Sapping, spaetzle, and an infestation

© 2017 Joshua Stark

The fun with the stand mixer continues!  I've whipped up egg whites for home-made Belgian waffles, and made a gingerbread (from James Beard's recipe) with the paddle.  I've also tried the dough hook twice -- for a soda bread, and yesterday, for spaetzle dough.  I'm still getting the hang of it, but it is coming along.

If you've never made spaetzle, the recipe is super easy: 3 cups flour, four eggs, a teaspoon salt and another of nutmeg, and about 1/2 cup of water.  After mixing the dry ingredients together, mix the eggs in the middle with half the water, and then beat in the rest of the water until it's a smooth, elastic and fairly sticky consistency.  The dough hook worked for this part really well, and let me do other things while it worked.

Now, the hard part (for spaetzle):  I don't own a spaetzle press.  I do it the old fashioned way, by cutting it on a board... something like what this absolutely amazing woman does.

Please, take a moment to watch that video, because that woman flat-out rocks!  

Anyway... I'm actually nothing like that woman.  First, I don't have a board with a handle.  Second, the board I do have is too wide to fit into my pot. I also don't have a knife that flat -- my knife is too sharp and kept getting caught on the board. What I got was a quick whipping up of the dough, followed by an hour or so of wrestling with a very sticky, gooey mess.  

I finally was able to cook up a bunch (it kept growing and growing!), served alongside garden chard and elk meatballs. The kids liked it alright.  The wife absolutely LOVED it!

That latter fact bodes ill for my future.  


Now, for the infestation:

Not the best pictures, but they clearly show what was a short-lived infestation of maybe twenty or so Meleagris gallopavo.  They were first heard jumping from our roof to our neighbor's roof -- I wasn't quite sure what they were, then hey!  There's a jenny staring at me through the window!

I called a couple of times, since a jake was keen on struttin' his stuff, and then I hooted like an owl a couple of times and three or four of 'em immediately gobbled back.  It was great.

I don't know if they were roosting in one of our gigantic trees, but we'll be looking for them tonight (update: no return of the flock).

These are city-folk, and we won't be hunting this particular flock come Spring.  However, I have been very pleased with the efforts of our first bird last year


Speaking of trees, I just this morning discovered that people tap walnut trees for sap.  I have a monster English walnut in my back yard (it could easily accommodate three taps), but I have a sneaking feeling that our temperatures rarely get cold enough for a good flow.

Has anybody out there tapped trees in California?  Have you tapped trees where you maybe get three weeks, total, of below freezing temps?

How to cook nettles

© 2012 Joshua Stark

Here is a short video my friend Abby from This Old Blog put together for me.  If you don't realize it, she is the reason this video is so professionally put together; I did everything in my power to make it stink, but she is very good.

One bowl oatmeal biscuits

© 2011 Joshua Stark

And by one bowl, I mean you don't take the dough out of the bowl until you put 'em on the cookie tray.

It's unrelated to my typical stuff (I didn't grow the oats or flour, milk the cow or mine the baking powder), but it worked out so well that I thought I'd write it down here.

First, the ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups flour (I use a half-&-half blend of whole wheat and unbleached)
1/2 Cup oatmeal
1/3 Cup vegetable oil (or butter)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 or so Cup yogurt

Next, directions:

Heat your oven to 450 degrees fahrenheit.
Cook your oatmeal according to their directions and let it cool (I use leftover oatmeal)
Add the oatmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and oil, and mix it together.
Add the 1/2 Cup of yogurt and mix it together.  The mixture should be wet dough - it comes together as a ball, but it's a bit slimy.
Cut 12 pieces out of the dough, one at a time, and put them on a baking sheet.

Cook them for 12-15 minutes.

No rolling, no kneading.  The oatmeal imparts some liquid and also makes it easier to shape on the cookie sheet, so they don't look like flour drop biscuits.  The oatmeal also makes the biscuits moist.

It's a good, simple recipe.  I hope you like it.

Update: Around the garden and yard (tip!), pickling, and looking for ideas

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Well, it looks as if my latest attempt to keep the ducks out of the raised bed (give 'em one bed, and fence the other with five-foot bamboo trellis) is proving successful, but I wonder if it's only because they are getting older and care less about thwarting me.  Whatever the reason, I'm getting a late batch of corn, beans and possibly okra - I'm especially excited about the beans.  I wish I had pictures for you all, but our camera was stolen from our car a couple of weeks back (along with my fly rod)...

