...but, well:

that's a tub

You see, the house that I bought has a back yard but it is mostly concrete.  I'm going to dig it up and make it all plants at some point, but my bigger concern right now is fixing things inside the house so, you know, I can live there by the end of the summer.  But my tomatoes were outgrowing their pots and I certainly don't have the money to buy or move any big planters right now and this bathtub was just sitting in the back yard already filled with dirt so...

no judgement in bathtub planting, right?

I planted it!  Rutgers, Copia, Dr. Walter and Jersey Giant tomatoes, sweet yellow stuffing peppers and one lone eggplant in the bottom left corner.  So much space!  You can see that the eggplant and some of the tomatoes were getting quite dry in their little pots - because the tub holds so much more dirt they won't dry out nearly as quickly now.

I'd like to say a word about using household items in gardens.  You may think that with my love of puns I'd think the ubiquitous flower "bed" planted in an old bed frame would be just hilarious.  Bed!  Bed!!  That's some highbrow humor right there, and exactly the type that I normally laugh at so hard I snort.  Somehow, though, in my mind the wonderful pun is overshadowed by the fact that there's A BED IN YOUR GARDEN.  Sorry, that's just too tacky.  And that's how I feel about this, too.

THERE'S A BATHTUB IN MY GARDEN.

DID THE PLUMBER GET CONFUSED?

WHERE'S THE TOILET? [Actually my neighbors have planted things in a toilet bowl right across the fence so that joke doesn't work.  But pretend you didn't know that.]

Okay, okay.  But the aesthete (ha) in me is a little embarrassed to admit that when I first walked out the back door and saw the hideous tub my immediate thought was "What a great planter!" followed closely by "Sarah, don't you turn into one of those people who plants things in old shoes and tires and - shudder - beds."

But I knew that my tomatoes, peppers and eggplant needed more space.  I knew that the tub would have to stay for the time being since it's very heavy and I'd need lots of help to move it.  I knew my money and time were best spent on things inside the house like, uh, real plumbing and a working kitchen.  And before I knew it I had planted the entire tub.

So now my little vegetable garden looks like this:

eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, tree of heaven and a rose

And I'm telling myself that it's okay that I planted the tub because I didn't put it there.  But then again I didn't remove it.  What's that saying about making a choice by not making a choice?  Because for now, at least, I've made the choice to be a person with a bathtub in her garden.

If you've been to any of our events in the past year or so you've probably been captured by the astute lens of the Co-op's unofficial, official photographer, Albert Yee. Albert's work shows up all over the internet and in various publications in the city including the latest issue of Grid which features his black and white power portraits of the mayor's "Green Team." In fact, if you came to this blog through the home page of our website, you were probably greeted by one of my favorite of Albert's photos depicting some of our members having a characteristically good time at an event we had at The Wishing Well (a Shop South Philly business). Well in this article of Philadelphia Weekly (h/t Communications Committee member and member-owner Carolyn Huckabay for pointing this article out), we learn that Albert has decided to take his talents full-time to the world of professional photography. We're just glad to say "we knew him when" and hopefully we can get his autograph on a few of these Co-op pics before he gets all Annie Leibovitz-big on us.

The South Philly Food Co-op's Shop South Philly program continues to grow with the addition of South Philadelphia Community Acupuncture. South Philadelphia Community Acupuncture offers affordable acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine. They are located at 1532 E. Passyunk Ave. So stop by for your acupuncture and then take in the peace and quiet of the Singing Fountain! For South Philly Food Co-op members, South Philadelphia Community Acupuncture is offering $5 off every 6th treatment! Please show your member-owner card and thank them for participating in the program. The support of local businesses has been a crucial part in helping the Co-op come as far as it has. We encourage you to become a fan on Facebook of all of our Shop South Philly participating businesses and, more importantly, SHOP at them! Click here to become a fan of South Philadelphia Community Acupuncture on Facebook and click here to follow them on Twitter.

It's zesty. It's perky. It's dill and it's creamy. I got dill in my farmshare haul the other week and it really wanted to be salad dressing.

Start with a good pile of dill. This was like two tablespoons.

Keep it green and bright and fresh with some parsley. This is like one tablespoon.

Make it creamy. A quarter cup of mayo (I used vegenaise) and a quarter cup of buttermilk. I keep my buttermilk frozen in cubes.

