cleavers coffee

So I found this plant growing in my sideyard this spring, which I learned is Galium aparine, also knows as cleavers or bedstraw or a ton of other common names. I also learned that not only is it edible, but highly nutritious. The first few articles I found talked about pulping it into smoothies or making tinctures, neither of which interested me. But then I discovered you can make a coffee-like drink out of it, and that intrigued me. As an experiment, I let it continue to grow- you have to harvest the seeds when they are matured and dried out.

Perhaps a mistake. I have not been out to the sideyard much this summer, and when I finally did check on things, it was all an overgrown mess. A lot of my joe pye weed had flopped over, black-and-blue salvia smothering the gladiolas again, lamb's ears seem to have died out. Not only that, but the cleavers was winding up and through other plants, tangling along with some bindweed or morning glory, and what looks like a weedy grape? I spent a few hours out there pulling the vines out, trimming things, propping up some of the pye stems, pulling weeds. While doing that I noticed that the dried cleavers stems had seeds hanging on them. So I stuffed all those in a bucket.

A few days later I went out and plucked a bunch of cleavers seed off the ground with tweezers. Yes, I do senseless things sometimes. Rubbing them around against each other and between my fingers knocks off most of the dirt. Then I methodically went through all the matter in the bucket. Holding little clumps of stem up against the light made it easy to see the seeds, which have fine hairs that give them a sort of halo. No problem if I dropped any, as they readily stuck to my clothes!

But it was super tedious. When I got to the bottom of the bucket I found far more seeds, however mixed in with broken chaff and fine dirt. I found it easiest to separate the seeds by putting little piles on the table, sifting and spreading it out, and then feeling for the seeds with my fingers, rolling them off to the side, rubbing them together to loosen off any remaining dirt. 

Hours. I would not recommend doing it this way. If I ever do this again, would make more conscious effort to go out there sooner and pluck the seeds straight off the plant before they fall. They are very small.

Next step was to roast them, I used a dry cast iron skillet. A nice coffee-like smell. (Unlike the roasting dandelion roots which smell more nutty).

Then pulverized them in a grinder. (A mortar and pestle would also work, but mine is full of eggshells right now).

Then steeped in hot water. I did a pour-over method, as they ground up so fine I was afraid it might clog the sieve part of my french press. 

How was the drink? Underwhelming. Mild coffee taste, very similar to the dandelion concoction actually. Not nearly so strong as I expected. I used one tablespoon and one teaspoon per the single mug-worth of water (about 8oz I think)- because that's all I had! After all that work. I think it would be stronger if I used a bit more roasted cleavers, or if I used the french press and steeped it longer. As is, it felt not worth all the effort.

what we ate today

out of the garden- rosemary on salmon (with a garlic butter sauce), and tokyo bekana (chinese cabbage) as a side. (Paired with carrots and brown rice cooked in chicken stock. It was delicious!

spring

makes me antsy to get out and do things, build. Forsythia is blooming, time to plant out lettuce but I don't have any seedlings ready. I need to trim the eunoymus, turn the compost pile, clear old leaf litter and replace mulch on the perennial beds, reset some bricks that edge the garden beds where they're leaning wonky, etc. I just don't have the energy yet. I went out yesterday and cleared weeds from one garden bed again, and that wore me out. 

It was the long bed #1, which had chard and strawberries last year (that never fruited). The weeds are so thick in all the garden beds because I didn't mulch properly in the fall. You can tell by how bare the ground is, now that I've pulled out the dead nettle and other stuff. It was nice to see a few bees out foraging on the nettle flowers on a warm day, but I still don't want the stuff all over my garden anymore. Here's the bared strawberry plants. They've spread, but the older plants I originally put in, aren't much bigger than the new plants. And I don't know if any will bear, as I didn't feed them in fall.

A few of the previous years' leaf beet chard rootstock sprouted new leaves. (You can see how far the strawberry runners spread- they weren't planted this close to the rows of chard!)

I cut all those baby leaves off, plus those from one likewise newly-spouted old collard plant in bed 8 with the catmint (it's very small)

and used them in a dish with the cowpeas. Finally I have cooked my cowpeas! I though it odd that after soaking, only some of them had doubled in size. Forgot to take a picture of the final dish. I found (of course) conflicting info online how to cook black-eyed peas: soak or not. I went with a two-hour soak before cooking and don't think it was enough. Had to simmer them longer than the recipe said and they just got barely tender, not creamy. Basically the recipe was: sauté onion, garlic and a bit of minced celery, simmer with the cowpeas in chicken broth and water, add bay leaf and some spices- the main one was thyme which I didn't have so I used summer savory. 

