On the Menu #1

That's right, Thai Eggplant! I know, these guys look like pretty poor specimens, and honestly, I'm far from happy with their condition (just look at those icky black calyxes!). However, I live in TN, and it's not even May yet, so unless I am growing them, or someone else is locally, these guys are going to always be a few weeks off the plant before I can get my hands on them. Really, I am lucky to get them at all. I put their age at minimum 2 weeks. I also got some Thai Basil at the international mega mart, Siam Queen I think. Again, the age of the cutting was pretty old, but I wanted the taste. Not to worry it was very cheap, 5 times the amount for fresh sweet basil in a local super market, and for half the price of that! I will have my own fresh plants within a couple of weeks...

I cleaned all these, separated the good from the bad and boiled up some rice as well. Now, the menu for tonight.

Thai Fried Rice For 2:
2 cups boiled long grain brown rice, H2O ratio: 1 to 1
1/4 cup small frozen shrimps
1/2 cup cubes extra firm tofu
Thai Eggplants
2 eggs
Carrot slivers or dice
Snow Peas
Mushrooms
Green Onion cut on the diagonal
Chilies
1 clove Garlic fine dice
1 tsp Ginger ground
1 Lime, halved
Fish Sauce or Soy Sauce
A sprig of basil leaves
1 tbsp Peanut Oil divided

Fried rice is a dish I have not yet mastered, but I am close. In the past I have used still warm, very hydrated rice. This can really get a nice flavor, but the consistency is very mushy. Well this time I boiled my rice with a 1 to 1 water to rice ratio instead of the traditional 2 to 1. This gives me a much more hearty grain to work with.

The ingredients are rather extensive, but for the most part easy to obtain or replace. Always prep every ingredient before your stir fry. Otherwise your Wok will turn into a black smoking crater while you try to cut up your tofu, or open your snow peas. That would be unpleasant.

The order is easy. First make sure your wok is clean and there are no black chunks from the last time you made Chinese. I admit, I will have to do this. Then, and I am cooking on electric *sigh*, set it on the number 1 burner and crank the heat up to high, red hot high.

Add oil, then ginger and garlic, and continue to add in veggies, shrimp and tofu stirring constantly. Make a well in the middle of the wok and add the egg. Let that get brown and crispy on the bottom and then add in the rest of your ingredients.

Cook until your rice is warmed up and serve with a fresh green onion on top and half of lime on the side. That's it. Churn each ingredient in quickly and cook it fast. Enjoy with a Singha beer or some tea.

If it doesn't taste exactly like the take out, no worries, it's your version.

All of those ingredients are optional, except maybe the oil and the rice I suppose. Personally, I like the hot chilies and the shrimp. My Wife does not, so our batches will be a little different. It's harder to do two different batches than it is to do one big one, but for me, the more times I practice, the better I get. This trick is to try it, and remember what you did when it turns out the way you want it.

I hope this helps. Let me know!

Plants plants plants!

Well, Sunday was yard/patio/garden day around the Casa. The wife and I set out some more plant life to further increase the visual appeal of our hodge podge of a rental and to utilize the energy and nutrients from sun and soil.

In the front of the house she planted some small white flowers, and managed the ones she put in earlier in the week. She also made up a window box in the window over the sink in the kitchen. Finally she put a couple of nice potted plants on the deck and now everything looks much better. Please forgive me for just saying plants and flowers.. I don't know much about them. My limited knowledge lies in food plants.

***Breaking News***
Despite my rant on the quality of the cheap soil, I am happy to announce the lettuce has sprouted! Less than a week, that's not bad!

The 50 or so tomato seedlings were set out, with a white sheet canopy to block out the 80+ degree sun we are having but allow them to adjust to the temperature and light before I throw them in the ground next weekend. When I get home today I hope that I do not find four dozen crispy brown plants where I thought my tomatoes would be. I watered them this morning, they should be fine... See Photo for plants before transfer outside. Some of the leaves were sunburned last weekend when I began the hardening process.


Next comes Basil. Recap: I love Thai food, and Thai food uses lots of Basil. Also, I am growing lots of tomatoes, in case you haven't noticed. Well, Basil and tomatoes go hand in hand, at least I like them together. So, I figured I had better get to growing. I planted 4 kinds, Holy Thai, Lime, Siam Queen and a Sweet variety. Some are up already that I put in last week. Soon, I should have too much to keep up with! Won't that be nice?

I also put in some Asian style bunching onions called menegi. They are interchangeable with chives, which so far I have had no luck getting to germinate. I'm crossing my fingers with these.

