Dill Pickle Soup

This post is for my cousin Kathleen, but I thought everyone else might enjoy it, also. 

Dill Pickle Soup, a Polish dish, is a wonderful warming food that is easy to make, vegetarian, cheap and also good for you.

The first time I tried Dill Pickle Soup was on my first date with Mr. Green. We went to a Polish restaurant called Old Krakow in West Portal. He said that dill pickle soup was one of the best things on the menu and we ordered a cup to share. Needless to say, I was skeptical, but I tried it and it was delicious! Unfortunately, the restaurant is no longer there, and, although they said they were going to open up somewhere else in the city, they seem to have disappeared. Their dill pickle soup was wonderful! I'm not sure mine is as good, but I thank them for the inspiration.

You'll find lots of different versions of this soup on the net if you google it.

Here's my version:

Dill Pickle Soup
1 tbls olive oil
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
4 Idaho potatoes - not huge, but a little bigger than a standard baker
chicken or vegetable broth
dill pickles - preferably ones you put up yourself or some that you bought at a local farmers' market
1 large carrot
1 good-sized bunch of fresh dill
1/2 cup of pickle juice
whole milk
1 pat of butter (optional)

Dice onion, chop garlic fine and saute in the olive oil, in the bottom of a large sauce pan, until translucent.
If at all possible ALL of these veggies should be organic. So should the broth & the milk. OK, so all the ingredients should be organic - for your health & for the planet.

Peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes, add to the onions and garlic and pour enough stock into the pot to just cover the potatoes. Bring to a gentle boil.

Chop up a bunch of pickles into small pieces - about the size of a pea (only, of course, they won't to be round). Make a pile that is about 3/4 as big as the pile of potatoes were. 

I get that this is a lot of pickles. . . 

Chop up the entire bunch of dill - take out the big stems and just chop the finer stuff. Add it to the pot.
And, yes, that's a lot of dill. Trust me, you'll like it.

Grate the carrot
This is as much for color contrast as it is for flavor, but it's also good for you so go ahead. 

When the potatoes are about half done (10 to 15 minutes, depending upon your definition of small) add the pickles and the carrot.

Then add 1/2 cup of pickle juice.
I have no idea why I measure this, but I do.

Bring back to a gentle boil.

When the potatoes are almost done, add some milk. About a cup. Enough to turn the broth opaque. Heat to a gentle boil one last time.
Taste it at this point. Don't burn your tongue (I am notorious for burning my tongue tasting cooking food). If you want to richen it up a bit, add the butter. Just a pat. Not a bunch. You might also add a couple grinds of fresh pepper. I don't add extra salt, but I was raised without salt, so if you think it's not salty enough, add a little. 


That's it. Turn the burner off, let it set for a few minutes, ladle it into bowls and eat it.

I like it kind of thin, so I don't thicken it. The starch in the potatoes thickens it enough. Also, if a lot of the broth has gone away during cooking, I add more when I add the milk. You can also add more pickle juice if you like the flavor. And, if you want to get fancy, save a few sprigs of dill to garnish the top!


Enjoy!

By the way, ALL of these ingredients are available right now at your local Farmers' Market. Shopping at the Farmers' Market is fun and supports your community. Buy Local!


Please note: I got the soup picture from Sister Mary Martha's blog, entitled Ask Sister Mary Martha and sub-titled "Life is Tough, but Nuns are Tougher. If you need advise ask Sister Mary Martha". A great blog! I love it! She hasn't posted since 2008, but it's still worth a look. The picture is under a post about Santa Claus. You should check out the blog if you are, at this point, just entertaining yourself. . . 

Grow Your Own!

We did it! We planted a winter garden. The seeds have been in the ground for two weeks tomorrow and there are a lot of seedlings pushing up through the soil.

Back in September Mr. Green and I had a conversation with our farmer friend Elijah from Tara Firma Farms about how we could make our garden more productive. He offered to take a look at our space. One beautiful Sunday in early October Elijah came to the city and saw our garden. He loved it! He said it was enough space to feed 20 people!

Yikes! Who knew?

He suggested that we orient the whole thing differently to waste less space and said we needed soil amendments. Our poor plants were being choked by the sand. He said, "Find a friend who has cow manure and get a lot of it." Now, I have friends who have, or can get, cow manure. Lots of them. They all live in Idaho. Shipping really isn't an option.

