an odd moment of laser-focus -- I picked two things, one favorite familiar and one exotic item, and it allowed me to come up with a most delicious, singular meal: penne and spinach in cream sauce, topped with herbed oyster mushrooms, toasted in butter. Ooh, la-lah, bitches.

Do you prefer clams or oyster (mushrooms)? - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: A Day Late, A Dollar Short, But Still Delicious

I get zero points for blogging about seasonal ingredients today. But at the time I made all this stuff, I was cooking with seasonal ingredients like a Mofo. Garden tomatoes and fresh oregano? Looking outside into most PacNW gardens, it's a whole lotta soggy earth, wilted plants and gray skies, but a month or so ago, we were all still enjoying fresh-picked goodness. So let's jump into the Way-Back Machine and pretend it's still summer, shall we?

Yes, more effing tomatoes! I love these little guys!! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Gardening isn't ridiculously hard to do, but it's still a bit of work, so when you do yield even a modest harvest of edible goods, you want to celebrate them. Short of putting them in a glittery dress and making them learn to twirl a baton for an upcoming parade, you want to prepare them in a way that shows off their flavor and doesn't just drown them out as some supporting ingredient role. I didn't have a ton of tomatoes this year, but for the ripe lil' gems I got, I was celebrating the eff out of them. I went on a Pizza Rampage for a few weeks this summer -- not a bad thing to do, I admit -- and I was enjoying this magical food at several favorite spots, including The Station Pizzeria, which I happily shared many photos of their pizza-deliciousness. Working with fresh ingredients is what transforms pizza from cheap college junk food into something really special. I was particularly inspired by their spicy Cipolla, which has a mix of sausage, pine nuts, onions and fresh ricotta, as well as their Not So Classico, which had a sweet tomato confit, chevre and mozzarella, and a mix of arugula pesto and fresh arugula on top.

Inspired pizzas from The Station, and our own garden goods - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I wanted to make an UnRecipe - MacGyver pizza mashup of these pizza inspirations, using items from our garden, fridge and pantry staples and some CSA greens. I wanted to make everything as from-scratch as possible, so I used my go-to flatbread dough recipe from Epicurious, and that great homemade ricotta method using the microwave from Serious Eats. Fresh ricotta on pizza? To. Die. For. And making your own dough and fresh cheese isn't as much work as you'd think. The microwave method for fresh ricotta from Serious Eats has a lot of passive time, with the microwave zapping the milk and vinegar mixture, which is just enough time to throw together a batch of dough. You can use the dough hook attachment on your mixer or use your hands -- it really only takes fifteen minutes or so to put together a quick dough. You're just getting it mixed until everything comes together, you don't want to overmix and create concrete. Once the combined dough is balled up in a neat, clean round and placed in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap to proof, say Peace Out, and let it sit until dinner time when you're baking this bad boy. Same with the ricotta -- I made a double batch, based off the Serious Eats instructions, so it took a little more than double the time in our microwave to curdle and get cheesy. I drained off as much of the whey as I could, stirring the mixture through paper towels and a metal sieve, but once it got to Greek yogurt consistency, I set the cheesy sieve atop a big, empty measuring glass and set the whole thing in the fridge to just let gravity finish the job. I checked on it periodically throughout the day, stirring to agitate more of the whey to drain. The resulting ricotta wasn't as thick or crumbly, more creamy, like a thickened pudding, but because I baked the ricotta with the pizza, the oven evaporated a lot of the excess liquid.

You got the White Stuff, baby. Making cheese and bread - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I wanted the finished pizza to have a spicy mixture of pickled and fresh vegetables. I skipped the meat just because I thought sausage flavoring might overpower the vegetables and I wanted to highlight the freshness of everything. But if I were to add a meat, prosciutto would be a good candidate. I pulled some fresh oregano leaves and chopped them up super-fine, mixing it with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar for a basic dressing. This was tossed with halved fresh cherry tomatoes and pickled goodies like chopped kalamata olives and pickled peppers. Once the dough was proofed and rolled out to make a rustic, aka, lopsided and butt-ugly, shaped pizza, it was covered with the vegetables and dollop-bombed with the fresh ricotta. Into a hot oven the whole thing went.

