Sunday, May 17, 2009

Here Comes the Sun!

After many, many rain delays, (and snow!) we finally got to plant our seeds last weekend.
Here's the official list of what we planted:
Carrots: Purple Dragon and Touchon
Corn: Maple Sugar
Lettuce: Heatwave Blend (several types of lettuce that can stand up to our summer heat)
Green Beans: French Filet
Potatoes: Swedish Fingerling; Beauregard sweet potatoes
Strawberries: Eversweet

Now. About the strawberries. The poor dears had to languish in a pot under a grow light in our basement for several weeks. There was a lot of rain. And sometimes it just was too stinkin' cold to put them out.

I finally dragged them outside and started to plant them in their little strawberry tower. It has a removable bottom. Which, if you're not very careful, will come off when you try to turn it over after filling it with soil. Of course, I was very careful...but it all dumped out anyway.
It was all his fault:
After refilling the tower, I started to plug the strawberry plants into the tower. It looked like someone shoving a big ol' tobacco chaw into a little bitty mouth.
They all got planted and our cheery little tower finally looked like this:

That was a week ago. After one week, lots of threatening looking clouds, some brief but heavy downpours, it looks like this:
Yikes.
Not sure if these babies are gonna make it. Did I mention there were mushrooms in the pot from the basement? Mighta had something to do with it.

Good news on the seeds, though. 
We now have lettuce sprouts!

And little slivers of corn stalks, tiny carrot tops that look like fairy wings, and today, a bean sprout.
This is a long post, so I'll wrap it up. But I did get the potatoes planted in their containers yesterday. Photos and how-to on that next time.

Today's recipe is a sunny Baked Lemon Pasta from the Pioneer Woman herself. Made it tonight and it is delish!

Baked Lemon Pasta
1 pound thin spaghetti
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 cups sour cream
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
Plenty of grated Parmesan cheese
Flat leaf parsley, chopped
Extra lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook spaghetti until al dente.
In a skillet, melt butter with olive oil over low heat.
When butter is melted, add minced garlic.
Squeeze lemon juice into pan. Turn off heat.
Add sour cream and stir mixture together. Add lemon zest and salt. Taste, then add more salt if necessary.
Pour  mixture over drained spaghetti and stir together, then pour spaghetti into an oven safe dish.
Bake, covered, for 15 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for additional 7 - 10 minutes. (Don't bake too long or pasta will dry out.)
When you remove it from the oven, squeeze a little more lemon juice over the top. 
Top generously with Parmesan cheese, then chopped parsley.
Give it a final squeeze of lemon juice at the end.