Aloo Broccoli

Check out what my friend made by substituting my home grown broccoli for cauliflower in this recipe. Yih!

Broccoli Gettin Worked!

Hooray for broccoli! It did take me by surprise how quickly these plants bloomed this year. But over the last couple weeks I've cooked two large heads, given away 3 that got put to good use, and still have a couple of the OG heads wrapped up in the fridge. A little plastic wrap goes a long way, I must say! 

I harvested 2 epic heads this round. I grilled one with my recipe from last year, and the other went into my friend's broccoli aloo recipe. Both came out really well! I hear another went into a classic beans and greens dish, and I'll inquire about the third... Oh I almost forgot! I made capellini and boiled some of the broccoli florets with it, and then made a pesto type sauce with oregano and cilantro from the garden. Killer!!! 

They tell me to expect fresh eggs and homemade bread in return. Woot. I can't wait to bake an eggs and toast breakfast with locally produced food acquired via veggie swapping. Werd to the Herb. 

I like grabbing a tomato or some basil from the garden occasionally, but I really love when I can put together nearly a full meal with homegrown or swapped ingredients. Yay Summer! Now I just need a few chickens and maybe a cow...

JoeSoGarden 2014 Bloomfield Edition, Part 3

I used faux bamboo and potted flowers
to cover the dilapidated fence.

Everything has begun to flourish in JoeSoGarden 2014. I've already started to harvest mint, oregano, and cilantro, and I harvested my first head of broccoli before June 1st. Before June! So let me list a complete inventory here and post some pictures of the yarden in bloom. 

• 5 broccoli plants in the planter box
• 3 in the triangle plot
• plus a row of broccoli seeds
• a row of carrot seeds
• a row of cilantro seeds
• a basil plant
• 2 stevia plants
• a green pepper plant
• a zucchini plant
• tomatoes from seed
• a random seed, maybe a bean of some sort
• potted mint
• oregano

Early season broccoli success! 

The triangle plot looks great with the red and brown mulch, flowers blooming, and broccoli, zucchini, and oregano spaced throughout.  

Everything else, especially the carrots and cilantro (both started quite early and from seed) has done well so far. I need to get some little army guys or something to live in the carrot forest. 

    I put grass seed in half a dozen spots around the yard and it came in well. As did this mystery seed, probably from next door, that started growing in the box. 

JoeSoChallenges Update: The Month of May

Hooray for sunshine!

For the month of May -- perhaps the greatest month of the year, what with its flowers abloom and sunshine aplenty -- I decided to challenge myself to not watch any non-sports television. This choice made sense for several reasons. I have kickball and softball games 2 or 3 nights a week, the NHL and NBA playoffs kick into high gear, baseball season lazily rolls into Summer, my yarden needs lots of work, travel season opens, and people start cooking out on the regular. What a month! What a perfect time to ditch the TV! No crime documentaries, no stoned South Park marathons, no random Netflix browsing. I also had a chance to re-up on all my favorite podcasts, so I can fall asleep listening to 99% Invisible or Science Friday instead of Disappeared or Family Guy. What a great month! I violated my challenge once (because I had a bunch of Bob's Burgers episodes in my Hulu cue about to expire) and I felt like I had earned it after driving back and forth from the Hipster Capital of the World.

JoeSoGarden 2014 Bloomfield Edition, Part 2

Last week I finally posted some pics of the "yarden" in progress. For those of you portmanteau challenged individuals, yarden = yard + garden. Last Summer, my first in this apartment, I got to tend a yard for the first time in my life. Now, I don't necessarily mean extreme Hank-Hill-riding-mower-style lawn care -- I just have a small urban spot tucked in between an alley, a one-way side street, and crowded little Bloomfield houses with rusted chain link fences -- but I have a yard nonetheless. Take a look at the vegetables, herbs, and other plants I started in late April. I'll do a Part 3 of this post soon to show how everything has come together, with the herbs and veggies flourishing, and all my new ornamental annuals and perennials finding their homes in the Earth.

Who knew mint grows like a weed?!? I mean, I love a fresh mojito, but this herb will take over your life if you don't keep an eye on it. Last year I had it growing in the corner of the triangular plot, but this year I dug that sucker up and contained it. In Style class I learned you should always use the verb rather than the nominalization of it, so yeah, I didn't put it in a container, I contained it. Nice, job, Joe, that's why you TA'd that bitch as an undergrad.

From ground to pot to budding to flourishing in less than a month

I even planted grass seed, the bane of my athletic childhood existence, for the first time in my life. Trying to play soccer or wiffle ball without stepping on the goddamned grass seed sucks! Now I find myself standing on the edge of the lawn with my arms crossed yelling at Chance, don't pee on my grass!!!  I put the seed down in the corners of the yard and edges of the garden beds where it had gotten worn out. The areas I kept really wet have grown well, and I'll get those pics up in Part 3. In this particular spot, the mint had grown from the garden plot down under the brick and out into the grass.

In the last picture you can see last year's oregano starting to poke back out from underground. I didn't know this before, but oregano, mint, and thyme, will return annually. I'd love to know what other herbs do so as well...