Craigslist is the next best thing to someone you know who has what you need. I signed on later that evening and found a listing for "aged organic horse manure" for fifty cents a bag. . . fifty cents a bag? That fits right into my budget. I sent an email to Victoria's Fashion Stables ordering up six bags and "Voila!" they would be left outside the gate, on the appropriate day, just for me.

The soil was a different story. Tons of "dirt" or "fill dirt" available. . . immediate concerns about contamination. . . I don't want to sully our clean growing space. We were very careful in the spring to keep it "organic". So. . . I invested in six bags of organic planting mixture from Sloat Garden Center. At eight-something a bag, it was a bit much, but worth it, I hope.

We now were driving around with six fragrant bags of horse manure in the back of the truck and six bags of soil stacked in our garage. I was looking forward to the next weekend!

Earlier in the season, about a week after we had pretty much given up on our summer garden - having pulled the tomatoes, and harvested every bit of produce except the carrots and artichokes, it rained. I was ignoring the garden at that point. Nothing new going on. We were waiting for advice.

And suddenly, there was oxalis! We hadn't really seen any since we sifted all the sand and took out all the bulbs in the spring. It wasn't as bad as it was last fall, but it definitely was making itself known. We weeded. The damn stuff is impossible to pull up completely. It breaks off so easily and then comes right back. If it flowers and goes to seed, it's everywhere. We weeded some more.

The morning of beginning the winter gardening, we weeded. . . then the fun began.

We drug and carried the six bags of manure and six bags of mulch through the 1st floor hallway into the back. Then we stripped the earth of everything except the two artichoke plants. We turned it all over once with a shovel. I don't know where the eight bags of mulch from last spring went, but the soil was very sandy.

We poured out two bags of poo and two bags of mulch, mixed it up with the fork and shoveled it out onto the garden. We did this three more times.

It may not seem like a lot of work reading it, but it was. The garden is mostly in the shade in the winter because it's on the north side of our three story building. This was a good thing that sunny day. After the "amendments" were evenly spread, we turned the soil over again. Twice.

Then we raked a path down the middle, leaving a large bed on each side, and lined the path with some of the bags that the manure came in.

Mr. Green mixed up some of his magic "adobe" to pack on the sides of the beds - this combo of sand, mulch, compost and water mixed to create mud, we discovered, keeps the dirt contained and doesn't allow run-off, creating our poor-man's version of raised beds.

By this time it was late in the day and cooling off quickly. I was exhausted but happy to have the garden ready to plant.

On Sunday we planted.

peas peas

artichokes carrots

turnips lettuce

radishes spinach

beets garlic

broccoli cauliflower

cabbage

And garlic planted along the edges of the garden about every two feet to keep the bugs out. But not by the peas. Peas and garlic are not friends. The way I planted (as listed above) is companion planting. all these plants like their neighbors and, because they do, we are supposed to get a higher yield.

I have never companion planted before. I'm excited to see if it works. I found a handy dandy chart on a site called Gardens Ablaze. Just a matter of plotting it out once I knew which plants are friendly with which.

Again, another exhausting day, but fun work. We planted, watered the seed, cleaned up the mess, hung the tools and called it a day well spent.

I tagged each area that I planted with the date and what is growing. Mr. Green made worm tea and sprayed the whole thing the next day.

At this point, two weeks later, we have a bounty of seedlings. The turnips and radishes are up and crankin'. Almost everything is popping through except the carrots, beets and garlic. . . I'm sure they will be up by the end of the week. Awesome!

I doubt that we'll be feeding twenty people, but there will definitely be food to share. Assuming that we don't end up sharing it with the snails and bugs. . . we have plans for them if they show up. . .

We do this because we can. I like growing my own food. Between the farmers' market and our garden, we keep it local most of the time, supplementing with a trip to the co-op or regular grocery a couple of times a month.

I like to think that more and more of us are on the path to sustainable living. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it.

I'm sure you are, too.

Do you grown your own? Would love to hear about your winter (or summer) garden!

A Winter Garden

I get that this photo doesn't seem too impressive, but it is. These tomatoes were grown in the Outer Sunset in SF. Something everyone said couldn't be done. And, they are not the specially formulated "fog" tomatoes, either - which I hear don't taste like much. Ours, being smaller than usual, are like the dry land Early Girls that are now available at the Alemany Farmer's Market, full of intense tomato flavor. Yum.

