In the 27 years that we’ve been on our property my garden has changed and evolved and I’ve tried all kinds of ideas and methods for gardening. In 2020 I began an experiment in raised row gardening.

Our garden is built in a spot where we had a very low area. Built as a drainage swale it was obvious early on that it was designed in a way that would never have drained any water. So we decided to fill it in and put a garden there. The cheapest way to fill a huge area was from a rotted manure pile at a nearby farm. 16 dump truck loads built the base and then we added 9 loads of black loam to the top. My garden is literally built on a pile of shit

Originally I told Steve I wanted raised beds with pea gravel walking paths. That never happened. Honestly I think he was tired. We had just built our custom home in the country. We were young, feeling cash strapped and pretty exhausted. It is stressful to build a home and we had a yard of mud and two little kids. So, I started gardening the next spring in the traditional way; put some seeds into the dirt, water and wait.

Right from the start it was important to me that it be pretty. I’m also a very practical person, so I did divide the garden into 4 quadrants and laid down flat stones for main walking paths. This gave me the ability to roughly plan my crops into 4 yearly rotations. My garden has always included flowers, always.

For many years there have been only minor changes to the structure of the garden. I have fought with a patch of horseradish that took nearly 10 years to finally smother out (don’t do it, just don’t!). I have struggled to get a row of nanking cherries to do well along the West edge. Three years ago I added one raised bed, thinking that maybe I would get to my original plan one bed at a time. That has recently become my dedicated strawberry patch.

Two years ago I built myself a chicken coop and run (where the horseradish had been) as part of my permaculture sustainability plan – and to have lawn ornaments with benefits

Last year I added one more, shorter, raised bed but then due to Covid supply chain issues I couldn’t get any more of these corners to do more. I’m clearly not meant to have raised beds!

Anyway, my point is that a garden is an evolution. As you grow and as things grow, and die, and are replanted to grow again, things change.

Last fall I came across a blog talking about raised row gardens and I got curious. Funny enough my friend and neighbor Michele found the same info at a similar time and ordered the book. We both decided to give this raised row gardening thing a go for 2021.

In raised row gardening, basically the idea is that you lay out set paths to walk on, and set beds, which are raised a bit but not bordered with a container, to grow in. All is mulched. Cover crops, which is something I have been trying to figure out for our short season also figure prominently.

There are many things about this approach that I think are great. First of all it is not good for your soil to be walking on it, compacting it and smothering out beneficial microbes. Having set paths is great; you are never walking on soil you will be growing into. Secondly you are only watering and building soil health in soil you will be growing in; no wasted resources on unproductive land. Thirdly, all is mulched. That means that you are holding moisture, reducing weed growth and preventing erosion at all times. This is a very environmentally friendly concept.

I have thrown myself full on into this new raised row gardening system. I built a few rows last spring and tried both spring peas and buckwheat cover crops. You can see the three set rows I planted in last summer above.

Then in the fall I built the last of my rows, planting one with some cereal rye as a winter cover as a trial run and mulching the rest with a ‘Healthy Straw’ and chopped leaves mixture. Surprisingly this mulch stayed put all winter and the rye did indeed come up this spring.

This spring I have planted my cabbages directly into the rye, cutting it back and waiting for it to die back while providing a heavy mulch and green manure. Elsewhere in the garden I have pulled back last fall’s mulch and planted into the raised beds, waiting for the seeds to emerge before replacing the mulch to hold the moisture.

I’m excited about this experiment and can’t wait to see how raised row gardening works out for my garden this year. Have you ever tried this?

The post Raised Row Gardening appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

Dividing tulip bulbs will allow you to plant once and have them last for years, maybe even a lifetime!

I bought and planted these tulips about 25 years ago. Yup, you read that right. 25 years and going strong. It has been a very long time, but I think this is the tulip that I have. My original plan was to create a patch of tulips in the vegetable garden that was intended just for cutting flowers. I reasoned that if I treated them as vegetables I wouldn’t mind cutting them to bring into the house. I was wrong. Not once in 25 years have I had the heart to cut a bouquet of tulips from my garden. I enjoy their early spring color too much right where they are – in the garden. I wonder sometimes how many I would need to feel like I have enough of these beauties that I could cut a bunch out to bring into the house. 200? 300? A lot I think.

A lot of people do not know that tulips can be saved year after year, or how to do it. Many people plant them and then are disappointed when a few years later the blooms begin to wane even if the plants continue to come up in the garden. Overcrowding is the answer.

Like garlic bulbs, tulip bulbs are placed into the ground as one single bulb, and much like a garlic bulb (though not in exactly the same manner) one eventually turns into many. Your single large tulip bulb grows little baby bulbs around it every year. This is how tulips, like other bulbs, reproduce. If left entirely alone many varieties will begin to get overly crowded and they will choke each other out, with the result being smaller blooms or no blooms at all. The answer is to divide those tulip bulbs.

