On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Churyl <churyl@gmail.com> wrote:
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Heather, you mentioned this:
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> Learning to eat vegies is a learning curve, sure. It took me years and years, but that was before they invented YouTube. Watch Maangchi or Cooking with dog, and you can see some seriously amazing meals cooked in a few minutes, mostly based on veggies.
I searched and found mostly meat and egg recipes. Would love some links to your favorite veggie heavy videos!
Hm. I guess I never thought much about vegies. I usually just stir fry them or add them to my soup at the last minute. Or make them into kimchi. I tend to eat whatever vegies I happen to have ... I like the ones from my garden the best, mostly collards, kale, and green onions. I have some more lettuce started too though.
One dish though, that everyone likes is Chinese Green Beans:
You can also make these by mixing green beans, soy sauce, seseme oil ... and baking at high heat (400 or 425) until they are a little crinkly. Then toss in some more seseme seeds. Just watch them very carefully. The trick is to get them just the right amount "done".
I treat asparagus about the same way.
Also, a lot of what goes on in Asian cooking is the sauces. Like a PF Chang's ... you can mix the sauce the way you like it. I like approx equal amounts of soy sauce and honey, plus some Srachi sauce or chili oil, and chopped green onions. Dip the green beans or asparagus in it.
For artichokes, cook them in some water that has a glug or two of vinegar added, plus some cloves of garlic and salt. For the dip, puree some vegies (something like babaganoush is good: cooked eggplant, garlic, seseme butter). Or make some dip from some tofu, or olive oil with fresh garlic squeezed in it. Or even use some commercial dressing or mayo if you want (I don't like mayonaissy things myself: I want more spice).
If the vegies are good, they can be used in about any way you like. It's hard for me to believe how much difference there actually is, when you get good vegies! We used to have an organic farmer down the street, which is what got me addicted to "homegrown". It's taken me a couple of years to get the hang of "easy growing" (i.e. gardening without slugs, weeds, or a rototiller) but it's worth it.
Here is my bag planting from last year:
Here are my current planters:
My goal this year is to use hanging pots mostly, hanging off the porch overhang, next to the kitchen. So for making dinner, just walk out the door, pick some greens and snap peas, and cook! You can grow a lot of stuff if you go vertical, like the "grow walls", with very little space. My hanging planters though, are a lot cheaper and easier than grow walls, and made mostly made from recycles, and I don't have an issue with plants drying out or bolting, since each plant has it's own reservoir.
During the winter, I grow indoors, but kale and collards don't really care if they are in the snow and I grow a fair bit on our house deck too. There are some good links to growing here:
"Growing your greens" is another good YouTube video set, mostly about growing vegies.
Heather Twist
http://eatingoffthefoodgrid.blogspot.com/
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