I’m a big fan of vegetables in the crunchy water family (I believe that’s the technical term) – celery, cucumbers, etc. and one of my favorite things to get in my farm box delivery is radishes.

One week, I noticed that the greens on the radishes were looking particularly lovely. Were they edible? Yes! What could I make with them? Pesto!

Since this was an experiment with bonus vegetables (radish greens are now on my list with beet greens as a vegetable gift-with-purchase), I didn’t worry about not having all the right ingredients to make pesto (such as basil or pine nuts). I just threw the radish greens in the blender with some other things I had on hand to see what would happen.

It turned out good enough to share the recipe with you here.

Now that you have your pesto, what are you going to do with it?

You could put in on pasta, sure. You could use it as a spread or a dip. You could use it to dress a green salad. I use it for a roasted vegetable salad that I have been experimenting with and it is perfect for bringing all the random ingredients I found in my cupboard together.

Both the pesto and the roasted vegetable salad feel like good foundations for improvising as the seasons change and different produce is available. What would you add/change?

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We have all been at home for a long time now. Have you been doing quarantine-inspired stuff around the house? You know what I’m talking about:

• Make banana bread (check)
• Make bread (check)
• Make that fluffy coffee (I haven’t tried this yet; I worry that it might be too delicious and take over my life)
• Clean your closets (at this point, I only need the clothes in my sweatpants drawer, but I might regret getting rid of everything else, so I’m holding off)
• Take an online class (check)
• Crafts (check) *more about this later
• Gardening (check)
• Marie Kondo your whole house and garage (Ay caramba! No way!)

The list of possibilities is endless really. I’m sure that I’ve missed some good ones.

I haven’t done anything major, but I have done a few little things here and there that have really made a big difference in how I feel about my home. For me, when I finally break down and do something that I’ve been avoiding, I know that it was worth it because I feel taller when I’m finished.  I know, it’s a little strange, but there is no other way to describe it.

For me, sticking to little, bite-sized projects is key. When I think of a big project that I’ve been wanting to magically take care of itself (like reorganizing the kitchen), I get a feeling of dread that quickly leads to anxiety and avoidance. So, I have been thinking about my kitchen reorg as a bunch of small projects. Sometimes I do one a week … or less, but it’s not so overwhelming. In that spirit, reorganizing the kitchen became:

• Clean the refrigerator (like where you take the shelves out and wash everything)
• Move the coffee maker
• Find a place to store the ice cream maker (even though we use it a lot, it doesn’t need to live on the counter)
• Clean the cupboard under the sink
• Find a new home for that silver tray that has been living on the counter for the past XX years
• A bunch of other stuff that I haven’t started thinking about yet

Even cleaning the refrigerator was tackled one shelf at a time. It doesn’t matter that I did it slowly, I still felt taller when I was finished.

I’ve also made some progress with consolidating/organizing/purging some of my other clutter catchers. Sometimes, just moving whatever doesn’t belong out of a particular location is enough to jump start some sort of resolution to the issue, like when I collected the various piles of books from the various locations around the house into one, big pile in the middle of the living room. I may have had to stare at it for a week, but one day, motivation took over and I organized the whole mess (including re-homing many).

Anyway, I was feeling relatively productive and accomplished about staying home until I saw this story about an artist who is painting flowers ALL OVER her home. It is so whimsical and happy. I mean, look at those doors!

I don’t think that I’m going to start painting flowers everywhere, but I do think that I will keep trying to find little ways to make the most of my home. How about you?  Have you tackled any around-the-house projects?  Did you feel taller when you finished or is that just me?

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Huh?  Kitchen scraps?  What?

Well, it all started one day when I was making something with green onions. I hacked off the bottoms and instead of tossing the little root ends in the trash, I decided to go stick them in the garden and see what would happen.  They grew! And I could go pull one and stick the end back in the dirt and it would grow again!  I love having green onions handy like that.  So, I decided to see what else I could get to re-grow.

I picked celery and romaine lettuce for my next attempt.  These guys got a fresh cut to the bottom of the heart (since they didn’t already have roots starting like the green onions) and kept them in a little cup of water on the kitchen windowsill. They started growing leaves right away. I kept them in the window and just changed the water every couple of days.  Eventually I had the starts of some roots.  So, into the garden they went.

Celery didn’t miss a beat, but I was worried that I might lose the romaine.  So, I watered and watered and told him nice things and he got his bearings and started to thrive.  One of each is not going to be enough to keep me from having to go to the grocery store, so I think I will have to try my windowsill technique on some more kitchen scraps until I have a more robust little crop.

I also planted the end of a sweet potato that I had left sitting around long enough that it has sprouted.  The vine is doing great, I am hopeful that I might wind up with home-grown sweet potatoes at some point as well (I might not, someone was telling me something about having to plant the eyes of potatoes…so I don’t really know what is going to happen, it will be fun to find out!

An extra surprise treasure was that once I started watering my kitchen scraps, a little, baby tomato plant sprouted up.  Poor thing was probably a seed from one of last year’s abandoned cherry tomatoes.  At least now he has a reason to grow up and he won’t just be a lonely seed waiting for his moment of greatness.

One unintended consequence of kitchen scrap gardening is that I now have an overwhelming urge to start composting.  Why not let the rest of those kitchen scraps go to good use?  I’ll let you know when/if I get around to it.

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