This is the handful I picked yesterday. I ate them sliced on toast - one of my favorite breakfasts! We've had probably four or five other handfuls of tomatoes. . . not much fruit considering how big the plants are. Next year we will definitely trim them back. I've never trimmed a tomato plant in my life, but, considering our small garden space, it makes sense. The plants got absolutely giant this year, shading the peppers we planted in front of them. Not good. The peppers aren't going to produce squat.

We have already started our winter garden. I had visions of the summer garden being over, reworking the whole space and then planting the winter garden. Actually, there is overlap. The tomatoes aren't done yet and the sunny months are just coming on. I don't want to tear them out. We have beautiful carrots on their way (the 2nd batch) and lettuce, too.

We did tear out the zucchini and summer squash plants. We had beautiful zucchini. We ate it as-is and in a variety of recipes including zucchini bread. Made a loaf with almonds for Mr. Green. It was interesting. I'm not a big fan of nuts in bread - or nuts in anything, really. He liked it, I think. He didn't rave about it, or complain. It got eaten. The Zucchini Orzo recipe from Animal Vegetable Miracle is definitely a fav. We made it twice!

Summer squash didn't do so well. For some reason the squash would come on and then rot starting on the end before they were big enough to bother picking. Too bad. We threw away alot hoping that the next round would be OK. Not sure what to do about that. Skip it or fix it. Maybe if we spray the plants with worm tea earlier. . .

I'm so excited about being able to grow food in the winter! I've been in San Francisco for a year now. Looking out the window at this moment, the sun is shining in the Sunset today! A rarity, but I wouldn't trade this for anything! It's great fun being in a large city and our tiny garden is part of my new Urban Experience.

In Idaho this is the time of year when we glean the garden for anything even remotely ready to eat and hope the killing frost holds off for a few more days. It is such a joy for me to be able to bike to work and walk out of my office at lunch to stand in the warm sun. And I love the thought of looking out at a green garden all winter. Of course, the rain will come, but not for a few weeks longer. . .

Speaking of rain, it is my hope that we will use very little water on the winter garden. Mr. Green has already prepped the dirt for the next round of planting. He's worked in another round of compost and worm tea where the squashes, carrots and radishes were. Over the next couple of weekends we will put in shell peas (these are delicious and hard to get at the Farmers' Market - very short season), broccolini (I like it better than the regular), turnips (Mr. Green likes these), cauliflower, and garlic. We've already planted spinach (the second round), cabbages, carrots, lettuce and artichokes.

We planted three artichoke plants. There were all exactly the same to start with. Now two are thriving and more than a foot tall. I swear the other one hasn't grown since the day I planted it. It's still green but has only one set of leaves past it's seed leaves. At first I figured it would come along. Some plants do better than others. Now I've decided it's just a dud and I'm going to replace it with another one. The only thing I can figure is I was too rough on it getting it out of it's container. I'll be very careful with the next one.

Interesting phenomenon in our garden - we noticed that the plants in the front of the rows are taller than the plants further back. This is not the norm, which would be the opposite, and we puzzled over it briefly while we weeded a few weeks back. Were we being so careful to water the front that the plants were doing better? Did we work in more mulch or compost in the front?

Actually, it is the cement wall that is the front of our garden. It gets hot when the sun shines and then keeps the soil warm over night. The plants do better that are closest to the wall. Mr. Green says he's going to cover our fence with reflective material that will turn the garden into a tropical paradise when the sun shines - or at least heat things up a lot more. I'm envisioning something along the lines of those tanning sheets we all used to lay in the sun on back in the early 80's - before we knew better.

A novel idea, don't you think? I'll keep you posted.

Local Beef -IT's What's For Dinner!

Last week there was a recall, by JBS Swift Beef Company, of 41,280 pounds of beef. Possible E. coli contamination. Then, on Sunday, they expanded the recall to 380,000 pounds! click here Say that out loud once! Three Hundred and Eighty THOUSAND pounds of beef. . . that's 1,520,000 Quarter Pounders. Yikes.