Make it tangy with a splash of red wine vinegar. Maybe a teaspoon. Add salt (just a pinch) and black pepper (two pinches). Add a small garlic clove, if you're feeling it. Whirr until it's blended together, or shake vigorously.

Put it in a jar in the fridge. This was so flavorful that it worked very well on simple salads. This one here is just tomatoes and lettuce.

This recipe is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.

 

Creamy Dill Salad Dressing

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped


• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped


• 1/4 cup mayonnaise or vegenaise


• 1/4 cup buttermilk


• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar


• 1 small clove garlic


• pinch of salt


• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Put it all together in a jar and shake. The fresh herbs really make a difference here.

Details

• Prep time: 5 mins


• Total time: 5 mins


• Yield: 6 servings

After a short hiatus I am back with some exciting news:  I now own a house with a big sunny back yard so my garden will be expanding!  Of course I'm excited about the house but I'm also excited about the gardens (yes, plural, front and back) and a potential greenhouse (!!)  But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  I may be living in a sublet while I work on my house but my plants are still growing, albeit in two different locations, soon to be three.  I know...I have a lot of plants.  Garden #1 is a very deep raised bed-type area that I've planted plants in and set plants in containers on.  It's pretty harsh, condition-wise:  it's very sunny and hot and windy and there's no shelter from hard rain.  I planted a bunch of tomatoes in the bed because I knew those conditions would dry out pots quickly.  Here they are beginning to bloom!

once again I neglected to label all my tomatoes: these are either rutgers or jersey giants[/caption]

Notice the unused tomato cage in the back?  I have so much room here that I just let the plants spread out.  I'll just have to watch once the tomatoes get ripe so that they don't rot on the ground.  Or get eaten by wildlife.

I also brought some mint with me and that is in a large pot in the sunny garden:

neglected mint about to flower

And next to that some basil that is a little dry but still okay, I think:

soon to be pesto

This garden is so big (and I share it with my neighbor so this is just half) that I got a bunch of flower seed very cheap - 12 envelopes for a dollar - and just mixed it all together and sprinkled it around.  I actually did have a little bit of a plan:  the tallest, poppies and phlox, against the wall, then marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums and various other "cutting flowers" in the middle and forget-me-nots and sweet alyssum around the border.  They're just seedlings now but hopefully I'll have something to show you soon.

At Garden #2, which is mostly shade, I have the rest of the tomatoes (in the sunniest spots), peppers, eggplant, figs, ferns, moss, begonias, crown of thorns, bay, chives, thyme, lavender and other things that I can't remember right now.  Despite the shade, these guys are all doing pretty well.  Here are some Dr. Walters ripening:

sweeties

I plan on moving these tomatoes and the peppers and eggplant at least to Garden #3 which is my new house.  It's sunny and south-facing and - wonder of wonders - there's a HOSE.  My days of filling up watering can after watering can in sinks and bathtubs are numbered, thank goodness.

Congratulations to Zack Hartman. Zack was the lucky Co-op member who won tickets to the Dave Matthews Band concert on June 26. We will continue to pass along opportunities like this to Co-op members as a way of saying thank you and to get some of our many "not-yet" members (you know who you are!) to make the switch and become member-owners. With just 130 more member-owners we will take it to the bank and begin to line up the financing we need to fit out a location, do some hiring and put food on the shelves!

So let's get on it! If you have any people whom you think would be ripe for recruitment into the ranks of member-ownership, let us know and we'll set you up with so much good information that your friend or family member will practically be begging to join.

And who knows... maybe you will be the lucky winner in whatever our next drawing is!

Kohlrabi is one of those veggies that makes people anxious. It's weird looking. It's not one of the ten vegetables* I grew up with.

It's actually pretty easy to just peel it and throw it in a salad. It's sort of like a mild radish, or a bland, crisp apple. So when we got the kohlrabi in our CSA haul, the first bulb was eaten raw, off the cutting board, while we prepped other veg. It didn't even make it into a salad.

You can use the greens, just pretend they're collards and you're all set.

But one quick answer for dealing with unusual veg is to shred and crisp. We've done this with parsnips, we can do it with kohlrabi. Enter the potato pancake.First I got those greens going in a pan just with some water. If I had a microwave, I'd "steam" them in there, but you're just looking to soften them a bit. Pay no attention to them, and go about the rest of your cooking.

I shredded three small red potatoes, from Week 4 of the CSA. Skin and all, just be sure to scrub. Then I shredded up two kohlrabi bulbs right in there with it.

