From Theresa:  It's finally Spring and one of the great things about it is that we can start eating from the yard! Today we harvested chickweed, nettle, fiddleheads, and chives and had them for breakfast and lunch. After the long Winter, these tasty Spring treats provide our bodies with the nutrition we crave.

For information on how to grow, harvest, and eat these Spring treats, see the April/May section of our Eat Your Yard page.

INGREDIENTS FROM THE YARD

• On the left is garlic we missed harvesting last season (aka spring garlic). Each clove in the missed bulb put up a stem. You can eat the whole plant at this stage.
  
• On the right are bunching onions (a perennial- just pull what you need and let the rest keep growing. Theresa is pointing out that I forgot that last part when I harvested).
• In the bowl is chickweed and nasturtium flowers for the salad.
• In the jar... Forget the jar, I forgot to move the damn thing before I took the pictures.

There you go... the way to create two bowls full of yummy.

We also made cheesy flat bread using a 100% whole wheat bread recipe from:

Type at ya later.

Here are a few things I learned on Saturday:

1.  When you don't have a garage "scattered showers" suck. We got everything on tables and ready for the sale. Shower. This was when we figured out having extra tarps in the shed is a good thing. We also found out if the rain is light enough  a large pine tree is good to have to set stuff under and keep dry. Every 1/2 hour it was tarp on, tarp off... tarp on, tarp off. Three hours of the yard sale version of the Karate Kid. 

2.  A lady from Florida who has lived all over the U.S. stopped at our sale and wondered why everywhere else had garage sale weekends on the WEEKENDS. In our area the weekend apparently was Thursday through Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. Some of us have to work on Thursday and Friday.

3.  A lot of sales stopped on Sat. around noon. We stayed open until 5:00. Our three biggest sales were after 3:00. Overtime pays... just sayen.  
Type at ya later.

Bear here... Ever wanted a big salad and been out of salad fixings? That kinda sucks. It sucks less if you have weeds in the yard instead of grass.  Yep... everything on the cutting board (above) is "weeds" from our yard.

WE HAVE
(above, from left to right)

Bear here... We have another "treasure you can find in your yard if you are lucky or hunt for it" page.  Ramps aka. Wild Garlic. The whole plant tastes GREAT. They go fast at the farmers markets. Next year we plan to get more so we can experiment and possibly add more ways to cook them on our ramps page.   

GOTTA HAVE PICTURES

Bear here... Yep... keeping the house cool while using fewer resources. It is such a simple thing but Theresa had to teach me about it and I figure I would pass the knowledge on to our readers. Here is how  it began...

Me... "Woman, it's night time why ARE you opening the windows?"

Her... "Silly male, this is how people kept their houses cool before air conditioning. When it gets into the 60's at night they opened all the windows to let cool air in. In the morning, before it gets hot, they closed the windows and the curtains to keep the day heat out."

Me... "Ug? They closed the curtains too? This sounds complicated."

Her... " Not at all, my cute neanderthal. Curtains stop the light from shining through the glass and having a green house effect. We also have different curtains for different seasons. Thick ones in the winter to help block the wind and thinner ones to let a little wind through..."

Me... "Oog. Me wondered about that."

Her... ... "Anyway, This is the plan. At night if it is warmer outside than inside or raining we don't worry about it.  If it is cooler, we open the windows for the night then close them and the curtains before hot air can get in during the day. Almost forgot, heat rises so the windows upstairs can be left open and the hot air can escape. Simple old school air conditioning."

Me... "Good to know."

Now you know... 

 type at you later...



 

Bear here...  Time to celebrate. Spring is here. It's fertility time. Time to get the seeds in the ground and harvest the early crops. (For more thoughts on the season, see our Celebrate Late Spring page.)

My inner shelf chef celebrates by cookin' decadent breakfasts. 

GOTTA LOVE THE DECADENT WEEKEND BREAKFASTS!

Saturday we had leftover grill bread and ambrosia with eggs. Sunday we had "kinda grilled" lamb steaks, eggs, and salad. A quick "how to" section will follow the "shout out" section.

SHOUT OUT TO (aka, Big Thank You!):

• Holly, our friend and supplier of lamb and hamburger. Can't cook it if I can't get it.
• Our neighbor's chickens for doing the work and the neighbors who are willing to part with the good stuff (fresh eggs with brilliantly orange yolks from happy chickens).
• Finally, Theresa who makes great salad dressing and most of the time loves me more than my cooking. :) 

• The salad was crisp baby romaine and green onions with Theresa's homemade ranch salad dressing.
  

Type at ya later...

Nettle, not just for stinging. We've added a "Eat Your Yard" section (so dubbed by Bear), in which we'll be sharing recipes for eating the wild foods (and weeds)  we're growing (on purpose) in our yard.

Nettle is one of the first plants to emerge in the Spring in our yard. It's a natural multi-vitamin. We eat the fresh leaves in Spring and make a nettle infusion drink the rest of the year (which even Bear says he likes better than mint tea). Our bodies have learned to crave the plant's amazing nutrition. Our Nettle page includes information on growing nettle, and recipes for: Nettle Soup, Nettle Pasta, Nettle Quiche, Ramen Nettle, and how to make a Nettle Infusion.  Yummm...

Bear here..  COOK OF ANARCHY UNLEASHED. Time for another breakfast that is strange and mostly from our yard. Hash made from our perennial plants and eggs from the neighbors. The hash uses ground nuts (Apios americana) and fiddle heads (baby ostrich ferns.) 

The Over/ Under name comes from cutting down the fiddle heads and herbs (they're over the ground) while digging up the ground nuts (from under the ground). I was thinking of calling this Fiddle-Dee-Nut Hash. Let us know which name you like best, or if you have another suggestion. 

Collect: Ground nuts (brown), fiddle heads (in the middle back), thyme, garlic chives (left), onion chives (right)... the garlic chives have flat stems and the onion have rounded stems).

Saute the brown ground nuts for five minutes then add the green fiddle heads and chopped herbs. Saute for another ten minutes. (I used two pats of butter)

Mise-en-Plase: Get everything cleaned and cut before you turn the stove on to medium heat. (Notice the neighbor's eggs are white, brown, and light blue? So cool....)

Fry the eggs in a separate pan, over easy, and sprinkle with the left over chives. Now you are good to go.