Excellent Article on Cooking Veggies

For all you vegetable lovers and chefs: I just found this great article in the New York Times online about the most nutrient enhancing ways to cook and prepare vegetables:

HEALTH / FITNESS & NUTRITION | May 20, 2008
Well: Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Are there ways to get more from the vegetables you already eat?

Quick update on the garden: The “panning for dirt” to sort out “non-dirt” is complete. Now it’s time to add the compost. We are experimenting with compost right now, as in we are trying to revitalize an old compost pile with new life forms. Our seedlings are coming right along as we wait out the last of the Colorado snow season (yes, we do get snow as late as mid-May in the Rocky Mountain West).

Cooking and Gardening: We are so efficient

So, in an effort to cut down on expenses and use only the finest ingredients, we (that being me and Eric, the manfriend) are planting an outdoor and indoor garden. Of course, it will be organic. AND, Eric has decided to use a planting method called “the Square Foot” method. I’m a bit more chaotic about my gardening, I guess….

He is an engineer and has been plotting and planning. I am a chef and have been thinking of what I can use in various dishes. Basil, chayote squash, chipotle peppers…..yummy!

We’re both very excited.

From time to time, I’ll give you the update of how it’s going. In a previous life, I lived in an urban intentional community (http://jasonstreetcommunity.org) and we had a half acre of land to plant a fairly large gardens (can you say “row planting?”). Currently, we are using about 6 square feet of raised beds in Eric’s backyard.

Last week, we spent a whole day tearing Grape Hyacinth, weeds, and grass out of the beds and picking out stones and woodchips.

We moved on to what I call “panning for dirt”. Eric has rigged a contraption that looks like a gold pan, except that you sift dirt through it and what comes out is “pure dirt,” the good stuff.

Probably about a week passed after that (we got busy), and sure enough, little grape hyacinths popped up. After a consultation with our friend and longtime organic gardener, Lori Wostl, we’ve decided to pick up some black cloth and burn the little f-ers. More to come…..