I shredded a whole onion as well, which produced onion snow. I also shredded a garlic clove.

I spooned all of the shredded veg into a tea towel, wrapped it up tightly and drained it over the sink like it was homemade ricotta.

Then I remembered the greens and added them in as well. You want this dry, so you wring and squeeze, wring and squeeze, shuffle around and wring again.

So for about three cups of shredded veg (pre-squeeze) I added three beaten eggs and three tablespoons of rice flour. Rice flour makes things crispier than wheat flour. If I didn't have rice flour, I might use two tablespoons of all purpose flour and a tablespoon of corn starch. Also some salt and pepper, maybe a quarter teaspoon each. More salt later.

I worked the flour and eggs into the shredded veg with my hands--no photos, but it was as unattractive as you might imagine. Then I formed the mixture into balls, bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball. If they didn't hold their shape, I'd add more flour, but we were all set.

I heated less than a quarter inch of oil in a skillet and when it snapped when hit with a drop of water, it was ready for a drop of kohlrabi potato pancake. It's safer and more reasonable to just put the tip of a wooden spoon or chopstick in there and look to see if the oil bubbles around the edges of the wood, but hey, water's fun too. I slowly lowered one ball in, knowing the fun of having hot oil snap back onto my forearm, and smushed it down a bit with a spatula.

Once I saw that the oil was hot enough, as in there were tiny bubbles all around the edges of the pancake, I added another and smushed it as well. I also turned the oven on to warmish, so that I could stash mid-batch pancakes in there while I made more. Also, you can see some toes down there. Wear socks when you fry.

When they were golden around the edges, like the guy in the bottom right here, I flipped them. I actually flipped each pancake four times: once when they were just getting golden, once when the other side caught up, then again to crisp the entire exterior of side one and again for side two. I'm an anxious fryer. Maybe two minutes per flip, for a total of four minutes per side? The color and crispiness should be your measurement.

Once they're golden brown all over, remove to a paper towel, or if you're more on top of your laundry than I am, move them to a regular kitchen towel. We have good days and bad days.

Hit them with a sprinkle of kosher salt while they're hot and slightly damp from the oil, so the salt sticks. The into the oven (sans towel) to wait. When I made potato pancakes, or fritters, or anything else like this, I make extra to freeze. It's not every day I'm willing to fry my forearms and toes, so reheating last week's (ok, month's) fritters or pancakes is a welcome break.

They're all golden and crispy, but on the inside they're almost creamy, with exciting bits of greens. Two of these and a salad and you might not quite hate yourself over it. One is a decent appetizer. Add sour cream, if you're like that.

*Alphabetically: broccoli, carrots, celery, corn, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, peas, potatoes, spinach.

This recipe is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.

Kohlrabi Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

• 2 bulbs kohlrabi, peeled


• 3 medium red potatoes


• 1 medium onion


• 1-2 cloves garlic


• 3 eggs, beaten


• 3 tablespoons rice flour (or sub 2 tbsp AP flour and 1 tbsp cornstarch)


• 1.5 teaspoons, divided kosher salt


• .5 teaspoon black pepper


• 1/3 cup oil (more if your pan is bigger)

Instructions

Chop greens and simmer in some water, or microwave-steam, just to soften a bit, while you're doing other things.

Peel kohlrabi, and shred along with potatoes (with skin), onion and garlic.

Drain greens and add to other veg in a pile in a tea towel. Squeeze and drain, quite a bit, to get them as dry as possible.

Mix three eggs and three tablespoons of rice flour (or sub 2 tbsp AP and 1 tbsp corn starch) with half a teaspoon each salt and pepper. Reserve remaining salt for later. Mix this in with the drained shredded veg mix. Form into small balls (bigger than golf, smaller than tennis).

Heat oil in a skillet - less than a quarter inch of oil, until it spits at you when you hit it with a drop of water, or bubbles around the edges of a wooden spoon or chopstick.

Add a veg ball to the hot oil and squish with a spatula until it's about a half-inch thick. If the oil bubbles all around the edges, you're set, add another and squish.

Fry until golden brown on both sides, maybe four minutes total per side, but until done.

Drain on a towel, sprinkle with additional salt and keep warm in the oven until serving time.

Makes 8 pancakes, and they freeze very well.