About every three years I divide my tulip bulbs, digging them up in the fall, sorting them into sizes, discarding the very small ones. I then replant the largest bulbs and rehome many of the medium sized ones.

Over the decades that I have had these bulbs I have likely divided them 10 or more times. I don’t remember but I likely bought around 2 or 3 dozen bulbs to begin with and I probably replant 150 or more every time I do it. The time to do it is when each plant has become a small clump, many bunches of leaves with only one flowering stalk.

There are two methods to do this. One, the one I tried with my first little tulip patch, is to ‘heel them in’. This requires digging them up once they have flowered and then replanting them in shallow rows lying down on a 45° angle, until the foliage has dried up and died off. The reason that one might do this is that once the flower is done and deadheaded you need to leave them in the ground to mature. This allows the energy from the leaves to go back down into the bulb so that they can do it all over again next year. The problem is, it’s not an attractive process. You have a lot of dead looking foliage in your garden for a fair bit of time. So, formal gardeners would find a patch of dirt outside of the flower bed to heel them in. This would allow the bulbs to mature for next year while allowing the gardener to plant something more attractive in their place. This works, but it is a pain in the butt. I like easy gardening. I also don’t like having tulips pop up in random spots of the veggie garden when I’ve missed one or two in the digging up process.

The second method, which is what I do now, is to leave them where they are for the summer and overplant something around them that will grow tall enough to hide that ugly browning foliage for the rest of the season. This year I have planted nasturtium in between the tulips, last year it was French marigolds. This will hide the ugly and also shade out many of the weeds that are hard to get at between the tulip stalks. Double duty for the win!

This fall my tulip bulbs will need dividing so once the nasturtium has frozen, I will dig up the row of tulips, divide up the bulbs, add amendments to the soil and replant. Next year they will be back as strong and beautiful as ever.

This thrifty method will have you enjoying tulips for decades. Have you ever tried it? Let me know in the comments.

The post Dividing Tulip Bulbs to Make them Last a Lifetime appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

In my last post I talked about some of the methods I use to preserve my garden harvest. Fermenting, freezing and canning (water bath and pressure canning) are all great ways to store foods and also to create resilience in case of an emergency.

But what if I just want to eat my veggies fresh?

Let’s face it, the biggest push for vegetable gardening in the first place is so that you can eat your own delicious, fresh vegetables! There really is nothing like a fresh picked green pea, sweet delicious tomatoes or a carrot or beet pulled out of the frosty soil. So how can you stretch that fresh veggie season out for as long as possible? It can be tricky but it can be done.

The three biggest factors in preserving your fresh veggies are:

• choosing vegetables that are going to store well in the first place
• In some cases (potatoes, winter squash, onions for example) curing those vegetables to harden them off
• controlling moisture
• controlling heat

In short, start by choosing and preparing vegetables that store well and then find the right place to keep them.

Have you ever wondered what your ancestors who came to the prairies ate all winter? I have, but I also know the answer, at least for my Ukrainian family. They ate meat, dairy, root vegetables, grains and cabbage. These are foods that can be grown in our short season and that will store well in the right environment.

In days gone by most people would have put up their winter vegetables in an underground root cellar, which would have offered the perfect temperature and humidity for most of their produce to last the winter. Root cellars are dark, consistently cool and a bit damp. These are perfect conditions for storing vegetables. The modern refrigerator tries to emulate this but often comes up short, particularly in the humidity department. This is one of the reasons that the crisper drawer often becomes the rotter drawer – at least it does in my house!

I was slow in harvesting my carrots this year and this has resulted in a big bunch of carrots that will need to be kept as fresh as possible and likely for a while. So….

I am trying a new method for storing root vegetables this year

Many resources will tell you that storing carrots and beets is best done in a container of damp sand. Though that doesn’t sound hard the idea of going out and lugging a bag of heavy sand home has always seemed a bit arduous. I know, poor me.

Recently though I saw an article suggesting damp peat moss. I am careful about using peat moss because all though it is a product harvested in Canada, many consider peat to be a non-renewable resource (though here is an interesting article debunking that a bit).

Anyway, the peat moss idea got me thinking that coco coir would likely also work well. Coco coir, while more renewable, also has environmental drawbacks. Although it is environmentally sustainable at the harvest level, coconuts are not exactly a local product! However, because it is pH neutral it makes a fabulous bedding material for vermicompost so I happened to have half a package in my garage.

To store my carrots I shook off the dirt, cut their tops to just one inch above the carrot and laid them on their sides between layers of my moistened coco coir. I started with about 1″ of coir and used about the same amount between each layer. I did not let the carrots touch each other. Hopefully his takes care of the moisture part of the equation.