The potato patch (described here) isn't working as I'd hoped - I only see one potato trying to grow, and it doesn't look like it can work its leaves through the bamboo sun-shade I'm using.  However, I'm still hopeful, and the plants I put in on top are still coming up, too.  They aren't looking too healthy, but this is a learning process, and next time I plan to layer some good soil from the worm bin in-between layers of straw.

My lawn experiment is also coming along nicely.  When I built our little duck pond last year, I inadvertently killed the majority of our lawn.  You see, I used the dirt from the pond to in-fill the lower sections of the yard, but I didn't really believe that the dirt below the topsoil was sterile.  Boy, was I wrong on that one.

Gratefully, the ducks have been fertilizing that dirt for the past year.  However, our very hard rains this year turned much of it into durn-near cement (if you put the emphasis on the first "e" in cement, you will pronounce that properly), and I, having no intention of renting a roto-tiller just to find out where my sprinkler lines are, started looking for a short-cut.  This time, to my surprise, I found one:

First, I mowed down the straw used by the ducks.  Then, I soaked the yard really good.  Next, I spread grass seed (by hand, of course - if I'm not renting a rototiller, I'm sure as heck not buying a seeder!), then covered them in a layer of mulched straw, and watered that down.  Every day for the first few days I sprayed the patch, and now, two weeks later, my test patch looks nice and green! A couple of days back, when I saw that the grass had established, I raked up the larger straw, and I'll be danged if it doesn't look like we have grass on our lawn. 

Of course, the ducks couldn't leave it alone, and there are a couple of holes (especially right where the sprinkler pops up), but those can be fixed with extra seed or a patch of sod.  Overall, I'm tickled pink at how well this worked. 

I also finally got around to dealing with my ketchup walnuts.  Instead of the nine days soaking in vinegar, I actually soaked them for over two weeks, and I must say that the vinegar became even darker than I'd remembered.  I wasn't too worried, though, since vinegar just gets better with age, and nothing was going to start growing in that acidic and tannic concoction.

Yesterday, I drained out the vinegar into a stock pot, put in some ingredients (drat! I forgot the horseradish), and about 30 minutes later, I canned four pints of green walnut ketchup. 

I then crushed the walnut chunks (I had a lot), added four apples and a cup of raisins, then some surgar and spices, and made up four pints of chutney, with a little left over for last night's dinner.

Both recipes can be found at my "Green Walnuts & You" page.  I added allspice and cinnamon to the chutney, and it is something special.  If you've ever had store-bought chutney, homemade blows it away - so long as you use good vinegar.  It is smoother, much less sharp, yet still vinegary in a good way.  I could have added some more heat in the form of more cayenne, but then my wife wouldn't have liked it nearly as much.  For dinner last night, the chutney and some yogurt made wonderful fillips for a split pea soup. 

Pickling Walnuts: issue

© 2011 Joshua Stark

First, I must say that the pickling liquid I made up (thanks, Cottage Smallholder!) smelled absolutely amazing.

However, I've noticed that, since pouring it in the jars, the amount of liquid seems to have gone down, leaving a couple of walnuts exposed.  I'm turning the jars every couple of days and refrigerating them, but I was wondering if anybody else had experienced that problem.  I'm guessing the walnuts absorbed a bunch of liquid, which makes sense, but how does one get around this?

I'd love to hear from anybody with expertise on pickling walnuts...

Anybody making stuff with green walnuts?

© 2011 Joshua Stark

I'm working on a green walnut page, to include basic preparation, recipes, hints and tips.  If you have any suggestions, let me know!

Tonight, I tried a green walnut ketchup & nocino barbecue sauce for some grilled spareribs (I dare not call them barbecue'd).  I improvised, with about 1/4 cup ketchup, 1/4 cup vodka nocino, 1/4 cup molasses, liberal amounts of thyme & powdered garlic, some salt, a couple tablespoons of brown sugar, some paprika, and a chopped onion and garlic clove. 