Garden-delicious with pickled olive and pepper goodness - photos by Wasabi Prime

It was a pretty heavily-laden pizza, but luckily this flatbread recipe yields a sturdy crust. The oven pulled a lot of the extra liquid from the ricotta and gave it a little color, but kept it creamy. If you had more crumbly ricotta, you could probably wait until adding it towards the tail-end of the baking, just so it wouldn't get rubbery. Once the pizza was finished, I sprinkled chopped fresh arugula on top to give it a peppery, green finish.

Pizza from scratch, from cheese, to bread, to tomatoes - so worth it! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The result was, of course, fantastic. While not something I'd make every day, it's good to make a meal like this now and then to remind your palate of what homemade tastes like. You never realize how much pre-packaged food we eat, even the stuff you get from restaurants -- if it's a big chain, chances are, some of the ingredients they use are premade. Granted, no one's going to die if you have a $5 takeout pizza now and then, but consider the notion that if you're going to treat yourself with some comfort-junk food, make it slightly less junky by making it yourself.

More garden-delicious delights - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I got struck by the Homemade Bug again when I had more ripe cherry tomatoes and was getting tired of just having them in a salad. I had an image pop into my head of the whole tomatoes baked into an herbed cheesy bread. Sounded like a good idea as any. Short of The Voices in Your Head that ask you to do evil, bad things, the ones that suggest a cheesy tomato bread is a far more socially acceptable option.

Cheesy tomato bread rewarded by a spot on Sunset's website - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I used the same flatbread recipe, but mixed in finely chopped herbs and shreds of Parmesan cheese right before baking it. I formed it into more of a loaf than a flat pizza dough, so that it would yield thicker slices. I used a mix of herbs -- oregano and rosemary, as that's what was left in the garden, but a dry mix of thyme, oregano and red pepper flakes would work just as well. I made little divots in the dough and pushed the whole cherry tomatoes in. A quick drizzle of oil and more cheese over the top, and into a hot oven it went to bake. The tomatoes caramelized, shriveled and popped, which doesn't sound good but that's what I wanted. They stayed sunk into the bread, binding with the dough, and they were a nice fruity bite as you ate the herbed dough.

It was a complete UnRecipe tomato cheesy bread, because I didn't really have any set plan over how it would come out, just a vision in my head of what the finished result could be. And I was glad to see it pretty much matched the picture in my mind. I was so pleased, I entered it into Sunset Magazine's photo contest, where they would showcase harvest-worthy images. I was pleased to see the bread made it online, which of course is all that's left of this loaf, as it was gobbled up without a trace. Will definitely make this again, maybe using olives, since we're at a loss for truly garden-fresh tomatoes these days.

And there ends our trip in the Way-Back Machine of Summer. No lush gardens to pluck fresh produce from at the moment, but we can still dream of seasons to come and how to celebrate those harvests in the kitchen for future meals.

UnRecipe: Spread 'Em

Every year I seem to go through a food phase. Last year I was making ice cream once or twice a month, a phase which continues to this day and could now be classified simply as "normal." A few years ago it was discovering the craft cocktail revival, imbibing new things and filling our cabinets with a worrisome amount of liquor, also a thing that I would consider "business as usual" in present times. This year I have to say I'm definitely in a phase of making savory jams and spreads, a behavior that will soon evolve into daily life and seem about as everyday as making morning coffee. Which isn't such a bad thing when you've got a jar of caramelized onion bacon jam at your fingertips.

Jamming with caramelized onions and bacon - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I never jumped on the Canvolution bandwagon, where everyone was preserving and jamming to their Portlandia heart's content, but I totally get it. For all the stuff we grow in our gardens and the surplus of summer's farm fresh goodies, there's no reason to let any of it go to waste when you can properly preserve it like Joan River's Botoxified visage. I just don't have the know-how or equipment to properly seal the things I make, so the best way to describe the keeping savory jams, marmalades is: freeze the extra jars before the mold grows! In the case of an onion jam, it's almost the opposite -- cooking down a mountain of sliced raw onions into sweet, caramelized little mushy-ribbons of flavor is like the equivalent of Spacebags for food. If you have more onions than you know what to do with, you can cook them down to fit into a couple of clean salsa jars, and you are rewarded with one of the best flavors known to mankind.



