What are you Cooking the Week of January 3, 2021?

[Mike Nolan]

Welcome to 2021. Not sure what we're doing for supper tonight (we've still got leftovers to use up), but we've got a veritable forest growing in the Aerogarden, so we'll almost certainly be having salads tonight.

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[BakerAunt]

We will be having delicious leftovers as well. (Hurrah for leftovers!)

I am making broth today using the meaty bones from our New Year's Day turkey and the frozen ones from our Thanksgiving turkey.

[Mike Nolan]

Last week I made about 3 quarts of stock from the bones of the turkey breast we had on Christmas, so I've got plenty of turkey stock for the next year.

[Italiancook]

Mike, I looked at the Aerogarden website trying to find this answer but didn't find it. Before Cbristmas, I saw online a hydroponic parsley grown in a jar. Is Aerogarden hydroponic or soil-based?

[Mike Nolan]

It is hydroponics, the pumps circulate the water about 1 hour out of every 12. Our 'farm' garden has two 2-gallon tanks, each of which holds 12 pods.

There's also a seedling starter top that I believe has 85 openings, which is a lot of plants to start, I'm assuming they won't get very big before they're starting to crowd into each other, so I'm not sure if we'll buy one of those for starting some plants for the 2021 outdoor garden or not.

We did buy the 'start anything' kit to plant some butter crunch lettuce, 1 of 5 sprouted, I will probably pull the 4 that didn't sprout and try them again this week. (The butter crunch seeds were from last spring, but I was hoping for somewhat better germination rate.)

The lights come on at around 8AM and go off around 11PM, though you can adjust that up or down, as well as when the daily cycle starts.

Recently I've been topping off one or both tanks nearly every day, all that growing uses up a lot of water. It's also in a south-facing window so there's probably some evaporation due to sunlight.

Liquid plant food is added every 14 days, and they recommend draining the water in a tank and replacing it periodically, every 2-3 feedings. I haven't done that yet, I will probably need to do it to the right garden in a week or so. (I'm going to ask my wife to talk to the hydroponics expert in her department to see what his recommendation is on replacing the water.)

Here's what our gardens looked like before today's harvesting. Lots of dill and basil. I'll probably use the dill in a batch of chicken stock, not sure what I'll do with the basil, maybe a pizza.

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[chocomouse]

Mike, I never change the water in my Aerogarden - unless I'm starting over a whole new garden. I shut mine down at the end of the indoor/winter gardening season, around early-mid May, and clean it. I then start it up in the fall, usually Oct-Nov. Between the Aerogarden and the Gro-light system, I aim to have home-grown salad and fixings year round. I wish I had the 24 pod system, although with the gro-lights I really don't need it, but the Aerogarden grows faster and bigger produce.

[chocomouse]

Tonight we had husband's birthday dinner: grilled strip steaks, green salad, rosti potatoes, and buttercup squash, and red raspberry wine from Leelanau winery in Michigan.

[RiversideLen]

Your dinner sounds delicious, chocomouse, is the wine sweet?

I made a sirloin steak with mashed potato and frozen mixed veggies.

[Joan Simpson]

BakerAunt I agree with you on leftovers, love them. Tonight we had all leftovers of roast beef-n-gravy, over rice, black eyed peas and corn bread.

Chocomouse your dinner sounds great.

Mike your garden looks great.

[BakerAunt]

I keep showing my husband pictures of Mike's garden--hint, hint.

For lunch on Monday, I made Curried Butternut Squash Soup. I first roasted the squash, then pureed it with some broth. (Memo to self: use deeper pot when using stick blender.) I added 1 tsp. of Penzey’s Now Curry. I have enough for two more lunches.

I made mashed potatoes on Monday for dinner to go with leftover turkey and some peas and carrots we microwaved.

[RiversideLen]

I made a stir fry with thinly sliced brussel sprouts, carrots, green pepper, mushrooms and some leftover steak. Had it with angel hair pasta.

[Joan Simpson]

We had another chef salad using up lettuce and deli meats of turkey and ham,added cheese,boiled eggs and tomato,husband had a baked potato to go with his.

[chocomouse]

Len, the raspberry wine is sweet, but not overly sweet. Excellent flavor. I just learned yesterday that when we are in Michigan for almost 2 weeks next summer, teaching and selling for my sister's handpainted yarn business, we'll have one whole day off with no classes or traveling - so we plan to visit some new to us wineries and revisit several that we have been to over the years. Of course, that is all dependent on Covid and events and businesses being open.

[chocomouse]

BakerAunt, a good use of your stimulus money!

[cwcdesign]

Will went to the garden on Saturday and our bib lettuce was ready for picking Also still have some carrots and radishes and lots of box choy! getting ready to start seeds for March plantings

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