I didn't cook it down enough, and so it was more of a pour-over-the-meat sauce, but wow it was good.  It was like dry-rub good, but with barbecue sauce caramel-y goodness.  Cooked down to barbecue sauce consistency, it would have been amazing.

I will definitely do this right, and very soon.

P.S.:  Even fewer pictures right now, because somebody absconded with our camera (and my fly rod).  I'm sad about the camera... & devastated about the fly rod.

Just try it!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

We are lucky to have some adventurous kids, and though we don't know how far, culinarily, this will go with our 8-month old, our four-year old is doing just fine. 

I've watched many kids balk at something out of their ordinary, no matter how ordinary it may be in the real world (see:  broccoli), and I've watched parents buckle under and just give 'em what they want.  Pick your battles, I'm told.  My response (in my head, of course), "sure, but that infers that you will actually pick a battle at some point".

With our daughter, food has almost never been a "battle".  She'll try anything once, and that's the only rule at our house.  She doesn't have to like it, and if she doesn't like it, she doesn't have to eat it, but she does "have" to try it, and she happily obliges, even when she gives a face upon smelling it.  To even my surprise, she once asked for the eye of a whole-fried mackerel.  Most kids, or grown-ups for that matter, just don't tap that spirit within humanity; we are being homogenized, just like our foods.

At a great party the other day, for example (which she didn't want to attend, it being a zombie-themed party for a 60-year old), I brought along this year's nocino, from last year's squirrel harvest.  I didn't mention that they were knocked out of the tree by squirrels, but I did mention that it is made out of green walnuts, and with that, I'm fairly certain I lost most of my audience. 

This is too bad, because even my nocino is a good, sweet, slightly bitter (but in a good way) and potent cordial with a lot of complexity. 

I catch the same flak about my duck eggs.  It shocks me that people won't try duck eggs just because they come from not-a-chicken.  Our yard ducks live great lives, way better than cage-free, even - a guard dog, 24-hour free roaming, a pond! - but, it doesn't matter.

What amazes me is that these same people grab the Safeway wraps that arrived encasted in plastic and containing who-knows-what. 

Maybe that's my problem.  Perhaps I should have just said, "here's a new liqueur from BevMo.  And try this fritata made fresh at Raley's." 

Now, if I can only figure out how to market squirrel...

Hank Shaw's new book is out!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

My copy arrived yesterday, and it looks great! 

Pick you up one.  While you are at it, see if you live near where he'll be stopping by on his tour.

Chilaquiles done right

© 2011 Joshua Stark

It occurred to me the other day, as I was accidentally making the best chilaquiles I've ever made, that although I have three laying ducks, I haven't posted any egg recipes on my blog.

So, here goes:

CHILAQUILES
Chilaquiles is a typical Latino staple, basically chorizo and eggs with the addition of fried tortilla strips.

Four eggs (duck, although you can use chicken eggs, if you must)
1/4 C milk
Three or four T butter
6 oz. or so chorizo (we use...SACRILEGE... Soyriso)
1/2 medium onion
Two or three tortillas, sliced to about 1/4" by 1 inch strips
Maybe a 1/4 C or more of cheese

Get butter sizzling at medium-high heat in a pan, and cook your onions for about a minute or two.

Scramble your eggs with the milk.

Squeeze in the chorizo, and cook it for as long as the directions say (with soy chorizo, of course, you don't have to worry about undercooking)

When the chorizo is browned nicely, remove it and the onions, and fry the tortilla strips (we use whole wheat tortillas, but it doesn't matter).

When the tortillas are just crisping, dump the chorizo and onions back in, and add the scrambled eggs.

After the eggs cook and start browning, turn off the heat and fold/scramble the cheese into the mix.

Serve with a bottle of Tapatio.

If you try it, let me know.  In the meantime, I'll try to think of other recipes for the gazillions of eggs we get from our three amazing Welsh Harlequins.