Onions are magical, much like unicorns and wizards who make bourbon - Photos by Wasabi Prime

On their own, caramelized onions are divine. You don't need anything beyond an f-ton of raw onions sliced thin and a little olive oil to help them cook down until browned and mushy -- but not burned. It needs patience, Grasshopper, low and slow is the way to go. Add salt and pepper to taste and you've got the starting point for French onion soup, a wicked topping for burgers or hot dogs, intense flavor to add to a grilled cheese sandwich, or just mix with your morning eggs. For my super-duper onion jam, I rendered the fat from a few leftover slices of bacon, set them aside, caramelized the onions in the bacon fat and then added the crumbled bacon bits back in towards the end when the onions were mostly done. I even added a splash of bourbon (one for me, one for the jam) for a little extra depth of flavor. The perfect mix of sweet and savory, but with that dark flavor profile of something that has been cooking for a good amount of time, awaiting like a cobra to strike with deliciousness instead of deadly venom. A much better option, wouldn't you agree? What to do with this rainbow of onion-bacon flavor? I slathered it on some bread with melty mozzarella and let the toaster oven work its magic. I also topped a burger with it to make a crazy version of a Locomoco with weird fridge leftovers like cotija and breaded zucchini. Yeah, our fridge is full of all kinds of crazy sometimes.

Onion and bacon jam Locomoco, because that's how we roll - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Admittedly, the bacon and onion jam doesn't last long enough to be threatened with deep freeze storage. But one thing I do end up making quite a bit of during the summer months is pesto. Traditional pesto is usually basil, parsley, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, garlic and olive oil, all blended to make a rich paste that can be used as a spread or a sauce. If the slugs hadn't eaten my basil plants to pitiful nubs, I'd be in much better shape, but pesto can be made with... well, almost anything. In our garden, we have a lemon balm plant/bush/forest that I have often referred to as the Thing That Will Surely Take Over Earth. It started out as a plant about the size of a little flower pot and it's since grown like Mothra, threatening world domination and smackdown date with a giant lizard from Japan. I cut it back liberally on a regular basis, leaving me with handfuls of lemon balm bouquets. I don't keep the stems, they can be a little spiny, but the leaves are tender and big, like giant mint leaves (no surprise, it's a close relation to mint), with a fresh herbaceous flavor of citrus, hence the name. Most of our garden pesto is made up of lemon balm, so it's got a refreshing zing to it, and I usually add a bit of whatever else we have, which could mean chives, oregano, even a little rosemary. I blend everything up with whatever nuts I have on hand (insert boy joke here), usually almonds and sometimes pistachios, which give a very pleasant sweetness to pesto if you haven't already tried this. I'll add Parmesan or Asiago cheese, plenty of garlic, red pepper flakes and a lot of olive oil. I prefer my pesto's consistency to be on the loose side, plus the heavy coating of oil slows down some of the browning of the fresh herbs, especially nice when I have to freeze the extra jars. For this recent batch, I had some fresh lemons whose juice also helps the herbs stay evergreen.



Pesto is Best-o with pasta, of course - Photo by Wasabi Prime

 
I slathered the pesto over a thinly-pounded steak, which I threw under the broiler for a quick cook on both sides. I also tossed the pesto with some pasta and peas. Aside from the fact the pasta "looked like a spider's nest," as Brock called it, after it was smothered in a heavy sprinkle of cheese, it still tasted divine. No spider's nest pasta for you, Brock! I still had plenty of leftover pesto, and the same application of the onion jam could be used for the pesto: eggs, grilled cheese, burgers, etc. For a while I was just calling it Hulk Pesto, as it was Hulk-Smashingly tasty, and I probably still had the image of Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk in my head from The Avengers.

