Rhode Island 100 mile

Double trouble!

ri100mi — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:35:05 +0000

Hello all! Sorry for the lack of posting lately- things have been pretty busy and with our lackluster homegrown crops this year there really hasn’t been too much to report. Some of you might be wondering where our tales of tackling the 100 mile challenge have been this year- we’ve decided not to partake because we are due to have twins in December! We didn’t want to compromise Ingrid’s nutritional requirements or have the added pressure of finding locally sourced goods during the challenge. As for this blog, we’ll still keep it up and running and try to post periodically but it may shift in content from time to time depending on what’s going on with the babies…things are going to get interesting!

-Josh and Ingrid

Tagged: babies, twins

Here it comes…

ri100mi — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 22:42:53 +0000

…Good luck and stay safe everyone!

-RI100MI

Feeling crabby?

ri100mi — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 16:36:06 +0000

…we picked up some of these guys at the Goddard Park Farmer’s Market on Friday from Tony’s seafood- straight from Narragansett Bay…and they were only a dollar a piece! Since they were already cooked, all we had to do is dig out the meat. There wasn’t much to be had in the bodies- we’ll use those for stock, but the legs had some sizable chunks of meat that was pretty sweet- no adornment needed.

-Josh

Tagged: crabs

Garden woes.

ri100mi — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:13:53 +0000

…our garden has been under a full-on assault from every direction- the tomatoes have blight, the chipmunks, squirrels and bunny have been chowing down, there are mites in the hops and we also found a tomato hornworm on one of our non-blighted tomatoes. Here are a couple of pictures of our blighted tomatoes:

…next year, we are going to do a major shakeup of our plantings…everything will be rotated into new areas and hopefully we can get better results.

Below is the stunted Willamette hops…

…but alas, all is not lost. We got our first eggplant today…

…and our second crop of radishes are ready!

…the cayenne peppers are coming along.

…and the bees are enjoying the variety in our herb garden!

-Josh

Tagged: garden, pests

Hot and sunny= things to eat!

ri100mi — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:23:48 +0000

…it seems as though we’ve shaken that late spring/early summer weather pattern which brought us grey skies and lots of rain. In response to the recent hot and dry weather, our plants have started producing! We were able to collect enough peas and beans to compliment our last two dinners and our tomatoes are starting to blossom, the eggplant has doubled in size and our second planting of radishes has already sprouted. Now, if we keep up with the watering we should have a couple of choices in regards to our dinner plans- all right from our backyard!

-Josh

Tagged: beans, peas

First 2011 “harvest”.

ri100mi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:02:37 +0000

Things have been off to a slow start this Spring in regards to our backyard vegetables. The cloudy and cool weather has been hampering our early season growing- our peas and radishes were supposed to be ready a few weeks ago. We did manage to gather enough to supplement last nights meal, however. The radishes were nice and crisp with a little spice to them. They were a little on the small side, but were a welcome addition to our salad. The peas were terrific, sautéed in a little butter which went well with their sweetness. Now all we need is a little sun to move the rest of our veggies along!

-Josh

Tagged: peas, radish

A delicious use for our frozen strawberries

ri100mi — Tue, 31 May 2011 00:12:33 +0000

This past week Josh made a strawberry-rhubarb pie with local rhubarb bought at the Goddard State Park Farmers Market and our frozen strawberries which were also local. It was a double-crusted pie and we sprinkled a little sugar on top. You could taste the strawberry and rhubarb and it was just sweet enough - and it was soooooo good! We had a little vanilla ice cream (not local) on it – perfect way to celebrating the spring.

The gardens are set.

ri100mi — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:49:05 +0000

We finally got all of this year’s plants in the ground. With the recent inclement weather, it seems as though things are lagging behind a little. The radishes which we planted back in March are really just starting to mature and some of our earlier maturing plants are still rather small. We were able to make the Rare and Unusual Plant Sale at City Farm and found some great additions to our garden which were rounded out with some plants from the Goddard Park Farmer’s Market and seeds from Seeds of Change. For this year, we broke up our plantings into three distinct zones:

Behind the house we have the herb area…we planted bergamont, shiso, hummingbird sage, pineapple sage, variagated sage, rosemary, bbq rosemary, chervil, flat parsley, curly parsley, cutting celery, marjoram, thyme, german thyme and lavender.

Out in our raised boxes we have some bush beans, sorrel, celery, tomato, peppers, eggplant, peas, radish and sunflowers.

The side yard, which gets the most sun hosts our tomato and basil plants.

…and we can’t forget about the hops! This year, I affixed a pulley at the top of the pole to allow us to lower the bine down for harvest…it seems as though some cones are ready before others, so now we can selectively harvest the mature cones without cutting down the whole plant.

-Josh

Tagged: garden, herbs

…a Saturday in May

ri100mi — Sun, 08 May 2011 23:28:05 +0000

Last night we hosted an engagement party/dinner for Ingrid’s cousin and her fiancee. We wanted to give them the royal treatment since they’ve wined and dined in some of the world’s best restaurants…Ingrid and I culled from our previous dinners and our ever-growing cookbook library and came up with and 18 course dinner for the ten of us in attendance:

Pine Nut Brittle
Rashes, homemade butter and salt
Oyster, ginger gel, trout roe and beer foam
Gruyere cheese gourgeres
Quail egg, bacon, brunoise
Cucumber gel, green almond, four tastes
Rhubarb and beet sphere
Beet ice cream
Asparagus, egg mimosa, viniagrette
Lobster cream
Oxtail ravioli
Shrimp, couscous, raisin, pine nut
Strawberry sorbet
Lamb, mascapone polenta, spring peas
Fennel jelly
Liquid popcorn
Lemon tart and basil ice cream
Chocolate truffles

Since so much was going on, we missed taking photographs of some of the courses. Below is a slideshow of some of the prep and the finished product that we happened to capture:

Click to view slideshow.
Tagged: dinner

PSD gone haywire!

ri100mi — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:42:40 +0000

…as some of you know from previous posts, we buy a 50-pound bag of potatoes at the last Farmer’s Market in the Fall with the hopes of storing them all winter in the PSD without much spoilage. Well, this year we were a little lax about using the potatoes over the winter…we popped open the container this weekend to find the above mess. I spent a fair amount of time breaking off all the eyes and getting the potatoes back into shape…they may not look pretty, but they’re still usable…looks like it’s potatoes for dinner for a while!

-Josh

Tagged: potatoes, psd