Cubit's Organic Living » 2011

Archive for June, 2011

project 365: week twenty five: June 18th, 2011 – June 24th, 2011

Saturday, June 25th, 2011

June 18th, 2011 First skinned knees ever.

June 19th, 2011 Quinoa Salad

June 20th, 2011 Sigh.

June 21st, 2011 Pesto!

June 22nd, 2011The first Ontario Strawberries of the season.

June 23rd, 2011 Toddlers can come up with some pretty terrible ideas.

June 24th, 2011 Roasted Golden Detroit Beets.

Tags: food photography, photography, project365
Posted in project365, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Recipe: Asparagus and Arugula

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Pesto is one of our summer standbys, and anyone who had been to the cottage with us will know that we always like to keep some authentic italian pesto on hand for a quick and easy lunch. Ha!

I normally grow enough basil to make our basil pesto once a week, but what to do in the spring when things are starting to grow but the basil isn’t quite in pesto quantities yet?

My good friend Shana inspired me to use my evesthrough arugula for something besides salads.

Inspired by her arugula pesto recipe posted over on folks gotta eat along with what is in season in my garden and at the farmers market, I combined our favourite pesto recipe with Shana’s and made this amazingly peppery pesto that stays perfectly green even after a few days in the fridge.

Here I am with the clingy toddler picking garlic and arugula for dinner.

4 cups of washed arugula

4 young garlic shoots and scapes

4 cloves of garlic

1 cup of pine nuts

½ cup parmesan cheese

½ cup of olive oil

1/8 teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon of salt

Whizz it all up in the food processor or blender. I do nuts and cheese first followed by greens and oil and then the salt and pepper. We also threw in some chives because we have them in the garden and they’re perfect right now.

Like arugula, this is pesto is perfect on a tomato sandwich. We served this batch up on some ravioli with the last of this year’s fiddleheads and some fabulous Organic Asparagus from Nightingale Farms. Nightingale is quite the operation, with 1500 acres in Norfolk County which is where Ryan is from.

Deliciously Green!

Check out this great video from OMFRA and Foodland Ontario on how Asparagus is harvested. It is sort of mind blowing.

Tags: arugula, asparagus, babywearing, fiddleheads, food photography, Foodland Ontario, local food, pesto, woven wrap
Posted in garden, local food, recipes | 5 Comments »

Wordless Wednesday: Arugula Growing in Eavestrough.

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

After seeing a tutorial on growing greens in “gutters” over on apartment therapy we had to try it. Here is our arugula growing in some eavestrough along the side of our porch. Tastes great and it’s a great use of previously unused space, which just makes more room for carrots in the garden. We turned a bunch of it into Shana’s arugula pesto. Delicious!

Tags: arugula, gardening, Urban Gardening, Wordless Wednesday
Posted in garden, Wordless Wednesday | 8 Comments »

Internet Excitement! Clawfoot bathtub potatoes are a hit!

Monday, June 20th, 2011

Much excitement on the blog this weekend. Our clawfoot bathtub potatoes are a runaway hit!

This post about growing potatoes in containers:

http://www.cubitsorganics.com/2011/06/how-to-grow-delicious-potatoes-in.html

That was also posted over here on Julia’s goat-notes:

http://goat-notes.blogspot.com/2011/06/grow-your-own-potatoes-with-laura-watts.html

Went from twitter, to treehugger where Colleen wrote up this nice little post about our bathtub of potatoes:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/06/turn_an_old_bathtub_into_potato_planter.php

Which then ended up on Apartment Therapy’s reNest which exploded my blog. Ah! This is a site I read every single day so to see Rebecca and I along with that extremely heavy bathtub & kind words was a great treat.

http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/gardening/planting-potatoes-use-an-old-bathtub-149314

To clarify a few things, the tub is positioned so the drain is slightly down hill and there are two layers of loosely stacked bricks at the bottom. In our climate we have never had issues with sogginess but I can see how you might. We have typically used the tub for beets and carrots, especially at our old apartment where we were worried about heavy metal contamination in the soil. Since we moved we’re no longer worried and now are on very sandy soil they go in the ground. Since potatoes are such nutrient suckers, they are in the grow bags this year and the tub is full on greens like mizuna and a bunch of beans.

e=”font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;”>Growing up, my mother also had a spare clawfoot tub which she kept all the laundry waiting to be folded in. Later on it was in my brothers’ room and it made a great bed for teddy bears. So I guess the love of the clawfoot tub is breed right into some of us, and repurposing too.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaways at the end of the two original posts, there’s a few days left and we’re giveaway an awesome book on container gardening along with some great companion seeds for potatoes.

Tags: container gardening, gardening, giveaway, potatoes
Posted in garden | 4 Comments »