Sorry, no pithy narrative on socioeconomic concepts... just doin' what Hank told me to

© 2011 Joshua Stark

After describing the wonderful dinner we had last night, Hank Shaw recommended I put the recipe up on the blog, and since I'm not one to argue with a published cook, here goes:

Braised Venison Shank in Gooseberry & Thrifty Italian sauce

2 venison shanks (I suppose any shank meat w/bone could be used here)
Oh, about 1 Cup of gooseberry syrup
More or less 1 Cup of Thrifty Italian (a green walnut liquor)
1 onion
1 chile arbol, dried
scant teaspoon of allspice
3-4 cloves
Black pepper (peppercorns probably best, we just used rough ground pepper)
Some kind of fatty meat (we used sausage, but bacon works best)
1 T olive oil (we used avocado oil - got it for free)
2 T brown sugar
1-2 Cups of broth (we used Better Than Bullion)

I took the basic braised venison shank recipe from Hank's blog (which he, in turn, adapted from a Portuguese cookbook), but left out the garlic (accidentally). 


I preheated the oven at 300 degrees, and I put in my long casserole dish to heat with it.  I salted the shanks. 

I made small medallions out of a landjaeger sausage, fried them in the avocado oil, removed them, and then browned the shanks, removed them, and browned the finely chopped onion in the drippings. 

Meanwhile, I simmered the liquids on the stove with the brown sugar, pepper, some ground black pepper, allspice and cloves, and dumped the browned onions into it when they were ready. 

After everything was ready, I put the shanks into the casserole, and poured the spicy-sweet concoction over them.  I covered the casserole, put it in the oven, and walked out.

I didn't even set the timer.

Around four hours later, I came back, pulled it out of the oven, and we ate.  My wife had made some brown rice and quiso de pipian as sides, and they fit perfectly.  All three of us loved the dish, and I think baby Ruben did, too - he breastfed that night like a baby possessed (seriously). 

Now I'm going to tell you the truth:  Next to a roast in a crock pot, braising shanks is the easiest way to get the most flavorful, most approachable meat you can serve.  Since the cooking is low and slow, and takes 3-4 hours, it's really hard to get it wrong.  There's no need for basting, no worry over charring parts or losing drippings or anything of the sort.

To get really good braised shank, you don't need the fancy-sounding stuff I used (which is only fancy because it isn't usually found in stores, but it's actually just stuff I have available to me).  Shank meat needs a sweet (brown sugar and/or molasses simply cannot be beat, and adding apple juice, orange juice, or some kind of jam is great, too), some strong spices (allspice, cloves, cinnamon, two of which were already in my Thrifty Italian), a touch of fire (a mildly hot pepper goes a long way), salt (salt), and some bouillon to keep the meat nice and moist.  Part of the enjoyment comes from mixing and matching different kinds of sweet, fire, spice, and salt, but you are just picking the best of the best.  Shank meat is easy, tasty, and makes a wonderful presentation. 

Our gooseberry syrup, by the way, was absolutely perfect for the meat.  It made a wonderfully, glazey sauce to pour over.  It's not hard to make either, especially if you live in California (home to 1/3rd of all gooseberry species). 

The next day, we put the leftovers (with all the sauce) into a soup pot, added about 1/4 C of acorn flour, 1/2 C of nettles, a chopped carrot, onion, and potato, and a couple cups of water, and simmered it for about an hour.  Presto!  Shank meat soup.  I added some green walnut kechup (basically worchestershire sauce) and hot sauce (Tapatio) to mine.  It was great.

We didn't take any pictures, by the way, because I didn't think I was going to post about dinner.  However, with Hank's nudge, here I am...

Definitely try braising shanks some time.  It's very easy, and a great confidence booster, because it comes out so darn good.

Birthday party!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Today, we throw a birthday bash for my wife, and also her brother's wife, who share the same birthday (tomorrow).  Sadly for the sis, this will be the first year that she is older than her sister-in-law...

I'm orchestrating the dinner, which is almost perfectly akin to herding cats.  I love it, however, I really do.

The main course:  Oven fried chicken.  Some good sides (smashed potatoes, hummus, a pasta).  For dessert, I'm making a chocolate cake and a four-sweets acorn cake (it went over that good, Hank, thanks!), and one grandpa is making pio quinto.  Can you, from the meal you read here, determine my family's origins?  Hint:  It's more than one.

I'll let you know how the shindig went down, hopefully with a couple of pics.

Some dairy ideas

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Smarter people than I know why buttermilk (and yogurt!) make better biscuits, cornbread, and cakes.  Smarter people have shown me how to easily make them.

My Dad would occasionally set out some buttermilk with regular milk out to "clabber" (sometimes he wouldn't even put the buttermilk in it for a real taste treat!), but I didn't know it was just making more buttermilk.  Now, I do.