On Sunday I ate a slider for lunch. I'm sure you all know what a slider is, but just in case you don't, it's a mini-hamburger. About a quarter of a quarter-pounder. When I got home and found out about the recall, I wasn't worried. Because the slider I ate was made from local beef. It came from a happy cow who used to life at Marin Sun Farms click here. Delessio, the restaurant where I ate, serves local organic food click here and they post where the food comes from. This is not only good for the restaurant's business and their customers, it's awesome for the farmers.

If you eat beef, you should be concerned about this huge meat recall. E. coli contamination means there's poop on the meat. Who wants to eat that? Not me. And I'm sure not you. There are lots of ways to find local beef. Ask around. Google "meat CSA". You'll find a source and you'll be glad you did.

And when you are done enjoying that rare t-bone steak that came from a critter who used to mow a pasture just down the road, watch Food, Inc. click here. You'll be glad you did. . .

Urban Gardeners

This is our small urban garden. Even though we are on the third floor, we are the only non-commercial residents in the building so we get access to the small rectangle of dirt in our "backyard". We get to our spot of green by climbing down the fire escape. It's a beautiful, warm inviting spot of about 200 square feet with a palm tree on one end.

We (I) decided we should turn the patch of oxalis "out back" into a garden in early April. I guess that's when the gardening bug hits for someone from Idaho. What I have learned since then is that people start their gardens in March here in San Francisco! Who Knew?! The only thing my inner clock inspires me to do in March is build another fire in the fireplace.

The really amazing thing for me about the garden space is that it sat fallow for six years. Nothing was done with it. The only thing that grew there was oxalis season after season. A very clean plot of dirt for a city gardener! I would even venture to say "organic".

Mr. Green agreed to the garden - a bit reluctantly - and the fun began. We did some internet research to find out about getting rid of the oxalis. What we found out was it's almost impossible to get rid of. In order to really make it go away you have to dig down twelve inches and sift the dirt, throwing away all the bulbs. Then you have to weed it consistently, never letting even one plant bloom. After five years, it will be gone. Yes, I said five years.

Undeterred, we pressed on. The next weekend just happened to be sunny and beautiful. We borrowed a shovel from our neighbor and descended the fire escape. It really didn't take very long to get the almost solid green matt of plant matter off the top of the soil. I only wish I would have taken a picture before we removed it! In the shot below you can see some of it piled on the patio. Needless to say, there was a lot.

The shot above is during the sifting process. We went to Home Depot and bought a piece of screen. The ingenious Mr. Green cut the bottom off an old trash can and made a huge sifter with the help of some scissors and duct tape. Sifting consisted of one of us shoveling three shovels of dirt onto the screen and the other rocking the can back and forth until all the dirt sifted through, leaving a ridiculous amount of oxalis bulbs to remove. We worked two or three inches of forest mulch into the top six inches of soil as we went. The forest mulch bags made great containers for the bulbs and they, and all the plant matter, got hauled to the compost pile at the dump the next weekend.

It took an entire weekend and two evenings just to sift the dirt. Quite the arm workout. We came in each evening covered in a fine coat of dust with streaks of mud on our arms and faces and barely able to lift our arms. And yet, I have to say that it was much easier than it would have been with the soil I'm used to in Idaho. The Outer Sunset soil has a lot of sand - because it used to be a sand dune - and was very easy to sift - no clay, no clods. We did find some construction debris. Hunks of cement, pieces of tile, nails, etc. We managed to get the whole thing sifted, mulched, organized into rows and planted in two weekends plus three

evenings.

During the process Mr. Green fell in love with, and took total ownership of, the garden. I came home from work on the Monday after we planted and he said we were going to have to do something about the cat. He caught her digging and chased her out. Seems she thought we were creating a huge sandbox just for her. By Tuesday evening, after online research by Mr. Green, we were the proud owners of a "ScareCrow" (see top picture). This amazing, and odd looking, device was just what we needed. Hooked to the hose, and set in the front edge of the garden, it watches. If something enters its line of site and triggers its infrared eye, the rainbird attached to the top sprays back and forth really fast three times. Scared the crap out of me! To see a description click here: ScareCrow. Mr. Green bought ours at Orchard Supply Hardware OSH which I hear is a pretty cool store. I've only forgotten to turn it off twice. . . and yes, I got wet both times.