Now I need to find a cool place to keep them. A cold but not freezing garage, an unheated basement, or a cold room would all work. Since I neglected to dig a cold room under my garage when we designed the house (I kick myself regularly for that), and my basement has in-floor heating making it pretty warm, I am going to try the garage. We do heat it, but we try to keep it as cool as the furnace will allow. This may still be too warm, I guess only time will tell.

If anyone has any ideas for keeping things cool I’m all ears!

I’ll keep y’all up to date on how it goes.

The post Storing Root Vegetables for the Winter appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

Gardening here in the Canadian foothills brings a myriad of challenges with it. A short season, cold nights and highly variable weather are just a few of the things that make it a unique climate in which to garden. We are forced to cram an entire season of growing into what essentially amounts to just a few short months – and that is assuming we don’t get snow in June or devastating hail.

That means that if we hope to be creating resilience for ourselves by growing at least some of our own food we really do have to find a way to extend our season and work on preserving our lovely produce. This allows us to grow a wider variety of things over a longer period, and to keep those foodstuffs farther into the remainder of the year.

There are many methods for preserving the garden’s harvest but choosing the safest method for your food is important. Using a variety of methods also helps to create resilience. If one system fails, you can likely count on others.

So how can we keep all of our lovely produce and create resilience at the same time?

We can ferment many types of foods beyond, but including, sauerkraut. I have fermented cabbage, cauliflower, garlic scapes and grains (to make sourdough bread). I also ferment kombucha and red wine vinegar which don’t really preserve a harvest but do add to my family’s gut health and also to delicious meals.

Freezing is a great way to keep food, but of course you eventually run out of room in the freezer, and if you happen to lose power then all of your lovely food is likely a write off. Having a backup is a good idea.

Canning is another great way to ‘put up’ the harvest. Making your food shelf stable is power outage proof. The drawback is storage space and a need for some equipment specific to what you hope to can.

I used to can a fair bit when my kids were young. Using a water-bath canner I preserved mostly fruits like peaches and also some pickles. The problem with water bath canning is that fruits and pickles are about the only thing you can use them for. They can only be used for high acid foods. That means fruits. Vegetables can be canned in a water bath canner but only if acid is added to them, turning them into pickles. So, jams, jellies, canned fruit and pickles are what you are limited to. Because of this I haven’t been canning as much. I don’t eat a lot of fruit, certainly not with added sugar, and we only eat so many pickles.

So, about two years ago I started looking into pressure canners. A pressure canner allows one to can items that are not high acid. Things like soups, meats and vegetables can only be safely canned when using a pressure canner. The drawback is that the equipment is a bit more (or a lot more) expensive and it is also a bit intimidating.

I started doing some research, watching some videos, doing a bit of reading etc. Now, for those who know me you know that I like having good equipment, the right equipment, to do the best possible job. That meant one of two canners; the Presto pressure canner, or the All-American. These two canners are the two most often recommended by those who are in the know. Because I’m an equipment geek and because it has a near-cult following I was, of course, enamoured with the All-American which has been built in America since 1930. But holy moley, it is not cheap! And, if you want to talk about intimidating, this sucker suits the part.

I mean just look at this behemoth! I’ve nicknamed it ‘Sputnik’.

Long story short I bit the bullet when I found one on sale (still expensive) early in the spring, right as Covid hit North America. My timing was perfect as since then, with people pretty freaked out about food supply chain issues, these have been super hard to come by. Now that I’m over my initial intimidation I’ve been busily putting Sputnik to work. Together we’ve been preserving wax beans, tomato soup, chicken bone broth, beef broth and baked beans.

I’ve also water bath canned some fantastic homemade ketchup, my sister-in-law’s favorite salsa, and two rhubarb grilling sauces; one with sour cherries and one with haskap berries.

Have you changed the way you view your food supply chain since March? Have you ever tried preserving with a pressure canner?

The post Preserving The Harvest appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

This global pandemic thing has everyone on edge and I’m certainly no exception. Like so many I’ve been doing my best to stay home (I suck at that!) and keeping my distance when I do need to go out (that I can do).

I have been doing a lot of thinking about a lot of stuff including our collective future. It is a heady time.

Here’s what I’m doing personally:

