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Easy garden fresh tabouleh recipe
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Tabbouleh is a Lebanese dish, considered by many as the "national salad". Its main ingredients are bulgur, finely chopped parsley, mint, tomato, scallion (spring onion), and other herbs with lemon juice and various seasonings, generally including black pepper and sometimes cinnamon and allspice. In Syria and in Lebanon, where the dish originated, it is often eaten by scooping it up in Romaine lettuce leaves. In the Middle East, it is truly a salad with the green ingredients dominating. The dish's global popularity has led to new interpretations and regional modifications such as the use of couscous (which originates from Northern Africa) in place of bulgur.
Ingredients
2 bunches of fresh parsley (1 1/2 cup chopped, with stems discarded)
2 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped
I small onion, finely chopped
6 medium tomatoes, finely diced
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup bulgur
juice of three lemons
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Procedure:
Rinse bulgur in water and add to a large mixing bowl. Combine all chopped ingredients, salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil, and stir. Cover with a clean dish towel and let sit for 1-2 hours or until bulghur is tender.
Photo credit: Ulterior Epicure
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| 3. |
Good Fats, Bad Fats
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Fats have gotten a bad rap. Cruise any supermarket aisle, and the promises of
“fat free” and “no trans...
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| 4. |
Building tomato cages
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By Roger Postley
First of all -- lets get this straight!!! There is absolutely only one correct way to raise tomatoes! (And that is whatever method works for you.) I have used stakes, trellises, store-bought cages, 'post and weave', and homemade cages. The latter has worked best for me and allows me the greatest production in the smallest area. The disadvantage is cost, construction time, and required storage space.
I like tomato cages! Concrete remesh can be found at most major consumer lumberyards. It comes in 50’ and 150' rolls. The wire is very strong and can be difficult to handle. Three essential tools are a small pair of bolt cutters, a large pair of slip-joint pliers, and a screwdriver type nut-driver with an interior hollow shaft diameter just slightly larger than the diameter of the remesh wire. There is variation in the rigidity of remesh – choose accordingly; stiffer wire is stronger but harder to bend.
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| 5. |
Optimal timing for your garlic harvest
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Plants tell us a lot with their leaves. In the case of garlic, they tell us when the bulb is ready for harvest. Or do they?
Scanning some of the literature written by expert growers, we saw differing opinions on what harvest signs we should be looking for:
Garlic is mature when the tops fall over (mid July to early August).
-Eliot Coleman, Author of the Four Season Harvest
When half to three-quarters of the leaves turn yellow-brown, it's harvest time.
-Organic Gardening Magazine
Each green leaf above ground represents a papery sheath around the cloves. Once the leaf tips begin to yellow and die back, its time to dig the garlic. The lower six to eight leaves still being fully green indicate optimal harvest timing: This allots 5 to 7 protective wrappers around the bulb after curing. Our harvest here in northern New Hampshire begins the latter part of July and gets completed by the first week of August.
-Michael Phillips, Heartsong Farm
It's time to harvest garlic in the late summer when the bottom two or three leaves have turned yellow or the tops fall over.
-Ed Smith, author of the Vegetable Gardener's Bible
Harvest in summer when the bottom leaves are beginning to yellow and before more than one or two leaves turn brown (July through August).
-University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension
Fully green, yellow, or brown: so who's right? Well, in a way, you could say that all of them are. It depends on what your garlic goal is. The longer you wait, the larger the bulb. The danger in waiting too long is that the bulb will start to split apart into individual cloves. If Michael Phillips urges an earlier harvest when the plant is still upright and showing a lot of green, it's because he has a different goal: long term storage. An earlier harvest helps insure that the garlic cloves are "well-wrapped" for fall and winter feasts.
One surefire way of knowing whether your garlic is ready is to dig up a test bulb. If it's a decent size and seems well formed, then you can harvest the rest of your crop with confidence.
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