Turning up the Heat

I've spent the last year trying really hard to up my tolerance for heat in food.  Coming from Iowa, and raised in a Norwegian family, the only 'spices' we used growing up were sugar, maybe salt, and maybe a little pepper.  But rarely pepper.
I've always been a mild food eater, afraid to try anything that might have even the smallest amount of heat.
Then I realized that I was missing out on some incredible food all because of my wuss of a palate.  So about a year ago I started add a bit more heat to my food.  It started with my chili, which I spiced with some chili powder, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper.  I tend to eat my chili with cheese and sour cream, which helped cool my mouth between bites.  After a few months, I was able to tolerate a decent amount of heat and was ready to graduate into something heartier.
I took a cooking class at Flavour cooking school in Forest Park where we cooked with pablano peppers.  We grilled them and blended them with other ingredients to make a green salsa.  It was hot.  But I could handle it.
Friday night I cooked up some homemade creamed corn, which called for chipotle peppers in an adobo sauce.  They were nice and hot and smokey and they made the dish sing with flavor.  And I had a second helping!

So I'm not quite to the point where I'm chomping on jalapenos (jala-painfuls, as someone I once knew used to call them), but at least I'm working my way there!

Backyard Garden Update

I snapped this pic of my backyard garden so I can update you on all the goodies growing!  You can see in the back of the frame that my potatoes are getting HUGE!  It looks like one giant shrub.  :)
The back of the larger bed now houses 1 tomato plant and 2 bell pepper plants.  To the right side of the peppers are some yellow onions.  The turnips are getting large and my row of beets are coming in strong too!  You can see a small row of lettuce and arugula at the front of the bed and a few random bush green bean sprouts popping up here and there as well.
My snap peas (not pictured) are climbing strong up the trellis.  My one pole bean sprout was eaten by some critter so that's a lost cause.  My strawberry patch is growing strong and beginning to flower and my asparagus are tall and starting to fern out!
I also have two pots with herbs: basil, parsley, and thyme.  I was able to use the thyme this week in a recipe for a spicy cilantro lime marinade for skirt steak.  I love being able to step into the backyard and pick fresh herbs!
This weekend I want to plant another seed or two of bush beans and I will check in on my squash and watermelons at the community garden.  So far everything is coming up beautifully!

Corner Garden: Community Garden

Friday night we finished building the community garden.  We have 25 beds in total, one compost pile, a huge mound to grow a pumpkin patch on, and 2 larger member beds for high yield produce.  It was a lot of hard work but man am I excited about this project. 
I spent Sunday morning planting butternut squash and sugar baby watermelons in two of the garden beds.  My 'neighbors' in the garden are Tina (who is also planting squash) Melissa/Matt (who is planting a whole bunch of produce using the square footage gardening techniques) and Charles/Lisa (who are planting potatoes). 
I'll be sure to post photos throughout the summer as the garden fills with yummy produce!

Corner Garden

Chris and I spent part of the weekend helping build a community garden, "The Corner Garden", in Brookfield.  Our church, Compassion UMC, is organizing and overseeing the garden.  We're hoping the garden will bring people together, offer folks an organic space to grow vegetables, and help provide some food to our local food pantry (for those in our town who are hungry).
Friday night a group of about 12 of us got together and started on the project.  We built 20 raised beds out of cedar planks, I picked up two trash bags full of garbage off the lot (seriously people, stop littering!), and we picked up rocks to prepare the space for tilling.
Today my friend Karl is tilling the soil and tomorrow night we will lay out the beds and fill them with organic soil and compost.  Then it's time to plant!

I have taken on two of the twenty beds.  In one bed I want to plant butternut squash and in the second bed I want to  plant sugar baby watermelons.  I thought it best to grow these crops in the wide, open field of this community garden versus my back yard, because squash and watermelon like a lot of room to stretch their legs and I don't think Fred will take kindly to them stretching all over her lawn.

We will also have 2 large member beds where we will grow large yield crop.  Anyone who tends a small 4 x 4 bed, can pick any of the produce from the two larger member beds.  We plan to grow summer squash, cucumbers, basil, rosemary, tomatoes, and hot peppers. 

I'm really excited about this project.  It's a lot of work but this space is just an empty lot in Brookfield.  I feel good that we've picked up the trash and we're turning the space into something beautiful and useful.  :)

Garden - May update

Here is an updated photo of the raised beds in our backyard!  In the bed closest to the camera, you can see the potatoes have sprouted!  In the center bed you can see my thick row of turnips followed by a thinner row of beets.  And at the front of that bed are a few arugula sprouts.
And in the farthest bed you can see my strawberries are growing.

Not pictured are the asparagus that are growing tall and the snap peas that have begun trellising up some netting attached to our fence.  It's going to be a delicious summer.