Okay, so I have to confess.

I cheated a bit.

I hired people to help clear the beds – and it was well worth it! If you find yourself needing some help – hire Jimmy Eager at Achlys Gardens – http://www.achlysgardens.com/ Check out his site – he’s a genius.

With a fresh salad from the garden, and mustard greens ready to saute, we came up with an absolutely delicious herbed and grilled chicken that we’re sure you’ll love too.

CITRUS AND HERB MARINATED GRILLED BONE-IN CHICKEN

What you need:
1 whole chicken cut up for grilling

2 large lemons and 2 large oranges zested and juiced

A good handful (or 2 if your hands are small!) of chopped mint, tarragon, basil

1/2 cup olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Mix the oil, balsamic vinegar, orange and lemon juice and herbs all together with a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper. Add your chicken to the marinade, as well as the squeezed orange and lemons.

Let the chicken marinate for about 6 hours or so (overnight is great too!). About an hour before the you’re ready to start grilling, take the chicken from the refrigerator and let it come up to near room temperature (I know what you’re thinking, but it’s fine!).

When your grill is hot, place the chicken onto the grill. Turn only once during the cooking process, and cook until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165 degrees (remember to keep the thermometer away from the bone).

Easy and delicious!

With the chicken, we decided we wanted baked potatoes. Of course, we had to give them a little spin, and came up with Twice Baked Grilled Potatoes. Taking a little spin on the traditional “Twice Baked” idea, we just put them on the grill.

Baking Cycle 1 – Clean your potatoes (1 per person, usually). Poke a few holes in each potato and soak them in salted water for about a half-hour. Drain and dry your potatoes. Coat with olive oil and coarse salt.

Place the potatoes on your grill, but not over direct heat (we lit the outside two burners, and put our potatoes down the middle). About 20 minutes into the cooking time, give the potatoes a turn. The skins will start to get a bit papery, and you will be able to feel them “give” a little when you squeeze them. After another 15-20 minutes on the grill – remove your potatoes from the heat.

Let them cool for a few minutes, and when you can pick one up without hurting yourself, cut them in half lengthwise. They’ll probably be steaming hot inside, so let them cool for another couple minutes.

Scoop out the inside of the potato, so you’re left with a little boat of potato skin. Reserve the potato flesh in a bowl. Once they’re all scooped, mash your potatoes reserved in the bowl until they’re just chunky – you don’t want to blend them smooth, necessarily. For our 8 medium sized potatoes, we added 1/2 cup of sour cream, 1/2 stick of butter, 1/2 cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and a tablespoon of chopped garlic, salt and pepper to taste. (This is where you can be creative! Add green onions, bacon, anything you like on a baked potato can go inside!)

Once the potato mixture is blended nicely, fill the emptied potato boats with the creamy potato mixture, and return them to the grill. Again, not directly over the heat. Give them about 10 minutes or so on the grill, until the cheese is melty and the inside of the potato is starting to bubble a bit.

We garnished ours with freshly blossomed garden chives and maple-cured bacon. Beautiful and delicious!

Last, but certainly not least, is simple and delicious fire-grilled corn on the cob. Start by removing the silks from your corn, and soaking the ears (husks and all!) in cool water. Let it soak for about an hour or so. Drop your ears of soaked corn onto the grill (still in husks) and let them roast for 10-15 minutes. They’ll steam in the husks and become incredibly sweet and delicious!

After grilling, remove the husks, and cut the cobs into 3-4 inch sections, and toss with melted butter and a combination of paprika, chili powder and cumin for an incredibly delicious sweet & spicy blend of flavors.

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Cinco De Mayo is this Saturday which for me brings to mind the start of Summer Foods, back yard entertaining, grilling, BBQ, margaritas and cervezas aplenty, and of course the Farmers Market (which starts Friday @ Union & MLK in the parking lot of the Grocery Outlet, here in the Central District of Seattle). Check out my simple and easy Cinco De Mayo Recipes and have your own Fiesta this Saturday. For a quick history click the link to this website: http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm

Classic Guacamole

Ingredients

4 ripe avocados, 2 limes, bunch cilantro, *whole roasted garlic (recipe will follow), 1/2 sweet onion (vidalia), 2 jalapenons or 1 lg poblano, s&p

Preparation

• to roast whole garlic bulb, cut off top so cloves are exposed, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper (can also add dried herbs to use with recipes at this point)

wrap in foil and bake in 350 preheated oven until tender – should be able to squeeze cloves out of there jacket. Add 3-4 cloves to lg mixing bowl and smash with fork.

• add onion (small dice), chopped jalapenos or pablo (seeds removed) and the 4 avocados.
• mash and mix by hand with potato masher, season with salt and pepper, juice of 1 lime and lg handful of chopped cilantro

At this point taste and adjust seasoning (lime, cilantro, s&p) if needed, can also add cumin, corriander, chili, or paprika. When in season, chopped and seeded tomatoes are always great to add or your favorite salsa or pico de gallo.

Refried Beans (The beans in the can are only a good start to fantastic refried beans!)

