Square Foot Gardening

Sometimes I get too excited about learning something new that I get ahead of myself. We're not even out of our last freeze in Oklahoma, but I wanted to share with you: I'm starting a garden! I figured I'm knitting, cooking...so why not grow some of our own fresh produce?! (I'm on a journey to be more like the wife of noble character in Proverbs 31 (so along with these talents I bring honor to my husband))

Good friends of mine are preceding me on this journey. Zac and Abbey had several of us over one afternoon for lunch and we talked about gardening and Farmer's Markets. They showed me their garden outside and some flowers they had saved from the bitter Oklahoma winter. Their blog is here. Little Bitty Garden borrows a bit from the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I'm about halfway through the book and I'm pumped! It's small, it's efficient, there won't be so much food that we can't finish....and no weeds!! You build the garden above ground which means that you mix the soil perfectly and never have to add another bit of soil again. You DO have to add compost every Spring, but apparently his compost method is the NON-stinky method.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because that's what the Little Bitty Garden blog and the Square Foot Gardening book are for. But I've planted my seeds (I decided to go the hard/money-saving route) indoors in a seed starting tray and I plan on building my outdoor SFG box, soon. You build a 4'x4' box out of 2x6s and lay a wood lathe grid on top. I'll also need to make a cage top with a wooden frame bottom to keep the rabbits and birds from eating my seedlings.

I remember when I was little my grandmother had a garden. The thing I remember the best was the tomatoes. There is nothing like an organic homegrown tomato. You can eat it like an apple. Just a sprinkle of salt and you're good to go. I guess I'm finding that my grandmother's generation are some of the last of a self-reliant and hardened breed. My grandmother quilted (beautifully!), crocheted, sewed, gardened, cooked and painted. We can't lose these skills. In a world where it's sometimes cheaper to buy the factory-made, I think we lose the "love in the stitches" our grandmothers imparted.

Bibimbap

I went to South Korea when I was 13 and I loooooved it. I ate some amazing food that is still among my favorites to this day. Last week,I decided to conquer my favorite South Korean dish: Bibimbap. It's Korean for "mixed veggie rice." And the best thing: it tasted as good as I remember!!

My journey (Gawd, that's corny, isn't it?) started online, trying desperately to find a good recipe. The best one I found was on Maangchi's blog. Her videos are great! She has a great sense of humor and she's a fantastic cook. I subbed sirloin tip marinaded in yangnyeomjang sauce instead of ground beef, but next time I'm going to do the ground beef like she recommends. I also didn't make the kosari she calls for. I'm still unsure what it is, and I don't remember that being in any versions of bibimbap I've had.

The next step was to go to a great Asian Market for ingredients. Crepe Myrtle Market came heavily recommended from friends. It was modern, clean and roomy. They had fresh (and organic, maybe?) produce and loads of dried and frozen food. It was primarily Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese food from what I could tell, but there was just enough English on packages that I was able to navigate easily. The owners are fantastic, friendly and fluent in English (which helps with my lack of knowledge concerning authentic Asian ingredients). They even had a toy corner where my 3 year old was entertained for a while. It was a life saver!! Oh, and the prices!! They were incredibly affordable, better than Walmart (one of only two grocery stores in town) in quality AND price.

<---My husband made a large enough bowl that he had quite a bit left over. I ate that, too. >:)

We didn't get any bean paste, but we did pick up a bottle of Sri Racha sauce. That was sufficiently spicy. :)

The only cons to cooking bibimbap this time was lack of kitchen space, pots and pans, and rice cooker. If we could have used the rice pot for cooking the spinach and bean sprouts instead of sitting there doing nothing but cooking the rice, we could have had it down to one pot and one pan to cook everything. (You cook every ingredient separately - so multi-tasking efficiently is central to pulling off a dish like this)

I'm going to be shopping for a rice cooker when our tax return comes in. So here go my initial impressions of rice cookery.


(Sally's Kitchen has pretty good reviews of several rice cookers because she uses, like, four a day. Wow. I'm not going to be doing that, but it is nice to know she has used all of these...and more than once each, too.)

NOTE: I have not bought a rice cooker yet. I am currently researching which one to get. So this is more of a PREview instead of a REview. All prices below are the prices quoted on Amazon.


Aroma ARC-1000 Professional Rice Cooker/Food Steamer
$44.52

Likes: It cooks different things, including white rice, brown rice, veggies, etc. It has a time delay feature, which would be great if I got up in the morning in time enough to prep rice for lunch or have enough energy at lunch to prep rice for dinner time. It would be cooked in time for me to get home and cook some sides. Me likey.
Dislikes: Warming feature. In every good Japanese food blog and review for rice cookers they say to turn off the rice cooker warmer function ASAP...otherwise, you're going to get mush with a burned bottom. It makes 20 cups of cooked rice. GOOD GAWD! That is a lot of freaking rice. I am not feeding the (terra-cotta) army here (har har). And as I mentioned before I have limited kitchen real estate.

Zojirushi NHS-10HX Rice Cooker
$49.99

Likes: Size: 6 cup, perfect for our currently small family. It also takes up less counter space. It's a Zojirushi and Japanese cooks love the brand. Steamer rack.

Dislikes: No brown rice setting. No delay timer setting.

Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer
$153.13

Likes: It's so cute!! Ahem, but seriously. Again, Zojirushi is the most popular rice cooker brand in Japan. Brown/White/Sweet rice settings. Delay timer. LCD display.

Dislikes: Price. Size. 5-1/2- cup uncooked capacity...which means about 10 cups cooked. (be careful when buying a rice cooker and know if it's saying uncooked capacity or cooked capacity!)


Zojirushi 3-cup Rice cooker, NS-VGC05
$105.00

Likes: Size. Can cook as little as 1/2 cup (uncooked) rice. LCD, delay timer. Multiple rice settings.

Dislikes: It's a little more expensive. Doesn't have a steamer tray because it's quite a bit smaller.



Zojirushi Micom 3-Cup Rice Cooker and Warmer, Stainless Steel
$124.56

Likes: Multiple rice settings. LCD.

Dislikes: Price is getting on the high side for me. Not as cute as the NS-VGC05 above. Doesn't say it has the delay timer, but I suspect a lot of the Zojirushi DO have that setting, even if Amazon doesn't note it.




So, the good stuff this month is my obsession with Asian food. I blame it all on Miyazaki films and a dish I fell in love with 13 years ago and couldn't get out of my head. :)

Update: Life caught up with us and we're putting the rice cooker purchase on hold. I think we had decided on the Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer
$153.13, but we can't swing that right now. We'll continue to cook rice the old-fashioned way....for now!! :)