1. Spending a LOT of time in my garden. I’ve been a gardener for as long as I can remember so this is nothing new. However, this year’s garden had a bit of a different emphasis. Though my garden is always a mix of food and flowers, utility and beauty, this year had a particular emphasis on resilience and preservation. A few more potatoes, many more cabbages (for sauerkraut and other yummies) and the addition of a trial greenhouse for tomatoes, cukes and peppers. I’ve also been experimenting with cover crops. More about that later…The greenhouse project may turn into a permanent structure for next season.
2. Staying in touch. I have a core group of friends that I have worked hard to maintain contact with. It is, in my opinion, essential as these girls are keeping me thinking, on my toes, and connected.
3. Supporting local businesses. Like so many others I recognize that small businesses in particular are struggling. I’ve tried hard to make sure I buy local. I’m excited to see that Okotoks, the small town nearest to me, has yet another butcher shop RFG Meats and Seafood. Bonus!
4. Questioning EVERYTHING. I am a contrarian by nature and I am sceptical of nearly everything that is fed to us by the media and by governments. That has become a prevailing theme in my life this summer. None of what we are being told is likely true, at least not in full. Question EVERYTHING. Motives are usually money and power.
5. Enjoying my new puppy. A 6 month hiatus was needed after losing my beloved border collie Brie but I knew I couldn’t be dogless for long. A search for a Portuguese Water Dog breeder brought me to a litter that suited my desires and along came Wren. She is a delight and has been a wonderful distraction during this crazy time. We are enjoying trying everything on offer at Kayenna Training Academy, so far the tricks class may be my favorite!
6. Planning for more chickens. Actually, buying more chickens – 3 to be exact. This brings my little flock up to 6 for the winter. My new girls will add some additional heat to the winter coop and some additional laying power to my spring.
7. Making sourdough – I know, it’s not low carb!! I LOVE the process, and the outcome, of making fresh sourdough. I don’t make it often, maybe once a month, but it is so delicious and I adore the act of creating a yummy loaf of bread that is a wonderful, home crafted product – from beginning to end.
8. Pressure canning. In keeping with the preservation and resilience theme I purchased an All American 921 pressure canner in the spring. Honestly this has been on my list of desired equipment for a while and I’m glad I jumped when one came up on sale. A few weeks later there would have been no hope of finding one. This behemoth, nicknamed ‘sputnik’, has allowed me to can up more of my veggies, some bone broth and some low acid soups. Now that I’ve gotten over the initial fear of the thing, I’m pretty excited about using it for some more ready made meals, freeing up some space in my freezer and adding to my storage pantry.

What have you changed in the light of the Covid pandemic? I’d love to hear.

The post What I’ve been Personally Doing in the Face of Covid-19 appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

As I mentioned in my last post about compost, soil biology has become really important to me in the past few years. (I’m reading this fabulous book about it right now) I’ve always been conscious of the health of our soil; I generally do not use chemical fertilizers or weedkillers, I use our own compost and also some purchased organic amendments like sea soil. I also do not over-till our soil. We also happen to have a garden that is literally built on composted manure. I mean nearly a dozen dump trucks full of manure are under my veggie garden! It’s a long story – but it creates a pretty fertile base for the garden.

However, I’ve never gotten around to actually testing my soil. Here is the deal though; a simple soil test will give you information about what is going on beneath the surface that you simply cannot know otherwise. It is a pretty cheap investment to help you become a better gardener.

While taking my permaculture design course I’ve been giving even more consideration to soil health so I decided that I would like to find out what is actually going on out there. I looked into having a professional test done but it seemed kind of arduous, and expensive. I also had a gander at Takoda Coen’s video on doing a visual assessment of soil which seems like a good place to start. Then, fortuitously, I found a basic home soil test on a super great sale at my local garden supply retailer early this spring and decided that I’d just do it at home. I’m glad I did.

Mostly so far I’ve been focused on my veggie garden, as food production has been on my mind. With the recent Covid-19 saga, so many people have had food security brought to the forefront of their consciousness and although I have been on this particular path for a while now, I am no exception. I am asking myself how I can become more anti-fragile, more resilient, and less reliant on other people for our basic needs. How can I get more, and preserve more, of my own well produced food?

I was confident that we had pretty great garden soil but I wanted to test the main vegetable garden and also a raised bed that we put in in 2018. The main garden is what I will call our ‘native’ soil (even though it isn’t really) and the raised bed has ‘imported’ soil, a mix of loam and compost purchased more recently from a local garden center.

I tested both areas, starting with the main garden. As you can see, this area is pretty prolific on a good year. I seldom have trouble growing things here.

This area gets fairly regular yearly additions of ‘dump and run’ (slow, cold) compost. Compost is a great way to add all three of your basic fertilizer elements along with some great soil microbes. But, as many of you know, it takes a LOT of kitchen scraps to make a small amount of compost. This is not news to anyone who does it. You can add your scraps for months on end and have relatively little to show for it at the end of the year. Scraps are diverted from landfill, which is great, and you end up with nice organic matter for the garden which is also great, you just can’t rely on large quantities of compost every year. For me this means that I have to choose each year which sections of the garden might get the precious compost from last season. Quantity is one reason I’ve been working on getting thermophilic composting right. If you plan well you can make larger quantities of compost, tailored to your goals, in less time.

Back to testing…When I tested the main garden area I was pleased to see that I had pretty good levels of nitrogen and potash. However, it was low in phosphorus, which is responsible for fruits and also strong root development.

