You Grow Garden

 

I'm so delayed on posting that I just wanted to share how lovely our garden is growing these days. During my detox I was looking out at a straggle of grass and yuck. Many of these photos are from over a month ago. More to come soon. Humor me while I take another blog break. The first one was so productive and I've now lost 14 pounds on Kasia's Whole Foods plan. The garden has a white, lime green and red "theme" with hints of lavender coming later in the summer.

E. ordered our mulch and we hired some help but did most of the mulch ourselves over a weekend. It is such rewarding work. Very much like polishing silver. You have an immediate sense of gratification.

I moved these hosta's from a sad little area in the corner of the yard and they have flourished here!

E. and our great pal Brad hung a new glass door in our old shed. E's been working on this baby all winter and it is nearly finished. We found this fabulous green lamp at Housewerks. It is from the Natty Boh factory and E. had it rewired and mounted outside. How Baltimore is that? We had dinner watching the sunset in our little red chairs. We dream of a deck here one day.

My sweet Charlie has also created a real live orchard at Stone Hill Farm. We have one  apple tree (shown on the left) and three pear trees (to the right). He chopped the taller branches down so the fruit will stay lower to the earth and we can hope to have more fruit. It seriously looks so different now. There is more light on our fig trees and the upper part of the garden.

The side yard now has white impatiens after the beautiful pink peonies died off and our hot, hot pink azalea leaves dropped.

It is a happy day when you fold up your mulch tarp for the season.

I hate this grass and need to dig the stuff up. It would be awesome if it actually worked like a border but alas, I've tried and tried and it just clumps up.

Hydrangeas are one of my all time favorite flowers. We had them all over our wedding too. I love this pre-bloom photo.

 

We've planted red geraniums every year in these pots that were left at the house. This is in honor of our honeymoon location at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island. The red pops of color makes me so happy throughout the garden.

Our back yard finally looks good too. Some of the hosta's and sedum came back up.

The Shasta daisies are up now and I've pulled out the white leggy pansies from the winter and replaced them with white impatiens.

We have worked hard to kill the weeds this year. Say some prayers the new grass seed and weed killer works. I've enjoyed watching the redheaded woodpeckers during our breakfast. We truly lucked out when we found this place and all of the hard work is so worth it.

Blessings to you my Charlie for all of the hard work you've done on the yard. Can't wait to watch our garden grow this summer.

Five Spiced Chicken Stir Fry

Hello good people. This may be the longest little blog break I've had since I started back in August. It was much needed. I was traveling last week for a conference in Virginia Beach returned home and immediately got sick. This is par for the course lately for me. So I'm taking action. I'm on a mission to fight off my weak immune system and jump start a health kick. I've even gone to a nutritionist and am starting a 30 Day Whole Foods Detox Program next week. Very against the church calendar to start a fast on Holy Saturday but it is a must. My intro to the program was this Saturday and I learned so much about the toxic nature of all things in the world. Jet fuel has been found in breast milk in every country, vacuum often with hepafilters to get rid of the toxins that fall from your fire proof and toxic mattresses, don't run any where near a road with diesel buses nearby...and a hail storm of other scary stuff. Check out my nutritionist's website www.kasiakines.com. She is amazing and I feel like a new person after starting a B-12 regimen a few weeks ago. 

I have already dropped coffee down to two lattes a week, vs. one triple shot from Charmington's every day! I had a killer headache for one day and then it went away. I only drink booze on the weekends so that won't be too tough to break, but food preparation will be the ringer. I love to cook. I love to bring people around the table. I love meat. I love cheese and dairy. So what else will I eat? Who knows but I hope to blog a little about it and see what happens. Oddly enough I had a pretty great recipe that was in my hopper for the blog, Five Spiced Chicken Stir Fry. Aside from the corn starch I think this is a wonderfully balanced and organic meal.

Start by sauteing your Brussels sprouts. You can find these all the time at Whole Foods thankfully. They are nuggets of goodness. I slice them in half, add sesame oil to a heavy pan and sear them until they caramelize. When they turn bright green, about 5-7 minutes, deglaze the pan with approximately 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. Remove broccoli from pan and set aside.

Use skinless, boneless, organic chicken breasts (1.5 for two people with leftovers).

3 cloves of garlic, sliced

4-5 stalks of organic celery (holy scary pesticide stories about non-organic celery!)

1 more teaspoon of sesame oil

1 tablespoon of Chinese Five Spice blend

1 tablespoon of corn starch

1 carrot, sliced in ribbons with a peeler

no salt, it is salty from the soy sauce

I've had the same can of five spice for at minimum ten years and oddly enough it still tastes amazing. 

Sear your chicken until nearly cooked and add the celery and carrot ribbons. The vegetables will sweat and release water while cooking. This is easier in a wok, but somewhere in the move the Wok has run amok. Push the vegetables and chicken mixture to the sides.

Add your corn starch to the middle and watch the sauce thicken. 

Add your broccoli back to the pan and coat with the sauce. Serve with brown rice. I learned a little trick from one of the chef's I worked with on plating rice. Pack your cooked rice into a small miso soup bowl. Flip upside down on your plate and you have a fancy little mountain of rice. Vegans, you can remove the chicken all together and just add other vegetables or even pineapple.

I want to congratulate Maggie at Freckled Citizen for being the winner of my first ever Stone Hill Farm giveaway. She was the only person who entered and I'm so glad she did! She has a fabulous blog and is a cookbook collector as well. Enjoy Maggie. I'll send you the cookbook soon. Wishing all of my friends a holy Passover and a wonderful Holy Week.