For a great website on making everything from buttermilk to good, hard cheeses, check out Dr. Fankhauser's cheese page.  It is as informative as you can get, yet it is still very accessible.  He starts with buttermilk, goes to yogurt, and then on to cheeses. 

I don't use the good Dr's. yogurt recipe, though.  My sister pointed me to Crockpot365's yogurt recipe in a crock pot.  It is very easy, if a little finicky.  The yogurt is a bit runny, but that's how yogurt is supposed to be; if you want it firmer, squeeze out the liquid.  If you are as cheap as I am, you can use that liquid for making pasta or rice. 

Right now, I've got a half-gallon of milk sitting next to the wall heater, hopefully clabbering, and I'll be whipping up a batch of yogurt in a couple of days. 

Making these things takes a little leap.  Of course we have a good reason to be nervous keeping milk out of the refrigerator, or heating it just a little and letting it sit.  But it is only by taking these little leaps, putting ourselves into slightly uncomfortable places with the hope of accomplishing something, that we learn.  We might fail, but we learn.  (see my myriad pages on trying to grow a garden with three ducks).

Cheese (and dairy products) is one of these places where we can feel a little uncomfortable, learn some hands-on chemistry and biology, and feel like we've accomplished something special when we are done.  It can be a very rewarding process, even when the end result is less than desirable.

I made queso blanco a couple of years ago, and though I didn't fail at the recipe, I learned that I do not like queso blanco, not one bit.  I also learned that many, many people on the internet think that queso blanco and queso fresco are the same thing, and I'm here to tell you that they are absolutely not the same thing.  Queso fresco is fresh tasting, wonderfully fresh tasting, creamy with little ridges where you cut it, while queso blanco is the dairy version of rubber. 

I will definitely try for queso fresco soon, as well as mozzarella (also not queso blanco!) and ricotta.  Perhaps next year sometime, I might even make a cheese press and see if I can get a nice feta or cheddar. 

Have any of you had fun with dairy lately? 

Foraging update: Gather your acorns while ye may

© 2010 Joshua Stark

I found a great little tip about gathering acorns.  Taking a cue from the blog "Ramshackle Solid", I checked out some of our Valley oaks a couple of days after rains had come through.  Sure enough, many of them had split right open, making about one-third of the process of getting acorn flour so much easier.

Click on the pic. for a closer view of split acorns.

With such a great harvest, I thought I'd make my first try something special.  However, Hank Shaw's acorn honey cake was a tad expensive on our current budget, so I made a variation.  I replaced the 1/2 cup of honey with a mix of honey, molasses, and brown sugar.  I also substituted canola oil for the olive oil (ouch!).  Last, I used our duck eggs, rather than chicken eggs.

It is said that one cannot get stiff peaks from duck eggs, and although that is true, it is only true to a degree.  By beating the whites thoroughly and adding sugar a bit at a time, I get something pretty close to stiff.

I used the only springform we've got (10"), and poured in the batter.  After 17 minutes, I started watching it like a hawk, but by about 28 minutes it was done, and looking good!  It didn't rise as much as it would have with the chicken eggs, I'm guessing, but I will say that the mix of sweet substitutes worked so well that I renamed my variation.

The four sweets acorn cake

The acorns didn't just provide a filler, either.  This cake has a toasty nuttiness, and the slightly inconsistent grinding from my blender added tiny, flavorful chunks of toasted acorn.  It was really a treat!

We here have been so impressed with the acorn flour that after today's rains we plan to hit the fields to gather this amazing nut.

I will definitely be adding the Quercus (oak) family to the list of Lands on the Margin's edible plants list.  Keep an eye out for that and all the other plants I'll be adding to a stand-alone page, soon.

Pickled purslane, and some good friends' blogs

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Blessed with a bag of purslane from Dave and Abby of This Old Blog, and inspired by the Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich, I decided to pickle a pint.  In about two weeks, I'll pop that jar and see what we have.

I didn't really stray from the recipe, except I had to use sharper regular distilled vinegar, rather than the wine vinegar for which it calls... thus, I'll let it mellow a bit longer.  It also reminded me that I need to start infusing some vinegars for the winter.  Last year, I did a blackberry vinegar that is just getting better with age, and this year I'd like to do some herb-infused numbers for Christmas gifts and for trying with marinades and pickles.