Next, I put in some cucumbers for summer pickling and fresh use in salads. Only one hill though, since we have such limited space and they tend to sprawl a bit.

Last but hopefully not least, I planted some Thai Eggplants. After doing a project for my Vegetable Gardening class on them, I found out that there were lots of varieties other than the 'Italian' kind. So I ordered some seeds, and planted them. I think all fears of cold weather are past, so now I just have to wait. I went down to the international mega market down the street and purchased some of the fruit. It looked pretty pitiful, but I wanted to try it before I put too terribly much effort in growing some for my own. These specimens looked like they were grown over seas and were likely a couple weeks off the plant. Nonetheless I washed them, and even cut one up, gave it a quick stir fry with some fish sauce, and I must admit my surprise it was delicious!! I can just imagine what they will be like picked fresh from the garden after work when I want some stir fry. I am going to cook these tonight in fact, more on that later.

Potting soil

So, I thought I would get a long narrow flower box and put out some more lettuce. I got the box, some seeds, and some generic dollar a bag potting soil from the mega place. This stuff is crap, and not the kind gardeners like. It was muddy clay and river rocks. Probably some reject from a suburbia yard dug out when putting in the swimming pool.

Next time, I'll spend the 4 extra dollars and get the good stuff. Lesson learned.


Hopefully my lettuce will grow.

Nine fine vines... plus 2

I mentioned 9 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes I am growing. Well, how about a run down?

First my source. I order these online from a seed provider named Gary Ibsen. His site is here: Tomatofest He has an amazing variety of tomatoes and is a real stand up distributor. I sent him an email commenting on me, in my novice attempts, failing to germinate a couple of varieties. I was just letting him know for his records, but he sent me a bunch of free seeds anyway. Five stars.

Now the varieties:

Number 1: Black Krim. I had no idea that tomatoes came in anything other than red and green, and I thought the green ones just weren't ripe. Imagine my surprise when I found that there were Black-purple ones! Well I ordered some of these. They are a beefsteak kind, that is suitable for patio growing. Until I made more raised beds, I thought I would be limited to buckets on the deck. Not so! I will put a couple of these in the main tomato bed.

Number 2: Black Prince. These are smaller black-purple tomatoes that I wanted, again for containers. I admit, the picture sold me. If my tomatoes look and taste half as nice as that picture, they will be well worth the trouble. Despite a slow start for these seedlings, so far my two biggest plants are this cultivar. Exciting.

Number 3: Amana Orange. I believe these are pretty well known to tomato growers around the country. According to G.I.'s site, they are late season and make some monsters. Plus they say that orange vegetables, or in this case fruits, increase vigor and slow the aging process. Always a good time to start that!

Number 4: Russian Big Romas. These are large Romas, and are billed as being disease resistant. They should make fine pasta sauce, but their main application will be sun-drying. This way, I can make and eat as many as I want, with no limit, or without any one's permission! Yes, say it, I am greedy for them.

Number 5: Sweet Orange Cherry. These appeal to many levels. Orange, see above, cherry, which means lots and lots, and I can grow them in containers. I plan on giving a couple of these plants away as well. They are my second best growing seedling thus far.

Number 6: Blondkopfchen. These are small golden cherries that are rumored to have a terrific flavor. Stir fry, salad, salsa, etc etc.. I am really looking forward to these and am growing two plants in one large pot. Probably a bad idea, but as rich as that soil it, they should both do fine.

Number 7: Green Sausage. These are the strangest ones I am growing I guess. They are long green-yellow and sausage shaped... Regardless, they looked like good ones to make sauce with and they grow bushy instead of viney, think space people.

Number 8: Aunt Ruby German Green. These are German Greens, with traces of pink flesh. To me that screams flavor and acidity. Also, and I wish I had thought of this when I initially ordered these seeds, this cultivar grew nicely in TN, and we all know where I am. So, hopefully it should do well here.

Number 9: Flamme. A bonus G.I. sent me with my order. I started them late, but these meaty looking cherries might just pay off late in the summer.

The 'plus two' are my early plants I put out. German Queen and Golden Jubilee. I planted these as insurance. Since I've never done any of this before, I figured a couple store bought plants would serve where my seedlings could not. We'll see. I'll put out pictures of the operation soon.

All Thai-ed up!

In case you haven't deducted it from my name, I am a major fan of Thai food. I have not been exposed to as much as I would like, but I am slowly getting a feel for the cuisine. Living in the South, perhaps it is fitting. From June to September it's hot and humid here, quite miserably for a lad like myself. Although the latitude compared to Thailand is quite further North, and the zone, temperate instead of tropic, I feel like the South is in ways as to the U.S. as Thailand is to the East. It's hot here, and many southern meals include spicy food, that sounds quasi-Thai, yeah? Maybe it sounds like that because I want it to, and I am alright with that!