Even the Hulk could appreciate this green creation - Photos by Wasabi Prime 

The versatility of flavor in a jar, aside from the benefit of using up excess produce and garden herbs, is especially  nice in the summer. You don't want to be sweating over a hot stove when the temperature rises. This robs you of valuable cold beer time. Chilled pesto with a little mayonnaise makes for a simple raw vegetable dip. Grilling meat or vegetables brushed with some pesto adds easy flavor. I'm a longtime fan of toaster oven cooking, mostly because it doesn't generate much heat and a few slices of bread toasted with onion jam and cheese is a perfect lazy summer meal. So all hail savory spreads, jam and pesto. Intense flavor, not a lot of effort and summer-long rewards.

Flavortown, population: my appetite - Photos by Wasabi Prime

 

UnRecipe: Yes, Virginia, There Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing

You know you have these mental pictures rolling around in the ol' noggin, culinary creations that combine ingredients and flavors that in theory should work really well? Let's just say those good intentions often lead towards the Dark Side of indulgent culinary desires.

My stomach said yes, but my diastolic BP said hell no - Photo by Wasabi Prime

It was a simple enough notion: let's make a savory cheesecake. Cheese is one of those super-flexible ingredients that can transition from sweet to savory relatively easily, you just have to know which types of cheese works best and ideally, which cheese can play both sides. Cream cheese is most certainly one of them. You use it in the dessert variety of cheesecake, but the flavor is neutral enough to be used in savory applications. By taking a standard cheesecake recipe, omitting the sugar and adding some extra "oomph" of flavor with herbs and crispy pancetta, this notion of a savory cheesecake doesn't sound so bad... right?

To be clear, there wasn't anything wrong with the final product. My main concern was whether or not the cheesecake would set up properly -- technically it's more like a custard, not a cake, given its eggy-creamy batter which doesn't have much flour in it. The final baked good set up just fine. I made a savory crust, using some coarse breadcrumbs, a mix of panko, rye and regular toasted white bread. The crumbles were tossed with melted butter and pressed into a springform pan and baked for a few minutes to set up. The batter was a variation on a basic cheesecake recipe, sans sugar of course, using a mix of cream cheese and softened goat cheese. I mixed in a handful of chopped fresh herbs, mostly parsley, basil and some thyme from the garden. The last item I mixed in was a crumbling of pan-crisped pancetta for a meaty bite. The batter was poured over the crust in the springform pan and placed into the oven set to a low heat. I could have done the water bath, but it was fine, as the crust didn't crack during the bake time. All good in the 'hood so far, right...?

My biggest conundrum was how to serve. I love the ooey-gooey flavor of warm, melty cheese, but the problem with serving a slice of the cheesecake too soon is the fact that the center hasn't set yet, so the slice starts to resemble Jabba the Hut. Waiting for it to cool and set up for perfect slicing means you have chilled cheese -- not a terrible thing, but I wanted warm melty cheese goodness. I Benjamin Button-ed this thing and had it meet in the middle. I let the cake cool in the fridge, but then made a spicy tomato and kalamata olive relish, served hot, poured over the slice. The first bite was like a million flavor explosions went off in my brain. Incredibly rich, velvety-creamy cheesecake, super-savory hits of pancetta, kalamata olives, and the crisp crunch of the crust. It was like staring into the sun. You went blind from the sensory overload. And that's when it kind of hit me -- holy crap, I have the rest of this slice to eat and a whole rest of a cheesecake to finish. Of course, I wouldn't finish it in a single sitting, but knowing that much richness was in my immediate future, it's no wonder my vitals are off the charts. When I die, I won't be buried, I'll be a new fuel source for future generations.

Weapons of mass destruction - Photos by Wasabi Prime

So, what was the end lesson in this UnRecipe? It wasn't a failure, just a misadventure in too much of your favorite stuff is way too much of a good thing, especially if you love fatty cured meats and gooey cheese. I think I would make this again, but in small, bite-sized tart sizes. They would allow for fresh-from-the-oven eating, since as a bite-sized mini tart, you don't have to worry about slice integrity. And I could top with a little shard of pancetta, which would look prettier than the little bits that just got mixed and essentially lost into the batter. So, I consider this a dish something that's still a work in progress -- stay tuned, I'm sure it'll get revisited soon enough!