In the next installment I'll show how everything has really started to grow throughout May and how I finished up the yard stylistically with a bunch of ornamental annuals, and perennials, and get this, a layer of mulch to cover it!

JoeSoGarden 2014 Bloomfield Edition, Part 1

Spring has arrived! Between April 20th and May 1st I got the yard all cleaned up and put several seedlings, seeds, bulbs, and even rocks into the ground. First take a look at the yard before I got to work. It didn't look too bad, but I had plenty to do.

I needed to clean out all the vegetation and debris from the back sidewalk/corner; dig out (and replace) all the rocks in the small rock bed along the fence to the right; till a few spots and plant grass seed; and rejuvenate both planter bed areas with fresh soil and compost. The one on the left also needed some minor reinforcement around the corners.

Redoing the rock bed took several hours over several days. Someone must have put these rocks in a few years ago, but without any plastic tarp or fabric underneath. So the weeds and soil had reclaimed most of it, and would have overtaken the remaining rocks by year's end. I had to do something!

So I got down there and dug out all those rocks, put down a few layers of plastic, and left the rocks out on the sidewalk for the rain to clean them. If the sun ever comes back out, I'll take a picture of the finished rock bed. (...Ok, a week later the sun did return!)

In my old apartment on Penn Ave we had a second floor deck that opened off the kitchen out back. In those close living quarters, though, we had no privacy from all the houses behind us, so I bought these 3' by 10' faux bamboo screens to run along the deck railing. I tried it here above the rock bed, but ended up moving it down further to cover the other neighbor's dilapidated wooden fence.




I also tried putting some of the planters in the rock bed, but I didn't like that either. I think I'll just leave the rocks to rock out on their own in their little spot along the fence. I mean, who really gives a fuck at this point, I just need to fill up a bit more text on the left side of this post to balance out the pics on the right. Alright, that'll do, pig, that'll do.

With the rock digging underway I focused on restocking those garden beds and eventually getting some grass seed down and this year's seedlings in the ground.

I went to Phipps Conservatory's used bulb sale a couple weeks ago also, and got some tulips, hyacinths, and something else I can't remember. Those will return in all their glory next year. I don't know whether to keep them in planters or put them in the ground.

I also planted broccoli (from seeds and seedlings), carrot seeds, cilantro seeds, a basil plant, and a stevia plant. Last year's oregano and mint plant have also returned. I'll get those pics up soon... 

Yesterday I picked up some more decorative shrubs and flowers. Dude at Home Depot cut me a sweet deal, too, because he couldn't get it to ring up at the advertised price of 3 for $10. And then when I thanked him, he said, "any time." Now, maybe he just says that all the time, but I wonder if he actually meant he would hook me up with a deal "any time." I'll have to go back and see. I wonder what I could hook him up with in return...

JoeSoGarden 2014 Edition Part 2 coming soon

JoeSoChallenges Update!

Let me update the world at large about a few things happening in the world of JoeSoHeady. As you may know, I started 2014 by identifying some habits I wanted to add, drop, or change, and came up with a monthly 30 Day Challenge plan to take me through 12 months of self improvement. January -- no alcohol; February -- read for pleasure every day; March -- no caffeine and stretch every morning.

Welcome back coffee to my life! Wooo!
Dunkin' Donuts original, whole bean

I powered through January without a sip of booze. February flew by, my nose e-buried in an e-book most waking minutes. Then came March. Cold, gloomy, will-spring-ever-arrive March. Oh, beware the ides! What a month to drop caffeine! What a time to rely solely on sleep, nourishment, and sunlight for energy. The first week came and went. Oh how I yearned! Just a sip, just a taste, just a hint of a warm creamy cup o' Joe. 

Now, granted, the tone of this post might lead you to believe I strode through March like a (decaffeinated) Clydesdale coming down the home stretch, but I did not. I had my first JoeSoChallenge violation last month. In fact, I had exactly two and a half violations, and when April 1st hit I drank a whole pot a coffee, but I still call it a great success. Since March ended and I've allowed myself to return to caffeine, I can proudly say that I've skipped it at least 2 days, had decaf or half-calf a couple of times, and only brewed myself 1 cup at a time rather than the whole pot. Hopefully I can keep forming good habits in this department... Wool Sea.

Kickball season returns!

Heading into April I have daily exercise planned for myself every day this month. I designed my monthly challenges with this in mind. I figured I would drop caffeine in March, and added in the daily morning stretch to help replace that morning coffee routine. (You can't change a habit without replacing the old routine with something else.) Plus, doing the stretching every morning would start to prepare me for the daily exercise challenge coming in April. Kickball also started this month, so that gives me a planned exercise at least 1 day a week. I can count (serious) yard work or gardening as exercise too, so April made sense for that reason.  So far, I've had significant exercise every day!

April 1st I did major yard work; on the 2nd we had our first kickball game (and won 12-2); on the 3rd and 4th I rode the exercise bike for at least half an hour (and watched Sal Khan's talk at CMU); Saturday morning I went for a jog, followed by throwing the ball around, with Clay and Dan, and today I did a bunch of yard work and gardening again.

Yard work and gardening counts as exercise if you do a lot. Prepping the garden!