Details

• Prep time: 25 mins


• Cook time: 25 mins


• Total time: 50 mins


• Yield: 8 pancakes

Hello Co-op members and volunteers! Here's the list of volunteer needs for the upcoming month. These events are a great way to get to know some other Co-op members while helping the Co-op advance its main goal of the moment: getting to 400 members! If you are currently a member-owner, volunteering at any of these events will count toward your household's annual 8 hour volunteer commitment. For those who haven't become members yet but are interested in volunteering, we're still tracking your hours and will apply them to your account when you join. We also have several non-tabling needs listed in the Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities selection below--from Garden Tour design to the first Co-op t-shirt, the Co-op has a variety of ways for you to get involved. If you are interested in any of these volunteer opportunities, please email [email protected]. Passyunk Farmer's Market When: Wednesday, June 27th, 5 - 7pm (or earlier if you have availability) Where: Passyunk Square Fountain (East Passyunk Avenue and Tasker Street) We need one volunteer to table with a committee member. You'll be passing out materials, sharing why you support the Co-op, and taking member applications. Dickinson Square Farmers' Market When: Sunday, July 1st. Two shifts: 10am - 12pm and 12 - 2pm Where: Southeast corner of Dickinson Square (on Moyamensing near Morris Street) We need 2 volunteers to help table at the Dickinson Square Farmer's Market. You will be distributing Co-op information, sharing why you support the Co-op, and taking applications. You will be paired with a committee member who will support you with any questions that arise. Two shifts are available, one from 10am - 12pm and one from 12 - 2pm. Gold Star Park - Music in the Park - Local vs Conventional Veggie Tasting When: Thursday, July 12th, 7 - 9pm Where: Gold Star Park (Wharton and 7th) We need two vounteers to help with this event. You'll be helping to hand out samples of in-season fruits and vegetables. You'll also help distribute South Philly Food Co-op membership applications and materials about the Co-op. We ask that volunteers stay to help us clean up afterwards as well. Concert at FDR Park When: Friday, August 10, (rescheduled from Friday, July 27th). Two shifts: 6:30 - 8pm and 8 - 10pm Where: FDR Park (1800 Pattison Ave near the Phillies & Eagles Stadiums) The Co-op is bringing its Guerilla Gardening workshop to FDR Park. Volunteers will be making Seed Bombs, distributing Co-op information, telling others why you think South Philly needs a co-op, and taking applications. You will be paired with a committee member who can help to answer any questions that arise. We have two shifts for this event and need one volunteer at each. ONGOING VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES 2nd Annual South Philly Garden Tour - Help Needed Saturday, September 8, 2012 (Raindate September 9, 2012) The Garden Tour is a self-guided ticketed event, and will feature 20 public and private gardens throughout South Philadelphia. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of, and will be available for purchase soon. This is the Co-op's biggest fundraiser of the year and will help us raise the funds for a site analysis of potential store locations. 1) Call for Gardens Have you been working hard on your backyard or roofdeck garden? Have an outdoor space (big or small) that you're proud of? Sign up to be part of the Garden Tour and show off the fruits of your labor! Email Anna to participate. Do you know of some great gardens that we could recruit for the tour? Email Anna for details on how to help out recruiting gardens for the tour! 2) Design work needed We need someone to help out with designing materials for the garden tour: Ticket, Poster, and Tour Guide. We'll provide you all of the text--we just need your help with making it look awesome. Manage Our T-Shirt Order We would like to put together a t-shirt order, collecting pre-orders and payments ahead of time using available online tools. We need someone to head up this project with the help of the Membership Committee. This should be a fun short-term project that will be completed by the end of the summer and can satisfy your volunteer hours for the year. You can go down in Co-op history as the one who was responsible for our very first t-shirt! Help Us Plan Our October Membership Meeting The Membership Committee is looking for help planning the October Membership meeting. While it seems a ways off, we start looking to reserve a location for the meeting in July/August. We already have the "To Do" list for the meeting, just need a few people to help out to cross off the items on the list.

Not only did we announce reaching our initial membership goal of 250 member-owners at our Spring Membership Meeting several weeks ago (on our way to 400 and beyond!), we also held our annual Board elections. While some board members have left and others have stayed on, we are very fortunate to welcome Anna Shipp as our newest elected board member.

Anna has been involved with the Co-op for over a year as an active member of the Outreach and now Membership Committees, and played a major role in the planning and coordination of the first annual South Philly Garden Tour in September 2011. She officially joins the board on July 1.

