On-the-Fly Spinach Tart

November 4, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My plan was an easy dinner tonight. I’d been saving a few artichokes—letting them get big, so we could have steamed whole artichokes. I figured I’d make a salad with some leftover cous cous in the fridge, and maybe fry up some tofu crusted with herbs and parmesan cheese. Quick and easy.

Then I went to the garden and saw the spinach. Beautiful, glossy leaves, loving the bit of rain we’ve had recently. There was so much of it, I couldn’t resist.

So instead of a quick, easy meal, I made a spinach tart to go with those artichokes.

Dinner was a little late, but it was well worth it. There wasn’t a crumb left when we were through.

Trying to work quickly, I didn’t bother looking for a recipe. Here’s what I did.

I made a standard pie crust—enough for a single-crust pie. I rolled it out and lined my tart pan, then put it in the fridge to chill while I prepared the filling.

For the filling, I used:

Fresh spinach (maybe 1kg (2 lbs), coarsely chopped)

Fresh chives (a good handful, chopped)

Fresh dill weed (4 Tbsp, chopped)

1 cup grated goat cheddar

4 large eggs

salt and pepper to taste

I cooked the spinach and chives with a few tablespoons of olive oil until the spinach was well cooked, and most of the water had boiled off. I removed it to a bowl to cool. When it was cool enough to handle, I squeezed more water out of the spinach, and drained it off. (You want the spinach pretty dry, to keep the crust from getting soggy.)

I mixed in the dill, cheese, eggs, and salt and pepper, then poured the mix into the prepared crust. I baked it at 190°C (375°F) for about 40 minutes. I let it cool ten minutes before serving.

A New Gardening Lexicon

November 2, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

A nice tidy rolag.

I’ve noticed that the world of extreme gardening doesn’t have a very good vocabulary. There just aren’t the words to express the particular situations, actions, and states one experiences.

So I’ve developed my own gardening lexicon, to try to fill that gap in the English language. Here are a few of my words:

Chook—verb. To toss something to the chickens. E.g.: Just chook those weeds—they like them.

Chookable—adjective. Suitable for the chickens to eat. E.g.: Those weeds are chookable.

Dinger—noun. A rock in the soil, accidentally struck by a gardening tool.

Goat—verb. To toss something to the goats. E.g.: Goat these branches—they like them.

Goatable—adjective. Suitable for the goats to eat. E.g.: Those branches are goatable.

Grunter—noun. A weed that requires significant effort (and usually a tool) to pull.

Hum-dinger—noun. A particularly large rock in the soil, accidentally struck by a gardening tool.

Pop bead—noun. Insect pest. Name comes from the sound it makes when squished between the fingers.

Rolag—noun. A term borrowed from weaving. Weeds that have been hoed into a tidy roll, ready to be lifted into the wheelbarrow or thrown on the compost heap.

Squeaker—noun. A nest of mice, when overturned accidentally by a shovel or spading fork.

Superman tree—noun. A tree or shrub that looks difficult to cut, but is actually easy to cut, making the cutter feel like Superman. (See also Wonder Woman weed)

Twitch light—noun. Couch grass with unusually fine runners.

Twitch-on-steroids—noun. Couch grass with unusually thick runners.

Twitch-headed—adjective. Having weeded so much that you see weeds when you close your eyes.

Wonder Woman weed—noun. A weed that looks like a grunter, but is actually easy to pull out, and makes the weeder feel like Wonder Woman. (See also Superman tree)

Aquilegia

October 31, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

One of my favourite flowers is blooming—Aquilegia, also known as columbine and granny’s bonnet.

I can’t tell you why I like Aquilegia so much. I’m generally not a fan of frilly flowers. Perhaps I like it because, though the flowers look delicate, the plant is tough as nails. This particular specimen is growing in what used to be the driveway—a hopelessly compacted combination of clay and rock, dry as a desert most of the time—and is all but shaded out by the pittosporum behind it. It thrives, and has even seeded itself into other places in the old driveway.

Or maybe I like it because, in the Eastern US where I grew up, the native columbine, Aquilegia canadensis, attracts hummingbirds and hawk moths. Here, the bumble bees visit it, but little else. Apparently, of the 60-70 species of Aquilegia, several have evolved exclusive relationships with particular pollinators.

Whatever the reason I like them, the flowers make me smile every time I pass them.

Apologies, I’m tired…

October 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

When the day’s work is done
And exhaustion kicks in
And you want to collapse
You know you can’t win.

The blog must be written!
It doesn’t matter
That your hands are all blistered
And your mind is a tatter.

Just put down some words
Your readers won’t care
If you spell a few wrong
No need to rip out your hair.

Just type a few rhymes
They don’t need to be good.
Explain that you’re tired,
You’ll be understood.

Just whip out that blog post
In record time.
Then take a hot shower,
And a nice glass of wine.

You say Iris, I say Orris

October 29, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

When we first planted our herb garden, nearly ten years ago, we planted a ‘knot’ of rosemary and lavender. In all the spaces inside the knot, we planted other herbs—a wide range of thymes, oregano, salad burnet, chives, etc. This iris was one of them (though we’ve since rescued it from being smothered in the knot). It is not a herb we ever intended to use—we just thought it was interesting. It is Iris pallida—the iris that is the source of orris root.

Orris root used to be used medicinally, but today its main attraction is its smell. It is used in perfume and potpourri, and in a Moroccan spice mix called Ras el harout.

I love the word orris, because it’s so clearly a case of dialect confusion. Say ‘iris’ with your teeth clenched, and you’ll get ‘orris’.

I can just imagine how it happened…the doctor calls on a patient in a remote village. He examines the man, and asks the family, “What have you done for him so far?”