Mixed Plate: Spring... Is It Really You...?

It totally felt like one of those suspense/horror movies where the girl (likely a buxom, stupid one) is wandering alone, down some dark hallway/alley/staircase, hears a less than encouraging sound and then meekly says, "Bobby (or some other generic boy name)... is that you?" Murderball ensues with much screaming and buckets of red-dyed corn syrup. I would shake my fist at the movie theater saying, why are you falling for the oldest trick in the book, you dimwitted red-shirt cliche? And yet there I go, doing the food/gardening equivalent, planting stuff early with the meek, mewling call into the darkness: Spring... is that you...? Well, no one said the Prime wasn't just a big dumb boob at heart.

Early signs of spring - a suspense movie in the making! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

It starts out looking promising. You get a few days of consistent sun and the spring flowers are becoming to bloom. The frost-covered mornings seem to have tapered off. You even open your windows on a rare Sunday or two, nearly breaking your fingers from trying to pry the winter-sealed sliding panes loose. Call the ball, Wasabi -- Springtime is HERE! The container plants that overwintered are starting to perk up -- I had a crazy amount of parsley I grew last year and for the most part, they're starting to all come back. I even had some garlic bulbs sprouting some big green ramps, meaning woo hoo, I don't have to buy green onions for a while! I also started a couple of things indoors, like lettuce and basil seeds in peat pots, sitting in a Pyrex baking dish. I have to say, those glass dishes are a seed starter's friend -- they retain heat fairly well, easy to clean for later casseroles, and  just the right height to hold soaked peat pots and cover with plastic wrap to give it a little greenhouse environment to wait for the first signs of life, which we're clearly getting.

The promising conditions made me feel bold enough to get some herb starters. I'd been meaning to replace a dwindling lemon thyme plant (just got regular thyme this time, har-har), spicy oregano, and a couple of rosemary plants. I still miss the giant rosemary bushes I had from before, which sadly died after a particularly harsh winter, and hadn't gotten around to re-cultivating a new live rosemary supply. I wanted to get more herbs, as these would round out our current supply of parsley, lemon balm, sage, spearmint and chives. These are the days I crave, being able to shop your own backyard for supplies, versus going to the store to buy such basic items.

Springtime showers, flowers and herbs from True Value - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I spent a weekend exercising my Garden Muscle, aka the workout that feels like you've done about a million squats for three hours, freshening up our garden beds, removing the black garbage bags I cover them with for the cold months, turning the soil with new fertilizer and mixing the stuff from the composter that was buried underneath last fall. It's not pretty work and you wind up with dirt in the most bizarre and intimate places, but whatever. Happy soil = happy plants. I started using the black garbage bags last year as a weed barrier and something to help keep the soil both warm and moist, just cutting a strip down the center for the plants to grow out of. I'm happy to say the black garbage bags definitely help to keep the weeds down -- only had to de-weed the corners and edges the bag didn't cover this time. The winter barriers performed double duty, as once the soil was amended and heaped into rows for planting, I laid the bags back down, weighted them with stakes or rocks, and just cut new openings for this year's plants to grow from.

Never touch another man's rhubarb - wise words from the Joker - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I got a rhubarb plant for the heck of it, because I know they're hearty and grow well in this area, plus I hope to get some strawberry plants to create a strawberry-rhubarb pie garden. Also on the springtime docket is peas. Lots of them. I soaked the pea seeds overnight and then laid them out between wet paper towels on a plate and covered it with plastic wrap. A few days (OK, well maybe a few too many days) near a window, and the peas will sprout. I let mine get too far, so they got tangled and angrily shot through the paper towel, but as long as you see a little white sprout come out, you know the seed is viable and ready to hit the dirt. After much untangling, I was able to plant two sprouted seed packets of sugar snap peas and snow peas. I know, it's a lot, but I also hope to harvest the thinned pea shoots for at least a week's worth of salads.