Ahah! That is why I seem unable to grow the one vegetable that nobody else seems to struggle with – radishes! Radish, of course, is a root vegetable. I’ve tried for three summers now to grow them in this general area (I do rotate my crops) with rather poor results. Mostly I’ve blamed my timing, thinking that I’m growing them too late in the spring and that the bed is getting too warm for them and then they are bolting. Apparently, I’m wrong. It may not be my timing, it may be my soil. Without phosphorus it is quite possible that there isn’t enough nutrient for the plants to grow the nice fat root that I’m looking for. So, they go straight to seed. Same with the paltry carrots that I grew here last year. At least those I grew in more than one place but the ones grown here were pretty sad.

The raised bed tested a bit differently. It was not too bad in phosphorus, though a bit low, pretty decent in Potash and a bit low in nitrogen. Our soil ph is alkaline, which is a known fact here in the foothills area of Alberta.

So, lesson learned, after doing a soil test to determine what is missing I will be amending my soil with the addition of this season’s thermophilic compost as well as some bone meal, rock phosphate and also some lovely microbes to help the plants take up these nutrients properly. I am also trying a field pea cover crop this summer to fix some of the nitrogen in the soil and add green biomass for my compost in the fall.

I’m just beginning to play around with cover crops and admittedly don’t really know what the heck I’m doing. We will see what happens but at least I have some idea of what the goal is – which is why I totally recommend that you test your garden soil. You will be better able to tailor your amendments to the exact needs of your soil, and also of the crops or ornamentals that you hope to grow there.

Have you ever done a soil test? What did you learn and how did you rectify it? I’d love to hear!

The post Why You Should Test Your Garden Soil appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

I am currently completely obsessed with soil health, and by extension, compost. It started last summer with my chicken project and the saga is continuing. Wondering how to best get my chickens working for me led me to study permaculture. Then a fall workshop with Urban Farm School geared specifically to the benefits of thermophilic composting got me stoked, and my interest continued expanding over the winter into both vermicomposting and bokashi composting.

With the following questions leading my decisions I set my resolve to not let anything that was biomass leave the property:

1. How can I continually improve my garden soil, and by extension the soil of the earth (even if my little patch is miniscule)?
2. How can I utilize and retain the greatest quantity of biological resources from my property?
3. Could I create a zero organic waste situation on my property?

But why does this feel important to me?

Here’s the deal folks; soil is life. Nurturing lively, microbe rich soil is one of the keys to us continuing to live, healthfully, on this lovely blue/green ball that we call home. Without it there is little hope that we can continue to survive. Healthy soil is necessary for all life on planet earth, we all absolutely rely on it and we haven’t been doing a great job of it, especially over the past few hundred years as mechanization and chemical warfare has become our farming method of choice. Good soil management is also at least one solution to the carbon imbalance that we have created by extracting fossil fuels.

So again, with my big picture goals in mind;

I started with the chickens

Part of my reason for having chickens on the property was to have them work for me. Chickens are great helpers in the garden, if well managed. Hint: you cannot just let chickens roam freely in your yard – they will destroy it – pronto! However, chickens are great garden tillers, garden scrap eaters, bug controllers, compost stirrers and manure makers. All this while also providing me with nice fresh eggs and, if I was brave, home raised meat (so far, not me!).

Besides all of this, I find them thoroughly entertaining and nice to have in the yard. Chickens are considered to be ‘gateway livestock’ and many municipalities are being pressured to allow for small flocks on residential lots.

Then moved on to Thermophilic composting…

One of my instructors at Verge Permaculture is a delightful woman named Carmen Lamoureux who owns a small business called Urban Farm School. Recognizing a need for basic gardening skills in the community she started teaching workshops on basic gardening skills. In the fall of 2019 I took her class on composting which convinced me to try, really try, to make myself a thermophilic, or hot, compost pile. I had always composted but simply used what my friend Susan calls the ‘dump and run method’ of cold composting. Don’t get me wrong guys, this works. It is just different, with different goals and end product, than hot composting.

Sadly, the workshop was right before the cold weather set in. Even though I set to work the very next day, and my compost heated up beautifully (surprised even me!!) the cold weather set in before it was quite finished. I rescued it this spring by rebuilding and adding some fresh new materials, including my winter bokashi buckets (see below). This got my pile heated right back up and I am looking forward to a good sized pile of finished compost by the end of June.

The winter brought Vermicomposting…

What exactly is vermicomposting? It is creating compost (in this case worm poop. Poop is a bit of a theme here so far) using worms and it is a (relatively) easy way to compost indoors during our cold winter months. Let’s face it, here in Canada we have a lot of cold winter months. In the past I have chosen to just not compost for the winter. However, that means that for a good majority of the year I’m neither taking advantage of my food waste, nor keeping that food waste out of the landfill. Neither of these are great options. Yes, I could just continue to dump and run for the winter but taking my scraps out to a frozen and therefore increasing pile has never seemed all that appealing to me. It’s not that it can’t be done, it can, it’s just that my current system doesn’t lend itself well to doing so.