2 cans of vegeterian refried beans, 1/2 chopped onion, 1 chopped jalapeno, chopped garlic, cilantro, cotija cheese or sour cream

• heat saute pan, add olive oil, heat till oil is hot. add onion, chopped garlic, jalapeno and saute til tender
• add beans, stir and heat til smooth and creamy
• top with sour cream or cotija cheese and chopped cilantro

Chicken Fajitas
3-4 bonesless, skinless chicken breast cut in fajita strips, mix of sliced red, yellow, poblano peppers, sliced red onion, chopped garlic, cilantro, lime juice, chili powder, paprika, cumin, corriander, s&p, flour tortillas

• Marinate (3-4 hours) chix breast in fresh lime juice, dash red wine vinegar, olive oil (enough to coat chicken), cumin, corriander, paprika, chili powder, chopped garlic, salt and pepper
• Sear chicken on griddle or saute pan until barely pink in center then add peppers and onion mix and reseason with above spices, continue to saute till chicken is cooked thru and veggies are al dente. Adjust salt and pepper to your taste, add fresh lime juice and chopped cilantro. Serve with grilled flour tortillas, sour cream, guacamole and salsa!

Beef Fajitas
Use Skirt steak or London Broil with the chicken fajita recipe

Chili Rubbed Flank Steak Salad

Start with a 2-3 pound flank steak, rub with paprika, chili powder, crushed red pepper, cumin, dried oregano, dried thyme, salt and pepper. Let meat sit for about an hour at room temp. Preheat gas grill or charcoal, grill steak until it reaches an internal temp of 130 degrees.

Remove from grill and let rest wrapped in foil at least 10 minutes. Slice thin across the grain of the meat at a diagonal. Serve on a bed of mixed salad greens dressed with olive oil and balsamic. Squeeze fresh lemon on steak and adjust salt and pepper if needed. Add a good quality blue cheese and chopped green onions for an explosion of wonderful flavors!

Buena suerte en la cocina y Feliz’ Cinco de Mayo!

-Chef Brenda Lee

Here you can see a bit of the aphid’s destructive prowess:

These butter lettuce babies were MUCH perkier a few days ago!

Image from Wikipedia – Illustrating how overwhelmed a plant can become with aphids

Here’s the quick rundown on aphids – (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Aphids, also known as greenfly, blackfly or plant lice, are minute plant-feeding insects in the superfamily Aphidoidea in the homopterous division of the order Hemiptera. Aphids passively feed on sap of phloem vessels in plants. This sap, being kept under high pressure, once a phloem vessel is punctured, it is forced into the food canal. Aphids actively ‘drink’ (suck) from xylem vessels when thirsty. As they feed, aphids often transmit plant viruses to their food plants. These viruses can sometimes kill the plants.

Simply, they’re annoying little bugs that can lay waste to your best gardening efforts. Since we are not users of commercial pesticides that will end up in the vegetables, and ultimately in us after we eat them, we’ve decided to take another route, and call in the cavalry.

Enter, the ladybug.

A cute little ladybug hanging out on a zucchini seedling

The humble ladybug, cute and sweet seeming, is a voracious eater – capable of eating up to 50 aphids a day! And I unleashed 1,500 ladybugs in the greenhouse! That could be up to 75,000 aphids a day being eaten! Hopefully the ladybugs can eat aphids faster than the aphids can reproduce.

These ladybugs are busy setting up their new homes.

After only a couple of days, I can see marked improvement – a distinct reduction in the number of aphids visible. And today when I checked on them, the ladybugs seemed to be quite content in the greenhouse, digging in, and (HOPEFULLY!) laying eggs around the plants. Once the new ladybugs are born, they start eating aphids themselves, and mercifully leave the plants alone. Yay for carnivorous bugs! (How many times do you say that in your life?)

I hope this means they’re liking their new home.

More ladybug news as it develops.

You can buy live ladybugs through this link here:

What began as a fun project that we dreamed up has become an exciting outlet for our garden and food related ramblings, and hopefully a resource that you will continue to come back to for information and inspiration.

Please continue to send in your stories of gardening woes and victories! In the coming installments, we’ll be including some of your stories, including a weekly (or so) “Q&A” installment that wil begin in a few weeks – please send your food and/or garden related inquiries to mail@growingappetite.com and we’ll do our best to come up with a coherent answer!

Also, in the coming weeks, our own Chef Brenda Lee of JustFood Catering has some amazing springtime recipes to get you and your kitchen inspired and cooking! There’s a spring lamb recipe that will make you drool on your keyboard, and some great early-season salads that will make you wonder why anyone bothers with iceberg lettuce at all.

And as always, Boe, Valria and I will continue to share our own stories of garden discoveries and woes.

Thank you again for taking time to check us out. If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment to subscribe, and/or add us to your RSS stream. We look forward to being with you for a good long time to come.

Yours in the Kitchen and the Garden,

–Les

The Seattle Tilth is a non-profit organic gardening and urban ecology organization with demonstration gardens, children’s programs, workshops and events.

Visit the Seattle Tilth plant sale site for more information about the specific plant and varieties that will be for sale. Also, check the website for more information about special demonstrations going on during the sale.

Come out and support the Seattle Tilth, and walk away with excellent low cost locally-grown vegetable and herb starts.

Enjoy ~

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew has fantastic tips for small spaces.
It has an entire chapter on vertical growing, things I never thought of putting on
a trellis before. There is all the usual fare of pest control and watering,
propagation and controlling weeds. If you are planting in a small space or just
want to cram more into the space you have I recommend this book.

In addition, there are pages upon pages of encyclopaedic text that give more information about specific plants that could be envisioned in one small book.

If you’re a beginner and buy only one book about gardening, this would be it. Even if you’re an advanced player, this book will be an extraordinary addition to your library.

Click here to purchase:

Please make sure to comment whenever possible on any of our recommendations to share your experiences with books and products that we’ve recommended to you.
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Yours in gardening,

Les Sterling