Some old, some new, some borrowed, some... green? - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Another item of interest showing some signs of life are Mr. Wasabi's hop plants. We've got about six rhizomes growing in a row by the vegetable garden. He was able to harvest enough hop cones last year for one full batch of beer, and hoping for a bumper crop this year, as it can take a year or two before the vines really mature and start to produce sizeable amounts. This garden will see us drunk, come hell or high water!

What the hell is happening? - Photo by Wasabi Prime

On that note of inebriated relaxation, as all suspense/horror movie cliches go, you're easily lulled into a false sense of security, and in this case, the garden was developing, new growth showing strong beginnings and new plants settling in nicely. And then... the whammy of winter struck us down with some furious whoop-ass. One day of crazy icy rain, hail and big flakes of snow that followed. It wasn't enough to do much, if any damage, but still. Pretty cold, no? And all because someone had to say, "Spring... is it really you?"

Mixed Plate: July Gardenwatch

It's been over a month since I last posted about Le Jardin de Wasabi and I'm glad to say I'm able to gather more than a few handfuls of herbs. I can gather a handful of sugar peas, along with those herbs now! Woo hoo!!

Behold, my Green Pea-ness - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I've been regularly visiting the little forest of sugar snap pea plants, nabbing handfuls of green pea-ness (yes, say that out loud, in a crowded room, I dare you!), as well as snipping herbs, mostly to keep the plants from going totally out of control. I'm fairly certain the lemon balm and mint plants I have are plotting towards world domination, so I make sure to keep them on opposite sides of the yard and I harvest literal handfuls every week to keep their global anarchy at bay. But the sugar peas are kindly and amiable, as they continue to provide just enough to keep me supplied in weekly stir frys and salads. I tend to pick them when they're small, mostly because I like them tender, and it keeps them from sitting too long and becoming tempting targets for bugs. Cracking open a sugar pea and finding a big fat caterpillar in it is not a good way to get a meal going.

At the risk of personal health and provoking the ire of trained foragers, I've been gathering little red berries on this random bush that grows out of a dead stump in our yard. They're really tiny berries, super tart and it probably takes me over a week or two of steady picking to yield maybe a small jar's worth of jam. Mr. Wasabi calls them bilberries, I've heard them called currants, and when I look online I only find articles that heavily advise me to keep poison control on speed dial. But so far, we're not hallucinating or seeing spirit horses galloping in the sky, so I think we're good on our backyard foraging. With the exception of Miss Indy eating some "magic" mushrooms that grew in our marshy lawn and completely tripping-out, we've been very fortunate in nature's bounty.

Mystery Berries - delcious and non-hallucinogenic! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

But on to safer harvests -- I have to say our garden will most likely not yield any impressive veggie harvests due to our funky summer weather and regular raids by woodland creatures. I'm constantly sowing carrots because the ones that start growing just get eaten up, which has not happened in previous years, so clearly we have a new fuzzy neighbor that is most unwelcome. The chard I had growing got om-nommed by leaf miners, so I'm cutting bait and pulling the rows to put in something else. I still have seeds left and will likely replant for the fall, but in containers on the patio that are tougher for the bugs to get to. I've been a fan of onions and garlic as creatures great and small seem to steer clear of them -- I have scallions, shallots and have been planting our garlic that sprouts. I snip the greens from all those, which are great in soups, stir frys and a flavorful garnish, since the parsley I've planted is too young to snip. I've been trying to grow everything from seed, so it's slow going for some items, but I did pick up some basil plants at the farmers market -- had to transplant a couple of them into different pots, as two were nearly mutilated beyond recognition by slugs. Boo!!!

Herbal remedies from Jardin de Wasabi - note the wily mint and lemon balm! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

But as I've said before, hope springs eternal and gardening is the realm for optimism. I've got eggplant sprouts getting big and strong in the laundry room, set for an outdoor move, along with Walla Walla onion and broccoli rabe sprouts that are sprouting both indoors and out. The photos of the peat pots on this post are a little old, as the sprouts are probably over two inches high and at the risk of a serious jinx, I have to say, so far, so good. I moved several summer squash sprouts outdoors and nearly half of the sprouts got wiped out from insects, but there's seven or eight troopers that seem to be holding the line. I salute their Red Dawn surivorship and hope they get big, strong and squashy.

