Mission: Seed Saver

Did you know that there's are thousands of vegetables such as onion, pumpkin, potato, tomato, carrot, and every thing else that have been common for all of history, but t would disappear if it wasn’t for the work of the seed savers?

A Seed Saver is an agricultural defender of bio-diversity to whom it falls to protect and share all kinds of seeds in order to protect variety. This is a none nonprofit organizations since the 1975 and for about ten years ago there's an Italian organization, called Civiltà Contadina, that defends bio-diversity through seed savings.

Plus there is a website that gives information about the ongoing projects, the kind of seeds which are in peril. The organization has a news space where in the field of seed saving & bio-diversity post their relevant news.

I simply enjoy any kind of fruit and vegetables, and find the news quite interesting. Go and read up on all the fights and effort that are going into preserving the legacy for humanity and the planet. Most countries in the world have agencies that work on keeping seed stocks including the United States. Although the farms, labs, & vaults have been shamelessly under funded since the Reagan administration. Norway is building a international seed vault for the Global Crop Diversity Trust up in the arctic circle inside a mountain. It’s so 007…

Vacation Burndown

So I returned from vacation on Monday, and am full of ideas for the garden & the kitchen. Visited the Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia with it’s restored 17th century French kitchen gardens, a friends garden in the woods of Cape Breton, picking wild mushums in the wilds, having a Texas toast BLT with chanterelle mushrooms, trying to trap crawdads in main, farmers market shopping, fermenting tomato seeds, and picking my garden produce when I have been gone for 2 weeks. Plus the automatic watering system worked while I was gone. Lots of stuff happened garden, culinary, and otherwise…

chantrelle mushroom

Jiving with Chives

The other day I had a discussion at my community garden plot on humble Chive. You know that innocuous, tough, grass looking, purple flower and interesting herd. Our garden plots have a lot of chives, almost to the point of weeds depending where you go. The guy next to me is using his plot to do some sort of garden scape that relies heavily on chives. He kind of has a veld of chives… Anyway, he is nice enough to let me pick some of the blooms in spring, and here we get to the beginning of the list of uses of chives that apparently only I have put together.

Let me start at the beginning, I use chives in cream cheese or on the rare occasion when I actually eat cottage cheese. You know just mix some pepper, salt, a pinch of sugar and some chives to taste into the dairy; let sit for a half hour if you have the time & enjoy. Also, I use chives on baked and mashed potatoes. I used to chop chives up with a knife, but now I just use my kitchen sheers to cut them into the perfect length.

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are great on salads and mixed into vinaigrette dressings. And when available I used the fresh blooms of chives in salads they add a lot of color, and some light chive flavor. I’m always looking for new flowers to eat in salads, so add chive blooms to the list of nastrums, roses, and borage blooms you can eat on you greens. And the blooms can be used in one other fun way; in vinegar. Use an old Patron tequila bottle (large opening and ability to cork it is why I like the bottle) stuff about two dozen freshly open blooms into the bottle and add some nice white vinegar. In about 15 minutes you’ll see some of the color of the blooms leaking into the vinegar; let this sit in the sunny widows for 2 weeks to age & flavor the vinegar. The vinegar has nice onion flavor and a nice reddish color. Great for cooking or making more vinaigrette.

I usually keep the chive plant bloom-free, because the stalks get harder and I have been told the chives get more bitter. However waste is not good so before the blooms open I pick all the budding stalks, and stir fry them in oil and splash them with sherry or sake before I serve them. They are great on top of meat or another veggie. This is just like serving Chinese onions which are a larger Allium.