For the last week I have been madly craving some Basil-X stir fry. (The X being interchangeable, shrimp, chicken, etc.) I imagine that the past week of spot searching the internet for Thai ingredients for my garden is what put the taste in my mouth, so be it. Well lucky for me my wife likes stir fry, and was of like mind in that neither of us wanted to cook anything. Another boon to my bellyaching is that we live a mere two blocks away, give or take, to the Siam Cafe, a small Thai joint known for excellent food. We've been there before and loved it. I had gotten their Pad Thai previously and was happy as a clam with the selection. So we went, ate our fill, took the rest home. It was a good night.

Then I got to thinking. Well before I go any further, let me preface this by saying that I would recommend the Siam Cafe to anyone who likes Thai food and lives in Nashville. Seriously it is nice, the service is wonderful, the food is great, atmosphere, price, all winners. Also, I got what I wanted, Basil-X. When I looked back on the ingredients used, while flavorful, and to my virgin-Thai mind, authentic in taste, the dish seemed pretty ordinary. There was nothing there I couldn't get at the local, non-super market. Accept the Basil, which is accessible in any super market.

Ingredients List:
Steamed White Rice
Onion
Green Bell Pepper
Button(White) Mushrooms
Chicken
Red Pepper Flakes
Soy Sauce maybe a Fish Sauce
Oil, likely peanut or veg.

I know, not every dish is some exotic masterpeice. I don't expect that at all, but maybe we could pull a little closer to the mark than that. How about oyster or straw mushrooms? Or some lemon grass, or something a little bit more unique/authentic. Don't get me wrong, again, I must stress that I am a loyal customer that will go back time and time again to our little Thai treat in south Nashville, I just won't order that again. Now, the Pad Thai, it will be hard not to get that one.

I suppose I should prove to myself that this dish can be made at home, with funky ingredients, for more people, at a lower cost per plate. A few miles down the road is a large international market. If I cannot find them at the mega mart I will gather them there.

Our land lords moved up from New Orleans and spoke of backyard gardens of Southeast Asian families that sold produce. I don't know any in these parts but that would be killer. Please let me know if you find one!

Well, I need to order some Holy Basil seeds and some Thai eggplant.

Oh, if you like to make your own Thai food, but need some help: Thai Table

To begin,

While I hope that readers enjoy my successes and learn from my failures (I've had a few already) my main purpose of this blog, other than sharing, is archiving the activities of my garden for future reference. I hope that fellow gardeners in the area, as well as those abroad with more experience will comment their own findings in their gardens. So, where to begin, I suppose with what's in the ground already?

Well as most of this part of the country knows, April has been mean to plant-life. The Easter frost killed off lots of beautiful spring vegetation, and most of the plants are still in recovery. My garden was no exception. The beet sprouts and my foolish attempt at early tomatoes and peppers were destroyed. Not to worry, I was able to replant the beets and they are back in action. I also replaced the peppers and tomatoes. I am keeping my fingers crossed for mild weather until June.

With everything back on the green giddy-up and go let me give a small list of what exactly is planted.

First, Sage, there were 4 or 5 sage plants in the raised bed when we moved in to our little rental. I dug up half of them and trimmed the remaining ones back to the ground. The frost turned their remarkable lime green spring growth into gray withered leaves, but these hardy lads should come back in a week or two. I will trim them back soon.

Onions, I have sweet and red ones. They defied the frost, and actually look promising. I plan on thinning them out in a few weeks to make room for them to grow fat for dry storage.

The Beets are next, red and gold ones. I saw these guys roasted on a competitive cooking television program I am a fan off, and since my only exposure to this root thus far in my life has been in the form of the canned variety, I thought I would give them a try. Like the onions, I will thin them back in a few weeks once they are well established to get some nice big ones for later in the summer.

Lettuce is another one I planted that survived the frost. I planted these in spots instead of just broadcasting them in rows. I think I will go ahead and start more in a container to make up for their lack of numbers. Again, first garden.

The Tomatoes and Peppers, two of each, are just a couple of attempts at getting some nice fresh treats a little earlier. We'll see how they make it.

Last I have potatoes. I was given these from my mother in law. They are performing nicely and have bounced back better than anything from that frigid egg the easter bunny left behind.

In the house I have 9 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. As with the gardening, this is my first attempt at starting any thing from seed. I've made nearly every mistake possible, but at least half should make a somewhat healthy entrance into their own beds we made for them. More on those treasures in the coming week.

The forecast looks good for the garden.