Harbinger Lavender Farm

My mom and I visited the Harbinger Lavender Farm for their Open House last Saturday. It is a small family farm where they grow lavender (using no chemicals) and make products with dried lavender and lavender oils. We even had lavender lemonade and lavender sugar cookies. They grow Provence and Grosso varieties at the farm. 

The farm is located across the bridge from the Outer Banks in Currituck County, so they have sandy soil just like we do. The plants love it. The lavender ladies recommend mulching with white sand or gravel for the sun to reflect light and keep the plants dry. The humidity of our area is a challenge for them -- at the farm they set the plants wider apart so that air can circulate around them.  

The ladies recommend that lavender plants receive at least six hours of sun per day and excellent drainage. In the fall they prune their plants by one-third into a dome shape. In late winter they add lime to their fields. 

After looking around we hit the field and clipped a bunch of lavender to bring home to dry. Hang lavender upside down to dry so the stems remain nice and straight. Drying will take about two weeks. At the farm they hang their bundles in an old barn that is dark, dry, and well-ventilated. They propped the door open and I took a picture. It smelled great in there. 

Seafood and Spice

For a few weeks I was on a major seafood kick. I would stop by the seafood market on my way home from work and cook it up. Now the tourists have invaded and I don't want to drive anywhere. But here are a few of my latest favorite dishes. 

Shrimp and Grits

We visited Tybee Island in February for Kate's birthday and had a great version of shrimp and grits at a restaurant there. I've been making shrimp and grits with okra and tomatoes ever since. First I prepare the grits according to the directions on the package. I love Bob's Red Mill grits. Then I slice a couple of spicy sausages. I use aidell's sausage, the cajun style andouille flavor. Then I peel the shrimp. If you're cooking this dish with a friend and the friend asks if they can help you with anything, look busy and say: "oh, maybe you could peel the shrimp while I'm getting everything else ready." If I'm using large shrimp I de-vein it so it has a nice butterfly shape. Also a good thing for someone other than you to do. 

I cook the sliced sausage while I dice the tomatoes, okra, and garlic. Throw in these three ingredients with the sausage. Add a little butter and white wine. Add a little salt and pepper at some point, but not too much if you're using spicy sausage because it adds lots of flavor. Wait to throw in the shrimp until everything else is almost cooked, because shrimp only need a few minutes. Cook them until they are pink and no longer translucent. Add some green onions just a minute before you turn off the heat under the pan. Serve over grits. Drink the rest of the bottle of white wine with dinner. 

Blackened Trout

This is an easy way to prepare fresh fish. I have experimented with making my own blackening seasoning, but for this dish I just bought pre-mixed seasoning at the seafood market. While I heat up an iron skillet I coat fillets of speckled trout with the seasoning on both sides. I add butter to the pan once it's hot and cook the fillets for a few minutes on each side (for thin fillets like these a few minutes will do; add more time for thicker fillets.) Only turn them once. Top with a pat of butter and sprinkle some chopped cilantro on top. Chris made the potatoes, and I just lightly steamed the sugar snap peas to go along with the fish. 

Lemon caper flounder

I stole this flounder recipe from Back Porch restaurant in Ocracoke. Lightly dredge flounder fillets in a breading of flour, cornmeal, salt, and pepper. Pan fry it a few minutes on each side. For the sauce, melt a little butter (I just did this in the microwave), add some lemon juice and a lot of capers. Pour over the flounder after assembling a plate with flounder and white rice. I used Basmati rice and it was excellent with the sauce. I also made a tomatillo and corn relish to go along with the flounder. I also couldn't resist the softshell crabs at the seafood market, so Chris panfried a couple of those to go along with the flounder. 

The softshells were so fresh they were still alive. They cleaned them for me (removed the lungs and intestines) at the seafood market. The woman came out of the back with the cleaned crabs and was chuckling (in a creepy way, I thought) about how the crabs were still moving. 

"They don't know they're dead yet," she said. 

"Yeah," I said, "I feel kind of bad about that." 

"Just don't name them," she said. 

This meal was awesome with the new Radler beer from the local micro-brewery Weeping Radish. 

I said yes

Chris asked me to marry him and I said yes. Actually, I got a little choked up (who, me? Me who cries at those black and white Rice Krispies commercials?) and I couldn't say anything for a second. So I just nodded enthusiastically until I could squawk out yes. Because I started suspecting something when Chris asked me to pick out a ring, it wasn't a surprise, but I don't think I could have been any more excited if it was.

Since everyone I talked to and everything I was reading said that it takes six months to plan a wedding at the very least, I was anxious to get started since we want to get married this fall. Turns out that planning five months out seems to be working just fine. Within a week we were able to reserve the location and the photographer that we really wanted. We're also planning on doing quite a few things ourselves, with the help of my very talented mother and sister. And hopefully a few friends, too. I'll be baking cupcakes instead of hiring someone to bake a cake. I'm thinking about carrot cake, even though the time I made carrot cake cupcakes for Lori's baby shower all of the carrot sank to the bottom. So I'll do a few trial runs and take notes. My mom will be in charge of the flowers, and hopefully we can use mostly plants and flowers from our own garden. We'll start researching some fall-blooming plants. I like these. There's a great how-to on making your own bouquet on Real Simple's site.

