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The Artful Gardener

~ Gardening, cooking and a bit about myself

The Artful Gardener

Monthly Archives: June 2010

On a roll

26 Saturday Jun 2010

Posted by lvaletutto in baking, family, Food

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

baking, bread, home-school, kid, mom, recipe, school

For the duration of my middle school years my four younger siblings and I were home-schooled. My parents decided to home-school us for several reasons (but mainly because they felt the public schools weren’t challenging us enough) and they wanted to take a more hands-on approach to our schooling. My mom was the one who managed our lessons at home while my dad was at work and I was able to assist in the educating of my younger siblings as well. I was happy to be schooled at home, it allowed me to study subjects that weren’t being offered in my public school like:  poetry, journalism, creative writing and of course gardening. We would wake up at 8am to the sight and smell of fresh bread baking in the oven and would always start our day with warm rolls that my mom had made for us. Some days we helped make the bread with her. We worked, in the capacity of stirring in the yeast and watching it foam up, kneading the dough as best we could with our little hands and (the best part) punching it down after it rose to enormous proportions and was over-spilling the bread bowl. We then would help her roll the dough out into cylinders and tie the little ropes into knots. The dough knots would rise again and then be brushed with egg and sent straight to the oven for 20 minutes. After about 10 minutes you knew a good thing was happening because the whole house would smell like warm bread and all you wanted to do was station yourself in the kitchen with butter and a knife in hand, waiting for one of those steaming hot rolls to hit your plate. After breakfast, work would resume and I would return to my old fashioned wooden school desk in my room to diagram sentences, solve math equations or write poems. The real lessons from my childhood, however, always took place in the kitchen and because of my mom I now have the ability to make a pie crust on a whim, bake a tasty quiche, throw together some homemade pasta or best of all prepare a fabulous batch of bread. Thanks mom.

Fresh rolls

My mom’s bread recipe



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Spätzle, not your typical pasta salad

23 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by lvaletutto in cooking, Food, Gardening

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

community garden, garden, Germany, recipe, rhubarb, spätzle, vegetables

Our community garden plot

In the past weeks we have harvested radish, lettuce, spinach, scallions and rhubarb from our share of the community garden. (Well, the rhubarb was a nearby bonus not actually growing in our plot. You can read about that in As far as the eye can see.)

Kohlrabi and lettuce

We’ve made salads from our local harvest and I’ve made plenty of pies. My favorite creation this summer so far though has been a salad I threw together with some produce we got from our local grocer and some spätzle. Spätzle, for those of you not living in Germany or familiar with German/American cuisine, is an egg pasta that is more like homemade pasta than a typical egg noodle. It is made with durum wheat semolina and eggs, that’s it. It’s a coarse little pasta shaped like little twigs and very tasty. I had some smoked Salmon on hand and some cherry tomatoes and I wanted something green to throw in for good measure. It seems impossible to get fresh kale or collards or broccoli rabe here this time of year so I settled for what I had left over from another meal, green beans. The combination worked out amazingly well and I have made it several more times since then, each time being just as good as the first recreational cooking experiment. You can use whatever vegetables you have in season near you or even frozen peas or greens would work well with this too, I think. If you can’t find spätzle then a homemade egg pasta would work wonderfully for this dish.

Spätzle "pasta" salad

Spätzle “pasta” salad

250 grams spätzle or other homemade egg pasta

200 grams smoked salmon

200 grams cherry or grape tomatoes

250 grams green beans

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

In boiling water cook the spätzle until tender, about 10-12 minutes. While the water is coming to a boil prepare the green beans by removing the ends, cleaning and cutting in half. In a small pot put a small amount of water in with the green beans and steam them until tender but not mushy. When the spätzle is done drain and reserve at least 1/2 cup of the cooking water and set aside. In a large bowl combine the cooked spätzle with the cooked green beans and cherry tomatoes. Break bite size pieces of the salmon into the bowl with the spätzle. Drizzle olive oil on top and some of the reserved cooking water. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Toss everything together. The salmon will cook slightly and turn a lighter pink if everything is put together while still warm. If you want the salmon to remain raw then add it after the noodles have cooled slightly. Can be eaten warm (right away) or cold.


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Rhubarb: Rheum rhabarbarum
has poisonous leaves which contain oxalic acid. A median lethal dose of pure oxalic acid is about 2.6 grams per kg of body weight or .173 grams per pound of body weight. However, the acid content of the leaves is only about .5% so it would take about 5 kg or 2.25 pounds of the leaves to acquire a lethal dose in a 140 lb human.
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