My indoor worm bins gave me a place to compost the majority of our kitchen waste for the entire winter. The exception is onions and citrus, which worms are not super fussed on. So, enter….

And my final method of winter composting with Bokashi

I heard about Bokashi composting two summers ago from Steve’s cousin’s husband Dave. I had never heard of it but Dave was quite smitten with the method and after trying many methods has settled on bokashi. Basically bokashi is a method that uses ‘Effective Microorganisms’ (EM-1), a mixture of bacteria and yeasts, mixed with bran, to sort of ‘pickle’ or ferment (right up my alley) and thereby pre-compost wastes.

Kitchen wastes, which in this case can include even meats, bones, some fats as well as the regular compostable vegetative materials from your kitchen, are collected in a sealed bucket. Microorganisms are added after each addition of materials and the bucket is kept well sealed (bokashi is an anaerobic process) until full. Once full, the bucket contents are left to cure for a few weeks and then can be buried directly in your garden, added to your compost bins, or even fed to worms for further breakdown. For you pet owners there are even bokashi systems for composting that pet waste. For me, that is just a bit too ambitious but maybe someday.

This year I decide to use my two full 5 gallon buckets of bokashi as ‘green’, nitrogen rich, material to help build a hot compost pile. The material can be used as green, nitrogen rich, material because although it has been ‘pickled’ it still more or less retains its original qualities. It smells a bit funky and it looks like rather spoiled, but otherwise intact, veggie scraps. (It added a bit of funk to the compost pile at the beginning but it did seem to work to get that pile good and hot).

In a future post I intend to give y’all a good overview of each of these methods as well as the pros and cons as I see ’em so far. In combination, all of these worked together to get me to my goal for the winter. ALL of my food scraps and yard waste, except for the spring branches and trimmings, will go back into my garden as wonderful, microbe rich, compost.

I’d call that a resounding success.

Do you garden? What are your goals for the coming year?

The post I’m Compost Crazy! appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

When somebody gifts you half of a head (yes I said a head) of some of Alberta’s finest pork do you say no because you don’t know what to do with it, or do you blindly and enthusiastically say yes(!) and figure out what exactly to do with it later? If you are me, you go with option two – take the head, learn to make head cheese at home.

This recently actually happened to me.

Taking a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) with Verge Permaculture here in Calgary is my chosen learning project for this year. My interest in traditional nutrition has just kept growing over the past few years. Coupled with my concern for the environment and my enthusiasm for gardening permaculture design is a seamless fit.

What is permaculture? Permaculture is a system for designing land in such a way as to mimic nature as closely as possible. It is governed by principles that ask us to observe natural patterns, make the most of the resources that we have at our disposal while caring for the land and sharing the rewards with others.

Permaculture asks us to not just live sustainably, but to live regeneratively. That is, to leave the land better than we found it. It’s a pretty great ideal, and it is doable. I hope it is the agriculture of the future. If you want to get a sense of its benefit, watch The Biggest Little Farm on Netflix, or any of the Greening the Desert videos on Youtube.

Anyway, the day that the head arrived our PDC class was taught by a young man named Takota Coen. Takota and his parents farm a piece of land in central Alberta using exactly these principles. They are doing amazing things in regenerating their land and producing incredible quality food while doing it. I want to support these folks and others like them so I had previously placed an order for some of the pastured beef and pork from their farm.

When Takota brought me my order somebody else had not picked up their order – some pork fat and the half head. My lucky day 🙂 There was no question I’d be taking it – with gratitude. I do believe that if we are going to take the life of an animal that we should do our utmost to be respectful and use as much of it as possible.

The pork back fat will go into a future sausage and the kidney fat was immediately rendered into fresh lard. But what to do with the head? Well, after a bit of Google research it turns out that the most obvious thing to do with a hog’s head is make hog’s head cheese. Duh.

Head cheese is not something that everybody loves, but Steve definitely does. This is one of those traditional foods that was invented to use up every last bit of the animal – the original nose to tail eating. Like so many traditional foods it is not only frugal but it is tasty – and it is really good for us. Though it sounds kinda disgusting it really is just bits of tender pork meat suspended in quality pork bone broth that is thick enough to gel once in the refrigerator.

That bone broth offers a host of health benefits including nurturing our joints, hair, nails and bones. You don’t even really need a head to make this dish. Any cut that works well for pork bone broth, like pork hocks, trotters or other bones, would work. So, you don’t need to score a hog’s head to give it a go. This definitely makes it more approachable, though perhaps not quite as nose-to-tailish.

Much like making soup, once the head has boiled with aromatics for several hours the meat is removed and shredded. It is then pressed into a plastic wrap lined terrine (or loaf) pan, covered with broth and refrigerated.

The toughest part of making this dish for me was trying to clarify my broth.

