Posted on 01/02/2021 6:43:19 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
THE GARDENS OF THE ORIENTAL PALACE, TIVOLI, ITALY
The most interesting information about these gardens is perhaps the fact that they were established for the wife of an accomplished dignitary of Italy because she was very depressed. Talk about being over pampered. Well love surely is blind. Apart from this little fact, the gardens are famous in the whole world for their beautiful fountains.
I actually have a Villa d'Este recipe, that's why the gardens looked familiar.
Risotto can Carciofi / Risotto with Artichokes | Luciano Parolari, Villa d’Este / SERVES 4 to 6
Easy, elegant risotto was Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s favorite. They stayed at Villa d’Este on fabulous Lake Como when they first traveled to Italy in the 1950’s. Chef Parolari shares Verandah Restaurant’s secret recipe. Can serve w/ any Italian sausage grilled or sauteed w/ sage and butter.
PREP Slice artichokes very thin. Set aside one-half. Saute rest on med in tb ea melted butter, ol/oil 3 min (soft in center). Set aside.
RISOTTO BTB then keep at a bare simmer 6 c chix stock. Cook/stir/soften onion in tb ea melted butter/olive oil on med w/ wooden spoon til translucent 3 min. Add rice; cook/stir 3 min, coat every grain w/ butter and oil. Then add ½ cup spumante (sparkling wine); stir til absorbed. Add cup stock; stir til absorbed. Add uncooked sliced artichokes. Continue adding stock ½ cup at a time, stir frequently; absorb liquid before adding more stock. Cook rice just tender and creamy but al dente, 15-20 min. You may have leftover stock. Add 1/2 cup spumante; stir well. Offheat, stir in 3 tb butter, Parm, s/p. Let rest 1-2 min.
SERVE topped w/ sauteed artichokes, sprinkling of minced Italian parsley.
NOTE Eataly, NYC has fantastic Carnaroli rice; worth the effort to find it, but dish is still delicious with arborio rice as well.
Our camellias, which normally bloom late winter, very early spring, are starting to bloom now. One flower is fully out and quite a few other buds are showing color. Looking at low temps this coming week, they’ll probably get frozen before they fully bloom.
Wow, looks sooooo good, thanks!
Seed companies are still being hit hard. Baker Creek shut down their website temporarily. They said between the high order volume, and the staff shortages due to people being quarantined, they just couldn’t keep up.
Normally, I spend weeks going through the catalogs, making a list of everything I’ve marked, checking variety names to see which catalog has the best price for each variety, culling the list until it fits my budget, etc, until I finally order around February. This time around, I’ve been ordering a little recklessly. When Adaptive Seeds unlocked their page and started accepting orders, I got my order in immediately. Same with Cultivariable back in the fall. I’ve been watching certain varieties at Baker Creek, but those were still showing “out of stock”.
I’m in the process of setting up my Seedwise seller account. I’ll probably only have a couple things listed, but one of them will be the Bigger Better Butternut squash. I don’t know exactly how much seed I have yet, because we’re still eating them. Roughly half the crop is left, and shows no signs of deterioration yet. Those are excellent keepers! I’m curious to see how many manage to last the full year that Carol Deppe described, and how sweet they are by that point.
Some exciting projects for this coming year. A plant breeder on the Permies.com forum has promised to send me some landrace breadseed poppy seeds. He has a patch that self-sows, and is aggressive enough to compete with the weeds. He pretty much just harvests the ripe pods, and the plants do everything else on their own. I’m hoping they’ll do the same here.
On the same forum, a bunch of people are brainstorming ideas for an automated biochar-maker that works with crop debris. I have 10 acres (part tillable and part soon-to-be orchard) that I’d like to amend with biochar. But, that’s a LOT of biochar, and I don’t have a lot of wood. What I do have is a ton of crop waste, like chaff and empty bean shells. I’ve been making tiny amounts of biochar from that, but an automated burner would be so much easier!
Stay tuned :)
Thanks for the Head’s Up on the seed supply. No dilly-dallying this season - I already ordered the basics and have seed in hand.
I’ll take what I can get for the rest of the ‘stuff’ I want, not need. ;)
I’ll re-order bare-root roses in the spring. I did have ONE casualty that I know of out of the 15 or so I planted this past season - we’ll see who makes to cut come spring and I’ll re-order accordingly. I had NO Japanese Beetle damage due to feeding them the ‘goop’ they need, 3x last season. It’s just watered in; I want as little maintenance as possible for my roses.
I also decided to do some actual bed ‘plotting’ this season, on paper and everything! I normally just wing it and usually have MORE veggies than I know what to do with, but I feel the need to do a lot of successive planting next season and make good use of every inch.
Beau has already been alerted that I will need beds lightly tilled this upcoming spring, so he needs to have the small tiller in good shape...and I saw that he moved it into the garage to work on, so at least he’s listening, LOL!
I’m up to 14 seed catalogs right now. Happy, Happy!
And, yes. It was only 56 degrees IN my old, drafty farm house. I was playing, 'Laura Ingalls Wilder' in those days; I threw another quilt and a dog on the bed that night!
The “Weed” is miners lettuce and I have no idea how it got started???
Hey free superfood can’t be beat!
You need to talk to the Moms in the area, select a kid that’s being ‘naughty’ and get them out there to weed your garlic! :)
I am interested in the High Yield and the All-Tomatoes beds. 24 plans are available for raised beds and some look like they would do fine in containers, too.
That High Yield one is basically Square Foot Gardening.
Do you need special seeds to grow tom’s or peppers? Can you use seeds from store bought veggies?
Garden plan bookmark
I feel the NEED for SEED!
Burundi: Farmer finds new technique for preserving tomatoes
Vital Nduwimana hated how many tomatoes he lost every season. For years, his tomatoes started rotting just three or four days after harvest. He felt frustrated.
Mr. Nduwimana explains: “I was not able to sell all my tomatoes; I lost almost half of my production. Worse still, I would sell at a low price in the market. So in 2015, I thought that maybe I should find a tomato conservation technique.”
Mr. Nduwimana grows tomatoes in eastern Burundi, on Kabuyenge hill, five kilometres from the Tanzanian border.
In eastern Burundi, tomatoes are abundant during the harvest months of August and September. But growers find it difficult to keep tomatoes for later sale, which leads to a large number of tomatoes rotting.
Mr. Nduwimana tried several techniques to solve his problem. He tried storing his tomatoes in water, in clay, underground, in cartons, and even in sand. He tried everything that came to his mind—but without success.
Then one day, he noticed that the tomatoes he had kept next to his banana trees were not rotten. Then he noticed the ash at the foot of the banana trees.
He decided to try keeping his tomatoes in ash and found that this was more effective than any of the other techniques he had tried.
He uses ash from a chimney, and sifts it three or four times to remove large residues, debris, and other foreign materials. Then, he dumps the ash into a paper carton and places the tomatoes in the carton. With this technique, Mr. Nduwimana manages to safely store his tomatoes for many months.
He explains: “I keep my tomatoes in the ash for a period of five to six months, so I can sell them in December, January, or February when the price has risen—since tomatoes are rare and become expensive during this period.“
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