No matter what happens with the cupcakes, catering, music, or decorations, at the end of the day we'll be married. I asked Chris what he was looking forward to the most about being married and he said, "having breakfast with you."

Oh Snap!

If you want an instant gratification garden, plant sugar snap peas.

My sugar snap plants have taken off. These first two pictures were taken about a month ago, on April 27. 

Here they are today. I filled this container with several snap pea plants, and planted nasturtium seeds around the border. I thought it might get a little too crowded, but everything seems to be thriving so far. Fast and easy, sugar.  

Sugar snaps grow best in cool weather, so I don't think they will survive the summer heat. They can also be planted in late summer for a fall crop. 

Outer Banks Arboretum

This Saturday was the Coastal Gardening Festival at the Outer Banks Arboretum. Chris and I donated our extra plants that we started from seed to the Master Gardener's homegrown plant sale. It was a relief to get the extras off our hands. Chris's apartment was starting to smell like one big peat pot. 

I helped my Mom with her container gardening display for the festival. We assembled containers as demonstrations, and then they were raffled off. I think these containers were the reason that they ran out of raffle tickets. 

One of the best things about the gardening festival is that it draws attention to the Outer Banks Arboretum in Kill Devil Hills. Not many people, even locals, have visited the arboretum before. This is one of my favorite containers in the arboretum (also created by Mom). 

This is one of the containers at the entrance to the arboretum (yep, Mom again--isn't she fabulous?). 

 

All of my efforts to be kind to the planet were cancelled out this morning when I stopped to fill up with gas on my way to work. I was too busy selecting my gas grade to notice that whoever filled up with gas before I did failed to release the lever on the pump. Before I placed the spout into my tank gas started spraying everywhere--fast. Judging by my receipt, over a gallon of gas sprayed all over the back of my car and onto the concrete. What a waste, not to mention a mess. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

The Duck Rabbit Craft Brewery

Well-loved kegs. 

Chris and I made a pilgrimage to The Duck Rabbit Craft Brewery in Farmville, NC. Where? Farmville. It's right outside of Greenville, NC. Chris called ahead, which we'd been advised to do by a sales rep at Pigstein. She said if we just dropped by and it happened to be a bottling day, no one would be available to show us around. 

When Chris called the owner told him to come on by. When we arrived the owner himself, Paul Philippon, gave us a tour of the brewery. He was very charming, and never once made us feel like we were taking time away from the million other things he had to do. Which we were. Paul and one other brewer, Ryan, are currently it for the Duck Rabbit Brewery staff. Paul told us he just hired a third brewer from Wisconsin. The guy brought Paul a few New Glarus beers to his interview, so of course he got the job. 

Chris and I have done several brewery tours over the last few years and this was just the best. It was great to hear all about the brewing and the everything else that goes into running a small brewery right from the owner himself. We asked about everything, including the logo, which is a nod to Paul's previous career as a university philosophy professor. 

Duck Rabbit beers are available in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. They produce an Amber Ale, a Brown Ale, a Porter, and a Milk Stout, as well as seasonal brews, which have included a Baltic Porter, a Scotch Ale, and a Russian Imperial Stout. See the beer geeks do their thing at Beer Advocate. I just know that I like these beers and I love that they are made with such care by such nice people. 

Before Duck Rabbit we went to B's Barbecue in Greenville. It is located at 751 B's Barbecue Road. The pork (whole hog) and chicken is cooked over an open pit with charcoal. Chris and I had chicken plates (half a chicken each!) and Phil had the pork plate. With three sweet teas lunch for all three of us came to $20.75. B's cooks in the morning and when they are out of food they slap a sign on the front door and close it up. Fortunately we made it in time, but the sign was on the door when we left. 

Movin' on up

It was time for my little seedlings to grow up and get a place of their own. Last year Chris and I used plastic cups to step up the plants into a larger container before finally planting them into 5-gallon pots. This year we wanted to try to be a little more eco-friendly so we decided on peat pots. We bought them online here. They were cheap, which was good because we ordered 125 of the 4.5" pots, plus some wooden plant markers and more peat pellets. It would have been even cheaper to make our own containers out of newspaper, but we didn't discover this until after we placed our order. Maybe we'll try that next year. 

I prepped the pots like this:

I filled the pots about halfway with a soil mix. I watered my seedlings, which made them easier to work with and helped minimize any transplant shock. Each of the peat pellets has a netting, which I either removed or loosened. The roots were already growing through the netting on most of the seedlings. I planted most of the seedlings so the soil just covered the top of the peat pellet. The tomatoes I planted a little deeper, as there are little bumps on the stalks that will eventually be roots. 

My brilliant idea this year was to keep the plants in boxes, making it easier to tote the plants inside at night. But this is rapidly turning into a cautionary tale, because the peat pots are staying damp and starting to grow mold on the outside. Here's how I packed them originally:

This morning I found a few more boxes and spaced everything out so that air can circulate around each pot. Apparently this is a common problem with peat pots. I read online that mold is specific to what it consumes, so if it is growing on the (dead) peat, it won't grow on the (live) green plant. I never knew mold was so discriminating.