It was not really a hit. It was okay, but nobody really liked it. And the fact that two years' worth of saved dried cowpeas only got me one small meal (I had to cut the recipe in half), was beyond pathetic. My husband said "you were successful! We're eating it!" but I cringed inside.

I do appreciate how lush the cowpeas grew (pic from last season below), and how little they were bothered by pests and disease in my garden- but they just didn't give me enough output. True there'd be more dried peas if I hadn't eaten so much as fresh green beans, but I still think it would have just made a handful of meals, is all.

Well, I'll have to re-evaluate that. In another part of the backyard, my rhubarb is emerging! I really would like to make pie with my own rhubarb and my own strawberries again, but I probably will have to settle for just half of that being home-grown this year.

More pics to come.

garden to food

Picked the first few cowpeas. Young pods. They grow out very fast, long and straight, sticking up at an angle from the stems, so easier to see on the plants. I don't have many yet.

The vines are also getting a lot longer, I'm thinking to try and train lines up to the deck for them to climb, as none of my poles are tall enough. 

Getting more short fat zucchinis. I really think the speckled skins are pretty.

Cooked a shrimp stir-fry with homemade sauce. Included from the garden cowpea pods, sliced zucchini, green onions, ginger mint. The cowpeas were too few and smothered in sauce to get a taste- but added a nice crispness as I hadn't simmered them long enough to be soft.

green and purple

My regular bush green beans aren't producing much. Last two pickings all I got was enough for one serving. I made a new recipe with it, book borrowed from the public library. It's nicely tossed with a tiny bit of butter, garlic, and fresh herbs. The recipe calls for dill but suggests other herbs. I tried tarragon- now that I have a plentiful supply! pretty good. Would like to try with chervil too but mine's long spent.

Cowpeas are finally blooming! Pretty lavender color. Doubt I'll get beans mature enough to save as dried, just hoping for ones to eat as fresh 'green beans' now.

Benne would be a pretty plant, if mine wasn't so damaged by insects. I like the flowers. They now have fat, oblong slightly fuzzy pods on the stems. Intriguing to see them develop as I haven't grown this plant before.

My hollyhock mallows have gotten taller, and the flowers are more visible- makes me think they might be worth growing in the front bed next year.

I have one small cantaloupe!

and have eaten one more zucchini. Nice size and great taste, just wish there were more. Which is a really funny thing to say about zucchini.

from garden to table

No cowpeas yet, but I'm still impressed at how healthy these plants look. Barely touched by the insects, while I'm picking leaf hoppers, stinkbugs and cucumber beetles off the green beans right next to them. Still no sign of little beans yet, but they've begun to send out thick runners. I put up a few poles but will need more- and taller!

One huge cucumber, and a short but very fat zucchini. 

Baked it with tomatoes from the garden! 

 Also made this lentil dish, finally cracking open one of my cookbooks. (The cucumber slices were added as an afterthought, not part of the recipe). Lentils cooked with (among many other things) peppers, bay leaf and ginger mint from the garden. Fresh basil garnish. So the meal had seven things I grew.

My kids were not too keen on the zucchini boats, but they liked the lentils! It was work to prepare but definitely worth repeating.

for chicken soup

fresh out of the garden: carrots, lovage, leeks and tarragon.

I used the tarragon from the perennial herb bed- it was great. Thriving. The more tender mexican mint marigold in the pot is also doing well, but I don't like the flavor as much. 

On the cutting board the lovage, tarragon, leeks

turnip-rutabaga

I never had rutabaga before also known as swedes. I bought the seed to try this turnip-rutabaga hybrid, having read it can have milder flavor compared to either turnips or rutabagas. They grew huge! I hadn't grown many, so pulling four was half the lot. Yeah, the leaves had tons of holes- but I only picked off four small caterpillars. Either because most of the holes are from slugs, or it's prior damage from caterpillars I've already picked off (birds and skinks are helping out there too- I've seen the wren and catbird making rounds in the garden again!

I wanted to make a carrot/rice dish to go with the turnip-rutabaga but realized when I opened the cripser, I was out of store-bought carrots. So happily went down to the garden, very satisfied to find enough were ready to pull- 

This whole meal is garden-grown: carrots in the rice bake, turnip-rutabaga greens cooked with garlic, and the turnip-rutabaga roots simmered in a bit of butter and salt. They were very mild, none of the bitterness I get with turnips, and the greens surprisingly tasty, too. And so easy to grow. I think I might grow these more than turnips next year!

new outside

I planted out my bush green beans and cowpeas- on either side of the leaf beet chard row that grew between the snap peas (now removed). There was more space than I expected, so I sowed a few more too. (Mulch is green. Will make a better picture later when it's dried.)