The cat only got wet once. It was in the middle of the night and she promptly came in and hopped up on the bed to let us know. She steers clear of the whole space now. She goes down with us and hangs out while we are weeding or walks the fence line and sits looking down at us, but she doesn't get near the dirt. Smart cat.

Below is the progression from sifting to organizing to planting.

We planted all organic plants and seeds, mostly from Sloats Garden Center Click Here. They are a bit pricey, but just down the street. We made the rows so it would be easy to weed, planted every other one. We were expecting A Lot of oxalis. We covered the "walking rows" with some brown paper on a roll (very similar to grocery sacks) that Mr. Green had.

Then we waited. This was not easy for Mr. Green. Being a new gardener he wanted everything to come up right now. The first week he commented that he certainly understood why people bought plants instead of planting seeds. . . for the instant reward of seeing green in the dirt!

With a couple of rounds of weeding and Mr. Green's TLC the garden has flourished over time and we now have tomatoes in bloom (Everyone says we won't get tomatoes, but I'm holding out for enough sun in July!), 3 types of beans in bloom (these little buggers were supposed to be bush beans, but they are All Over the place.), beets that are about an inch and a half in diameter (I've never planted beets before and can't wait to EAT them), scallions almost ready to eat (also a new plant for me) and four different kinds of peppers in bloom (these guys seem small to me, but, hey they are blooming), cucumbers (also a bit small) and a pathetic stand of carrots. I've never had great success with carrots. My dad could grow them like crazy and used to give me a couple big bags each fall (out of sympathy, I think). OH, and Squash! Looks like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors!

So far we have picked three batches of spinach, which grows really really well here. Delicious! We've had salad & also steamed a bunch. I'll pick the last batch off these plants on the weekend and then start over with fresh seed. Mr. Green has also enjoyed a pile of radishes & already replanted them. I'm not a huge radish fan. He loves them. The second batch of the season is coming along well.

The best part of the garden is coming home from work, pouring a glass of wine, sitting on the 2nd story balcony in the late afternoon sun and chatting while we watch it grow. I realize, just now, that this is what my parents used to do when my dad would get home from work in the summer. Only they were looking out at 80 acres of farmland. I used to join them. We are creatures of habit, aren't we? Makes me smile.

I'm so looking forward to the larger produce!

I love touching the dirt. If you have a spot of land, plant a garden. It's a great way to get your earth fix.

Oh, and the Oxalis? Literally haven't seen more than one or two plants while weeding. Guess that whole sifting thing was worth all the effort!

There are two great movies out there right now to see. . . funny how things surface in pairs.

One is free & you can watch it on the net. It's called HOME. Beautiful beautiful beautiful footage from all around the world with insightful information about the global condition. A hopeful ending. Make organic popcorn the old fashioned way (in a pot - on the stove), pour a glass of wine and enjoy.

The other is one you'll have to pay $9 to see. It's called Food, Inc. A great combination off all the stuff you probably were already aware of put forth in a format that is both shocking and not surprising. Don't buy the popcorn. It's a Monsanto product. Bring water in your own bottle. :)

I'm a farm community girl. I've seen animals in all their pieces and parts. The most shocking thing for me, in this movie, was the unidentifiable blobs that scooted along conveyer belts and went through a lot of bleaching processes surrounded by steam and large pipes - in my head I kept saying, "Wait a minute! What is that? Rewind! I don't get it. Is that chicken? beef? some sort of pork leftover? I don't know what that is!" as it turns out, what was ground and ended up as a frozen square that fit perfectly into a box was. . . yes, folks - the % of fat additive in your lean ground beef. . . just the fat additive. All alone. Frozen in a box. Yummy? See the movie. Find a local source. They are there. Just look.

Also, new to my world is a Farm Fresh to You box every other week. What fun! An organic surprise at my door every other Tuesday. We get a small mixed box. If you'd like to see what they have to offer, go to www.farmfreshtoyou.com and click on one of the food choices on the right hand side of the page. Tomorrow our small box will contain a mix of local, organic, seasonal fruits and veggies that we will use as the basis of most of our meals and snacks for a few days. It doesn't last long.

We also have a small organic garden out back. I'll post pictures soon. We planted a whole month late, but things are coming along. So far we've enjoyed radishes (Frank's favorite) and spinach (2 pickings). It's fun and easy! Grow your own!

All the best,

Tamara