A nice clear broth to suspend the meat in isn’t essential but it makes the finished product look nice. I had watched a video that made doing this look really easy. I struggled to get mine to clarify fully, but ultimately it’s a visual thing not a flavor thing so after trying twice to make the broth super clear I finally gave up and just used it as is.

Once set slice carefully with a very sharp knife and serve. It is traditional to serve with a splash of your favorite vinegar.

I’m pretty happy with the result, and so is Steve.

What do you think? Would you take it if someone gifted you a hog’s head?

Print

Homemade Head Cheese

Making head cheese at home takes some time but is super simple.

Course Snack

Cuisine LCHF

Keyword LCHF, low carb, Traditional Foods

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 6 hours hours

refrigeration 12 hours hours

Servings 12

Author Mia Staysko

Equipment

• Stock pot
• Terrine or loaf pan

Ingredients

• 1/2 hog's head
• 1-2 med onions chopped roughly
• 3 stalks celery cut into 3" lengths
• 3 carrots cut into 3" lengths
• 2 whole bay leaves
• 12 whole peppercorns
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• small bunch fresh herbs such as parsley, rosemary, thyme tied together
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• Cold water to cover
• 1/2 lemon juiced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley finely chopped
• white or apple cider vinegar to taste, optional

Instructions

• Place all ingredients into a large stock pot, adding just enough cold water to cover. Cover pot and bring to a soft boil for about 5 hours.
• Remove pot from heat and let cool for about 20 minutes.
• Remove vegetables and set aside in a small bowl. Crush with a fork or a potato masher.
• Remove meat and bones to a cutting board. Pick through to separate meat from bones, shredding larger chunks somewhat. Set aside in another bowl. You can also save a small amount of the fattier bits if you like a bit of fat in your head cheese.
• Strain the broth through a sieve to remove any remaining vegetables or other bits. Return broth to the pot. If you wish to clarify the broth further, allow it to cool for another 20 minutes.
• Add two egg whites to the vegetables, beating gently to mix thoroughly. Pour mixture into slightly cooled broth, giving a gentle stir to incorporate.
• Return pot to stove over low heat. Heat very slowly JUST to a simmer – do not boil. The vegetables and egg mix should form a film over the top of the broth, bringing any additional solids to the top with it. After about 20 minutes gently push the solids from the center to the sides to make a ladle sized hole in the vegetable 'raft'. Simmer for another 15-20 minutes watching that the broth does not boil.
• Line a fine sieve with a piece of wet cotton (a cloth napkin works). Gently ladle the clear broth into the sieve to further clarify your broth.
• Generously season shredded meat with salt and pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Pour meat into plastic wrapped lined pan. Pour broth over just to cover, pressing into corners gently to remove any air pockets. Fold wrap over to cover.
• Place into refrigerator for at least 8 hrs or overnight
• Slice and serve with a bit of vinegar.

Notes

This recipe makes a generous amount and is pretty perishable, lasting just a few days fresh. You can slice it into a few larger pieces with a sharp knife. Wrap and freeze individual pieces, wrapping again more tightly once frozen. It should keep about 2 months in the freezer.

The post Making Head Cheese at Home appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

This isn’t good for a food blog, in which ideally should have new content seemingly every 5 minutes. However this blog is my own little personal project, not a monetized venture and I, like many of you I suspect, tend to rotate between a handful of easy, go-to recipes. I’m just not prepared at this time to devote the time every week to come up with new recipes.

So tonight was Jalapeno Popper Chicken, a relatively new favorite. I really like this recipe because much like my Chicken with Lemon and Olives, I can pretty much throw it together with my eyes closed and I almost always have the ingredients. I tossed dinner together quickly so I could get back to work on another creative project.

Okay so speaking of chicken, and creative projects, the second reason I haven’t been in the kitchen is because I’ve been spending an extraordinary amount of my time since the spring on my latest garden project. Backyard chickens!

I’ve thought about raising chickens a few times but have never actually bit the bullet, until now…

For whatever reason – too much time on my hands I think – I once again became a bit obsessed with the idea of having some chickens.

It is entirely possible that I have lost my mind, but the bird bug bit me and I spent considerable time in the early spring choosing a coop and run design and researching raising backyard chickens. Once my design (I’ll tell you about that in another post) was chosen, the coop was laid out in the garden and my lumber was loaded into the garage where I began putting my plan together. The coop was framed indoors and then taken in sections out to the garden to put it all together.

It was a s*#t ton of work since I did most of it by myself (with a bit of heavy lifting from Steve and a helping hand from a friend) but it turned out really great.

My Chicken Fantasy

Why, oh why would I want chickens? Well, I’ve got a few reasons. Firstly, I like birds, and chickens happen to come in a wide variety of pretty, and practical, designs. I had visions of enjoying my summer being amused by a small flock of avian friends. Ones who will eventually put breakfast on the table, bringing me to my second reason.