Unintentionally, I now have tons of tokyo bekana seedlings. When I gathered up the plants, the ones that still had green, immature pods I just hung under the deck to dry. Few days ago I split some open. The seeds were nice brown and dry, but very small. I thought: those won't make great plants. So I crushed all the dry pods and stems, scattered them in the bed with amaranth, adding to the mulch.

Turns out they were plenty viable. They grew up thickly all over the bed.

I've started thinning them. And made a little salad from the sprouts. With shredded carrot, raisins and sesame seed. It wasn't the tastiest, though. Kind of a sharp flavor.

simpson in the heat

Getting hotter- it's going to be above 90° today. Some of the simpson lettuce were looking a bit leggy, so I pulled 'em.

There's one row left, probably will pull by the end of the week. We have plenty more days in the eighties and lower nineties. Good news is, that means tomorrow I can start planting out my cardinal climbers, benne, amaranth callaloo, peppers, etc. And start the final lot- zucchini, cucumber and green beans (cowpeas in this case, unless I change my mind last minute. I also have seed for bush beans and the purple pole beans still).

Cheers! Day before yesterday I spied a bit of normal-colored green on the fenugreek. Looked close- there are new leaves growing, and they look fine. I promptly repotted all the basils and some of the waiting garden plants- younger peppers, zebrina flor- into the better soil, and tossed the old that was full of wood (at least it felt and looked and smelled like shredded bark or wood chips). 

My root bed is doing very well. I don't know why so much better than the spot they were in year before- more sun? improved soil (finally enough compost over the years)? or because I got rid of a large portion of pests with the insecticidal soap? Maybe they are healthier because followed the beans. If that's it, they should do great in the bed that has peas right now, next year . . . 

I'm thinking this because I pulled some lovely turnips last night- the best I've grown yet- and made a turnip/peas dish with fresh dill and butter. My husband liked it, the kids tolerated it enough to actually eat some, haha.

dead nettles

After the snow melted, I was able to pick a batch of purple dead nettle from the yard- and most of the leaves look perfect, no insect damage.

I lightly stir-fried them and ate with rice and sweet red beans for lunch. Took half an hour to pick and clean the nettles- but felt worth it to get something fresh, green and healthy from the ground when there's almosr nothing in the garden.

wonderberry pie

So I finally made a pie of those berries I picked and froze all last season. Wonderberry, aka sunberry, aka garden huckleberry. It's in the nightshade family, so I admit I felt hesitant to actually eat them even though all the info tells me it's fine if they're ripe- and I kept thinking of all those people who were afraid of eating tomatoes for centuries . . . 

I had only two cups, so cut the recipe in half for one small pie.

You cook the berries to soften them (though perhaps since mine were frozen I could skip that?) and they turned kinda green which was a bit unsettling

more so when mashed they looked greyish- ugh-

but I found that's natural it's same as when purple pole beans turn green in cooking- and when I stirred in the lemon juice it reverted to purple.

Ready for the oven

My husband liked it! The taste and texture (not so chewy but definitely full of seeds) reminded him of the mulberry pies I used to make. To me the flavor was a bit more rasin-y. It was pretty tasty with some vanilla ice cream. Not like huckleberries or blueberries at all (which the name and appearance resemble) but all its own thing. 

So this year I'll have to grow at least two bushes, then we can have more pie! and it's pest-attracting properties seem very useful in the garden, that makes two good reasons.

sculpit and nettles

Garden eats are pretty skimpy now. I picked this heaping lot of purple dead nettle from the yard- after washing and taking only the nicest leaves off the stems (without a lot of bug holes or slug evidence) it's only a fourth this amount. Also cut what little bit of swiss and leaf beet chard was still growing, and baby leaves of kale, made green tortillas with the combination.

Found that my kids like the nettles well enough cooked in a bit of olive oil until just starting to crisp, tossed over noodles as an extra among the other vegetables.

Earlier in the week I cut some sculpit to cook with onions and mix into cous cous. Found that some had made horizontal stems under the leaf mulch, with new shoots going up. I didn't know it would have this growth pattern. Nice to see that the plant will spread, so I won't need to sow more to expand my patch of it. Instead, I ought to remove the nepitella which I don't eat, and give this more room.