Anna has never felt more at home than she has in her 10 years in South Philadelphia, and is a proud to reside south of Snyder and west of Broad. Her Bachelors degree in Psychology led her on a path in youth work, social work, and non-profit program and volunteer coordination. Always having loved earth sciences as well, Anna is now pursuing a Masters of Environmental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She intends to use it to combine her passions for urban greening, stormwater management, and civic engagement to make Philadelphia a cleaner, greener, even more beautiful city. She is also currently a fellow with the US Forest Service researching perceptions of trees and green space in South Philadelphia. Anna is addicted to being outside, and loves gardening, hiking, and riding her bicycle(s). She is thrilled to be part of the South Philly Food Co-op and its Board of Directors, and is eager for the day we get to open our doors!

My friend MSNDG's grandmother makes this cucumber salad. I should be clear, she makes a cucumber salad, or even the cucumber salad, but not really this cucumber salad, and it's truly spectacular. It's sweet and tangy and so cool and crisp. I was thrilled to take home the leftovers from one of their family events a few months back. Also, we had a variant of this over a year ago as part of the falafel dinner.

I'm very good at asking your mother, your grandmother, whoever, for a recipe, but I'm not good at pulling out a notepad and writing it down. We covered this in the episode on brisket. But I asked her, I think twice, and she kindly told me what she does, but I'm under the impression that either she cooks like me, and doesn't measure everything, or that she intentionally gave me vague directions so I couldn't follow her recipe exactly. Either way, it worked like that, because I have no idea exactly how she makes it and this was close, and fantastic, and I'll make it again and again, but it's not MSNDG's grandmother's recipe. Close.

When I asked MSNDG for a refresher, just before making this, she gave me about as much information as I had remembered... vinegar, sugar, salt, white pepper, and cucumbers. Ratios, procedures, no.So I got to Googling. I figured if I didn't make MSNDG's grandmother's cucumber salad, I could make someone else's grandmother's version.

This week in my farmshare email there was a Simply Recipes version, which looks cool and refreshing and wonderful but doesn't have the sugar I know this one does. Smitten Kitchen uses this one from Gourmet that includes garlic and less sugar than I thought was right for recreating this particular salad. Emeril uses two kinds of vinegar, and there's quite a few others floating around out there, like this one using olive oil, this one with mayo, and this one with mint, tomatoes, and onions.

So as with most things, I winged it, with all of the varieties I'd read about plus my vague recollection of the actual recipe. As rarely happens, it worked very well.

I started with these tiny cucumbers that my CSA calls pickles.

I put on my safety glove and busted out the mandoline. One thing certain in the original recipe is that the thinner the slices are, the better the salad is. I chose to go skin-on, because that's my approach to most things, but I know the original is peeled and several internet variations are striped, half peeled.

So in the end I had about five cups of slices.

Step two is the marinade. Regular white vinegar, which in our house isn't so much food as it is all-purpose cleaner and ant repellant. It's ok, it's food.

Add to that a half cup of white sugar.

A teaspoon of kosher salt.

About a half teaspoon of white pepper.

I stirred the mixture together well until the sugar and salt dissolved and then poured it over the cucumbers. It just about covered them, and if it hadn't I would just have added more vinegar.

Next I added dill.

I was unsure about using dill, since MSNDG didn't list it among the ingredients she recalled, but I had this fresh dill and thought it'd be a waste to use cucumbers without it. When I served it this weekend I mentioned the dill and she agreed that it belonged in the salad. So, yay, dill.

That got a few good tosses and an overnight stint in the fridge.

The next day is was cool and bright and tangy and awesome. Not quite the original but something we'll make as long as cucumbers are around this summer.

Five cups of cucumbers made enough salad for four of us at dinner (alongside a green salad and some grilled pizzas) and two additional lunch portions, but we're all big cucumber salad fans so we may have overindulged.

This recipe is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

• 5 cups cucumbers, sliced thin


• 1.5 cups white vinegar


• .5 cup white sugar


• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt


• .5 teaspoon white pepper


• 2 tablespoons fresh dill, minced

Instructions

Slice cucumbers as thin as possible. I used a mandoline.

Dissolve sugar and salt in water, mix in white pepper. Pour over cucumbers.

Toss with dill and store in refrigerator at least an hour, better overnight. Serve cold.

Details

• Prep time: 15 hour


• Total time: 1 hour 15 mins


• Yield: 6 large servings