When trying to get a picture of the jar, I kept having trouble with my camera's focus.  So, I decided to take a couple of other pictures with the 'super macro' setting, which usually gives me good pictures.  They turned out fine, so I'll have to re-fiddle to get a good shot of the jar.

In the meantime, here are the couple of pictures I took.  The first one is a shot of my attempt at a wedding present to a good friend of mine.  I'm designing pretty salmon flies, because the newly-wedded couple are fly fisherfolk.  This is a snipe-and-teal:

The next picture also caused me to do a quick google search, and I'm glad I did.  This, here, is a picture of a sash woven by a friend of mine, Annie MacHale:

An Annie MacHale original that I use on my picking basket

When I decided to post the picture, I thought I'd quickly google her name to see if she was up to anything online.  Sure enough, she has a great blog of her own, ASpinnerWeaver.  Annie spins and weaves, and often makes great period pieces for mountain men, as well as other beautiful works.  If you are interested in weaving, or in art at all, I highly recommend stopping by her site.

The Fruits of Labor

© 2009 Joshua Stark

A great thing about learning to can, preserve, husband animals, and make things is that, when the holidays roll around, you can reach into the shelf, cabinet, duck-house or 'fridge and grab something that you took time to make, that is delicious and healthy and comes from the heart, and give it with love and goodwill to somebody who will appreciate it. You also don't have to stand in line so long, or spend a ton of money (so long as you consciously avoid calculating the hours it took).

I called my sister yesterday to ask about babysitting, and the first thing she did was gush about the elderberry preserves I gave her for Christmas. That was a nice feeling.

As part of my resolutions, I'm planning to make more things and forage more, and also to write more, including at this blog. So, stay tuned. I hope to come around more often.

Happy New Year, everybody!

My cordials were a hit!

I attended a fun birthday party for a dear friend yesterday, and folks tried out my blackberry cordial as well as the green walnut one. Well, both were well received, but the walnut one won out.

In other news, I finished deer season this year with no deer... again. I had a chance on a forked-horned buck this evening, but I would have had to poach it on private property, so no-go.

My First attempt at cordial

Upon tasting, the judge (my wife) declared, "Wow! You've discovered the secret recipe for Robitussin!"

The sweetest, most sincere cooking video I've ever seen

Innocently looking up a decent mackerel recipe, I found this little video by one MaryJose. I don't know anything about them (I just found it and had to post it here), but I think they are cute. Don't be mean, they are very sincere.

Foraging

The archery-only season for deer in the Northern Sierra Nevada drew to a close yesterday, and yet, that isn't a picture of venison...

The archery-only season for deer in the Northern Sierra Nevada drew to a close yesterday, and yet, that isn't a picture of venison...

These are blue, or mexican, elderberry (Sambucus mexicana). Down where we live on the Delta, these plants begin fruiting in June. However, I found myself on some 5-6,000 ft. elevations over the weekend, and found fruiting plants and flowers, which I also gathered.

Not really caring for the taste of fresh elderberries (they remind me of slightly bland blueberries), I never bothered collecting these, but I've recently taken up canning, and I'd heard that they really do better when cooked a bit. Since there were still no deer with antlers (I firmly believe that deer with antlers are a myth perpetuated by the Dept. of Fish & Game), I started picking, and took about five cups.

Later, down the hill, I found a great blackberry bramble, and picked a few cups of those, too. Yesterday, I made blackberry jam (my first time with pectin), two quarts of deep-colored jam, and my favorite. I also submerged the elderberry flowers in a simple syrup and lemon juice and zest.

As for game, nothing in season (that I'd known about), but good flocks of mountain and valley quail, and band-tailed pigeons, as well as squirrels.

Guess what?

I picked up this little gem this morning. Our first! Sorry about the sepia tones, the batteries on our camera were dying, and I couldn't use the flash. The jars to the left are blackberry preserves. The past couple of days I've not gotten any game while hunting, but I did pick a couple of pounds of elderberries, some elderflowers, and blackberries. Tonight, I'll have a one-egg omelet with garlic, tomatoes, green beans, basil, and peppers. The only thing not grown here will be the milk! It's a start.