Tag: swiss chard

Grilled Whole Chicken & Shiracha Swiss Chard

Posted on by AuSable

Editors Note: This should have been posted about 6 months ago. But better late than never.

Whole chickens were on sale at the grocery store for $0.69 a lb. So I thought that it was high time to make a roasted chicken on the grill.

The cooking time couldn’t be simpler for this dirty bird. With the bird directly over the coals, grill 8 mins on breast side, flip, than 8 mins on the back side, finally another 2 mins on each side of the bird (20 mins total.) Then move to the cool side of the grill, with the breasts facing the coals. And let it go for 30-40 mins, until the bird is at 160F.

As for the swiss chard, my crop of swiss chard was a total disaster this year. So I ended up having to bum some swiss chard from my farmer neighbor. As for cooking method, I lightly blanched the swiss chard, along with some green beans for a couple of minutes. And then in a frying pan with a with a little bit of bacon fat, I sautéed the swiss chard and green beans until golden. And then at the end, I gave it a couple of squirts of sriracha for some heat. I might have added just a little too much sriracha (as you can tell from the pics), but I like it hot. Thought it could of used some kind of crunch in the mix, maybe french fried onions or breadcrumbs. But I consider a missing crunch, only a minor detail.

Seed Starting – 04/02/2011 – Day 3

Posted on by AuSable

After three days we already have some activity in the flats. From flat #1 the swiss chard has sprouted, and from flat #2 the basil has sprouted.

I’m especially surprised about the basil, since it usually takes about 2 weeks to germinate. But seeing how both flats have a heating pad that is keeping the growing environment at a constant 80F, the accelerated germination shouldn’t be surprising (but it still is to me.)

But with the basil & swiss chard having sprouted, I’ve set-up the grow lights and a timer to begin an artificial light schedule starting on Sunday morning at 6am. Let the growing season begin!

Garden Season Over – Killing Frost – October 28, 2010

Posted on by AuSable

Oh baby was it cold last night. It ended up dropping down to 28F overnight. So when I got home from work ~6pm, it was a mad rush to pick everything worth picking in the garden before the frost hit. That ended up being about eight tomatoes, ~5 lbs of jalapenos, ~2 lbs of aji limon, and all the rhubarb left in the garden (half a grocery bags worth). And with this mad rush of a harvest, the gardening season is basically over for 2010. The only few surviving items in the garden are the Swiss Chard, the green onions and the sage, but other then that, everything else it dead. Continue reading →

Garden – Late-September 2010

Posted on by AuSable

I took these late night shots of the aji limo last night, since for a while there I was worried that they weren’t going to turn yellow. But as you can tell in a couple of the pictures, slowing but surely the aji are going from green to yellow. You can even see a couple of the jalapenos going from green to red.

I had a couple of ideas that I might test out this weekend. But seeing how I only have about 2 or 3 weeks before the first frost hits. I better get cracking on these ideas.

Idea #1, is to take all the red jalapenos, and make a red jalapeno hot sauce, using the latest version of the hot sauce recipe.
Idea #2, would be to make some hot sauce from the green aji.
And finally idea #3, would be to try drying out some of the peppers (aji or jalapeno) for homemade hot pepper flakes.

Cooking Swiss Chard – v1 – June 2010

Posted on by AuSable

Swiss chard ended up being one of those random things that I grew in the garden this year. And the only reason that it happened in the first place, was that my farmer neighbor gave me a bunch of swiss chard transplants at the beginning of the season that were headed to the compost pile at the farm if they weren’t planted. So not being one to turn down free plants, I picked a spot in the newer side of the garden for the swiss chard. Continue reading →

Garden – 07/08/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Look at the green garden monster grooooooow. Its been raining on and off for the last couple of weeks. So I really haven’t needed to use the irrigation system that I set-up around the yard. So for now, I’ll call that a bonus. Continue reading →

Garden – 06/16/2010 – Setting up the trellis

Posted on by AuSable

The tomatoes are starting to get fairly tall and a couple already have blossoms, so I think its about time to setup the trellis system for this year. In years past I’ve left the upper crossbars in place and them tried to space the plants under the crossbars. But at the end of last season I took down all the 1/2″ EMT conduit crossbars, since it really wasn’t the best setup for what I was trying to do. Continue reading →

Garden – 06/10/2010

Posted on by AuSable

Man oh man, look at all those weeds on the right hand side of the garden. It looks like its finally time to do a little bit of weeding in the garden, even though I haven’t been looking forward to the task. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Overall, everything seems to be coming in nicely. The sweet corn and rhubarb are growing like gangbusters. The tomatoes finally seem to be growing well. Maybe in another week or so I’ll prune off all the suckers on the tomatoes, and string them up to the trellis. Continue reading →

Garden – 05/31/2010

Posted on by AuSable

As you can probably tell, this is basically just a random dump of pics from the back garden. It seems like most of the plants are doing well. I finally spent some time during Memorial Day weekend to re-do the fence around the garden. Since each morning as I was leaving for work before the fence was fixed, the rabbits were basically using my garden as their personal buffet line. With the worst of the damage being on the tomatoes and swiss chard.

For some strange reason out of the four different beans/peas that I planted in the front right corner. The only seeds that really didn’t germinate at all were the Snow Snap peas from johnny’s, so go figure. But the Xera and Carson both seem to be coming on nice and strong, which is fine with me. Since the only ones that I really care about are the Carson’s, since they are a yellow wax bean. So if I’m able to harvest anything from the other three beans/peas, I’ll consider it a bonus in my book.