I like the idea of producing food on my own property, even if it is just some eggs. We are what we eat and by raising my own chickens I know exactly what they are eating and therefore what I’m eating. I’m not exactly prepared to turn my acreage into a ‘homestead’ per se but I do like the idea of using my land to produce some protein, at least for our own family and friends, and eggs seem like an easy place to start. (BTW, I tried to get the Big Man to agree to raising 30 birds so that I could raise meat birds but my plan was met with some pretty serious lack of enthusiasm Maybe next year…?)

Anyway…I found myself 4 chickens and the adventure began!! It’s been an interesting ride so far. I’ve been highly amused by them, have learned lots about chicken behavior and such, and I’ve also had one untimely death already (the cute little mottled one who I don’t think was well right from the get-go).

Just this week I collected my very first, home hatched eggs, which I made into a delicious spinach omelette.

Life is a circle people, life is a circle.

The post Oh My Clucking God! appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.

It was my birthday this week. I spent a fun evening with my friend Karen at the Kananaskis Nordic Spa enjoying the hot pools and enduring the cold ones. At -24° C it was an interesting experience, and a purportedly healthy one too. Cold immersion is reported to help convert white fat to brown fat, well, beige fat – which helps to ramp up your metabolism. For me it was an exercise in willpower as I honestly dislike the cold so I focused on the steam rising from the pools and watching the stars on a beautiful clear evening.

The setting is gorgeous and the beauty of the rising sun on the mountains the next morning reminds me that we should get out of the house and into the mountains more often!

As the week has been spent celebrating (one should get more celebratory days the older one gets in my opinion) yet another passing year I decided to bake myself a nice low carb flourless birthday cake. It seemed like a great way to top off a wonderful week with friends and family.

Adding the words low carb to the name of this cake honestly feels like a bit of a gimmick as flourless chocolate cake is a classic dessert which we are really just redefining as low carb by changing up our choice of sweetener. There are many, many versions of this cake out on the internet and it is, with the exception of the sugar usually in it, a pretty naturally low carb cake as it is made mostly with eggs and very dark chocolate.

Being soufflé like this cake puffs right up in the oven and then sinks in on itself just a bit. It amuses me that it looks a bit wonky – it feels sort of cartoon like to me. It wouldn’t win any awards for perfectly pretty cakes, but it wins big time in the super chocolatey taste department.

By subbing the added sugar in this recipe for a suitable lower carb sweetener and using a good lower carb dark chocolate, and by keeping serving sizes small (that’s easy as it is quite a rich cake!), this cake can come in at around 6 – 8 net carbs per slice. That’s peanuts for a rich and delicious cake.

For the sweetener I like an erythritol and monkfruit blend that I buy at Bulk Barn. Lacanto makes a name brand one that is really good. You could easily use Swerve or Truvia or any other granular low glycemic sweetener.

My dark chocolate of choice is President’s Choice Organic dark (85% cacao) bars available from Loblaws (Superstore). They are really dark but still have a creamy mouth feel and I don’t find them bitter at all.

Happy Birthday to me

Print

Keto Dark Chocolate Flourless Cake

A classic decadent and rich chocolate cake, made low carb by simply choosing your sweetener carefully and using the darkest, best quality chocolate you can find.

Course Dessert

Cuisine Ketogenic, LCHF, Low Carb

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 8

Author Mia Staysko

Ingredients

• 200 g dark chocolate 85% cacao
• 100 g butter cubed
• 100 ml heavy cream 32-35%
• 4 tbsp monkfruit sweetener
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract best quality
• 4 large eggs separated, at room temp
• pinch salt or cream of tartar
• 3/4 tsp instant espresso powder optional

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 325°
• Prepare a 7 or 8” spring form pan by lining with buttered parchment (I think you could just butter it if you didn’t have parchment – I used a 7″ pan so it would be a bit taller – and that’s what I have LOL)
• Melt dark chocolate with butter over a double boiler or in short bursts in the microwave, stirring often. Mix in instant espresso powder.
• Beat the egg yolks, cream, vanilla and sweetener together and then beat into the chocolate mixture. It may separate, if it does just mix well with a beater to smooth it out. Add espresso powder and vanilla.
• With a very clean bowl and mixer beat the egg whites with a small pinch of salt or cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Fold whites carefully into the chocolate mixture in three even additions.
• Pour into prepared pan, smooth very lightly and bake at 325° for about 45 minutes. The cake will not quite set (a toothpick would NOT come out clean!) It will still be a bit jiggly in the center but should look drier on the edges.
• Cool and then chill for about 3 or 4 hours. Cut with a hot, sharp knife.
• Dust with a light sprinkle of powdered erythritol or Swerve and serve with a few nice fresh berries.
• Cover lightly once cooled and store in the refrigerator.

Notes

I think this cake is even better the next day! A dollop of creme fraise or whipped cream and a raspberry or two is divine!

The post Flourless Chocolate Cake appeared first on Mia's Daily Dish.