“We’ve given ‘im a bit of iris root.”

“What? Orris root?”

“Yep, iris.”

“What is orris? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s this plant, blue flower, grows down by the creek. I’m sure ye’ve seen it before.”

“Hm.” The doctor scribbles orris root into his notebook, and forever after iris root is known as orris root.

Umami Stacks

October 28, 2016October 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My husband came home from work early yesterday, which gave us a rare mid-week chance to cook dinner together.

“What I want,” he said, “is some sort of pastry. Little rounds topped with feta cheese and…I don’t know what. What’s out in the garden?”

“Pak choi, asparagus, artichokes…” I began. “Artichokes would be good.”

“Yeah, but a lot of work.”

“Not if you use last year’s canned ones—there are still some left.”

Before we knew it, we had concocted these incredible little pastries. We called them umami stacks for their dose of umami-rich ingredients. They were as beautiful as they were delicious. With mid-week meals like this, it’s no wonder we never bother to go out to eat.

We measured nothing, but here’s an approximation of a recipe…

Make your favourite pie crust—enough for a double-crust pie. Roll thin and cut into 8-10 cm (3-4 inch) rounds. Arrange the rounds on ungreased baking sheets and chill until you’re ready to use (my recipe made 24 rounds).

Toast a few tablespoons of sesame seeds in a dry skillet until browning. Grind them in a mortar and pestle with some coarse salt and black peppercorns. Set aside.

Slice a generous handful of portobello mushrooms, and sauté with a little garlic. Set aside.

Steam 10 asparagus spears. Remove 8-10 cm tips and set aside. Chop the remaining stems.

Mix in a large bowl, mashing slightly:

feta cheese (about 125 g)
canned artichokes (1 pint jar)
spinach (several good handfuls, cooked well)
fresh dill weed (a handful, chopped)
1 egg
the chopped asparagus

Spread a dollop of the feta mixture on each pastry round. Top with a few slices of mushroom and an asparagus tip. Sprinkle with the sesame seed mixture.

Bake at 190°C (375°F) until the pastry is lightly browned—15-20 minutes.

*We had six pastry rounds left over. I spread them with softened butter, sugar, and cinnamon, rolled them up, and baked them with the umami stacks. Mmmmm!

Midnight Flowers

October 26, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We have several pittosporums around the house, mostly Pittosporum tenuifolium, also known as kohuhu. Kohuhu are nice hedging plants, and form lovely dense shrubs when pruned. They’re a great background plant—like mood music—a lot of nice greenery, but little character.

Until they bloom, that is.

And only at night.

Pittosporum flowers are the kind of blooms that you can walk past a hundred times a day and never see. They’re about the same colour as the branches, and sit nestled among the greenery. They attract no bees or butterflies.

But walk past the same bush in the dark, and you’re practically knocked over by the smell. Heavy and clinging, the smell must attract all the night-flying moths and beetles for miles around.

I’m generally not a fan of smelly flowers, but there’s something marvellously incongruous about pittosporum flowers—so inconspicuous during the day, so in-your-face at night. The smell has become as sign of spring for me, and I always make sure my early-morning chores take me close to one of the bushes at this time of year.

Orb Weavers

October 24, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Weeding can be tedious, miserable work. Hard on the back, hard on the hands, and downright painful in much of my garden, where nettles and thistles grow exuberantly.

But there are some perks. Weeding brings you close to the vegetation, and gives you a chance to see things you might otherwise miss.

Today I was treated to two native orb weaver spiders—two of my favourite native spiders here.

The first was a bright green, round-bottomed Colaranea viriditas—the green orbweb spider. These little gems are supposedly quite common, but the bright green ‘leaf’ on their backs must do an excellent job of camouflaging them, because I count myself lucky when I see one. Unfortunately, my camera was nowhere close, and this one scurried away before I could catch it.

The second orb weaver I saw today is an expert at camouflage. You would be hard pressed to recognise it as a spider at all most of the time. This spider is in the family Tetragnatha—the big-jawed spiders. Tetragnathids have long thin bodies, and sit with their legs stretched out to the front and back, making the spider look like a small twig (I had to poke the one pictured here so it would stand up and look like a spider for the photo).

Tetragnathids are usually associated with wet areas, so I’m not sure what they’re doing in my dry yard, but they’re certainly common here. Though they’re hard to see, you can’t swing a sweep net in the tall grass without coming up with a few of them.

Both these spiders catch flying insects in webs shaped like the classic Halloween spider web—orb webs. Is it a coincidence that I saw them both today, a week before Halloween? Maybe they’re practicing for their big night.

Or maybe it was just my lucky day.

Crowded House

October 22, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Last night the temperature dipped to -1°C. Fortunately, it had been forecast, so I pulled all the tender plants out of the greenhouse and into the heated office for the night.

It was a truly glorious sight—the seed shelves full of just-sprouting cucurbits and corn, and the floor carpeted in tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and basil plants.

I look forward to getting all those tender plants back out to the greenhouse—I can’t even walk through the office, let alone work in there at the moment—but it was fun to have all the plants together for a photo shoot.

Supreme Spring Salad

October 21, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We had occasional salads all winter, from the fall planting of lettuces and spinach. We’ve also had several salads from this spring’s lettuce planting. But all these salads have been small, and have required me to scrounge every available leaf to glean even a modest quantity.

Today’s salad was the first of the Supreme Spring Salads—salads for which I have so much lettuce, I can choose to pick only the best, most perfect leaves, and can adjust the proportions of each variety to perfectly suit the meal. I also had a few lovely radishes from my daughter’s garden to add to the salad, making it even more perfect.

And this was just the first. With luck (and a fair bit of weeding), we’ll have many more Supreme Salads to look forward to in the coming months.