So wish the garden good luck and I look forward to posting regular updates as well as kitchen experiments with some of the harvested goods!

Keeping fingers crossed for the new kids on the gardening block! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Miss Wasabi, How Does Your Garden Grow?

I totally meant to write this earlier, as the Wasabi Garden has been puttering along as early as February when I was starting seeds in our laundry room and it was looking completely garden un-glamorous and probably more like an illicit weed stash. But efforts and a mild winter prevailed, and while I have no impressive harvest bounty to show off yet, I do have some radishes along with baby greens and perennial herbs that have picked up springtime steam.

The radness of radishes - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I think gardening appeals to the hopeful optimist in all of us. We take these seemingly inert little seeds, shove them into the ground and hope that not only will something green come out, it'll produce an edible delight that will amount to a meal. Or at least a pretty garnish sprinkling. Our backyard vegetable garden consists of three good-sized raised beds and a smattering of plastic containers that have now become designated lettuce/microgreen growers, as the caterpillar invasion from last year taught me well to keep that bounty out of easy reach. I lost a whole batch of spinach to gross little caterpillar eggs that were laid on every damn leaf, and yes, I'm still mad about that. Grr.

The first year I decided to dive into this whole veggie gardening thing, I went buck-wild with tomatoes, starting a ridiculous amount of seeds, babying them to successful healthy plants, and harvesting literally pounds of tomatoes a day. That was fantastic, but I realized I should diversify a little, plus it really wore the soil out as tomatoes can be a drain on nutrients. Fast forward a couple of years and mixed results with different vegetables, and I've come to find a few hearty staples that I like to stick with. In general my rules for veggie choices, aside from the obvious "will it grow successfully here?" question, are does it have a short growing cycle, is it something that can be frozen or prepared for storage in case of overage and of course the obvious -- will we eat the thing? If I an answer yes to all these questions, than it becomes a candidate for the highly exclusive Wasabi Garden Club.

For springtime goods, I've become a big fan of radishes and sugar peas. Radishes are just easy root veggies that grow fast and you can eat all the parts, using the sprouts when thinning down rows, to the whole root and green tops when they're ready to pluck from the ground. As for peas, I got a good tip from garden blogger and pal, South Sound Garden, for soaking the seeds overnight, then placing between wet paper towels for early sprouting and a test for viability. This worked out well, I could throw out the duds, and put the pea sprouts directly in the garden beds to let nature take its course. The photos in this post are actually a little old; the sprouts are now full-on plants and probably over two feet, in dire need of me to attach them to a webbing or some posts. When I start to see the first signs of their white blooms, I know I'll be in sugar pea heaven soon!

From sprouts to starts to om-nom-nomming - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I have some herbs that have perked up after winter's chill, like chives, thyme, mint, sage, lemon balm, and I started from seed more flat-leaf parsley and cilantro. It's a slower road going from seed, but I'm seeing larger leaves from the cilantro and parsley and eagerly await my chance to clip from them. I've also got some red leaf lettuce going in some pots, but hesitate clipping them quite yet, in fear of over-snipping. I also have some shallots and some plain old garlic cloves shoved in the ground to harvest their green tops or ramps, if you're a foodie-nerd who's into the latest trends. Putting garlic cloves that are starting to sprout straight into the ground is a great way to let nothing go to waste, as it will definitly sprout a hearty green top that you can snip and use like scallions, but with a light garlic flavor.

I actually did start several rows of scallions, but they're a bit slow to get going and look more like rows of little chives right now. I also put in carrots, beets, swiss chard, green beans, and am giving leeks another try, but for the most part, those are not in a photogenic state right now. I'm hopeful for their Mr. DeMille-worthy closeup at some point this year. Yet again, the hopeful optmist of the gardener pops up. Maybe that's a good life lesson in the labor of gardening -- aside from enjoying something you grew from seed, it's a great lesson in having faith in things that grow, whatever it may be. If you have a moment, send a wish of good luck to the little sprouts everywhere, in the hopes they grow big, strong and om-nommable soon.

Sprouts that hope to be carrots and beets someday soon! - Photos by Wasabi Prime