radishes Archives - JoyFoodly

I’ve yet to meet a child that didn’t love to dig in the dirt for fresh vegetables. It doesn’t take much to get started with a small home garden. This week, I’m thrilled to have a guest post by Susan Huff of The Soulful Seed With heartfelt love for home gardening and a career helping families and communities make this a reality, Susan brings a loving and easy approach to help you get your first home garden started this summer. Thank you, Susan!

When we eat food, we have the opportunity to begin a relationship with food, paying attention to what fuels our bodies and satisfies our soul. It can also provide an even deeper experience with the earth, the climate, the location and the space we live in. It all begins with a garden! Few things are more satisfying than growing food you can eat. Regardless of where you live, or even the space you have, there is always an opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with food and health when you start a home garden.

Gardening is popping up everywhere. Co-ops, community gardens, school plots, and even social media, like these fun suggestions for kid friendly gardening, provide ample examples of how easily YOU too can do it. Yet, many see the term “home garden” and feel it is a project only done with success by those with tons of experience or someone to teach them step by step in person. Gardening is an art form, and should be treated as such! The canvas the colors and the medium are all about your preferences and your enjoyment! Any art project can seem daunting if you feel it has to be perfect or it should be done a certain way.

The truth is that gardens are a direct reflection of you – a personal statement about what you love to eat, what you enjoy planting, and how much you want to develop that relationship with your diet and your connection with its process.

There are thousands of plants we can choose from and hundreds of ways to practice the art of gardening. I want to share a few ideas on how to get started simply, easily and without stress. Your spot, plot , or plan should feel positive, should be fun, and most of all, it should help you bring about good lessons to help create more of what you want!

Fresh veggies are about the most favorite things in my life- be it a cherry tomato, a clipping of basil, or a handful of arugula -nothing brings me more joy than walking out the door at the end of the day and bringing in a part of my meal that’s fresh and homegrown by ME!! Let’s begin by picking a few things that grow well in most every part of the country(watch your temps to see what works best for you). These four are a great beginning for the home gardener:

Cherry tomatoes
Radishes
Greens (pick a variety you love!) and
At least two herbs–I love thyme and sage

Just be sure to use good soil – possibly a mix of gardening soil and peat – available at all garden stores – rather than potting soil or top soil which can make the process more difficult. Remember, a good rule of thumb is that less is more! Now, you are on your way to success.

The road to beginner’s success is to use raised beds or container gardening. I have a few tips to get you started:

Start small: 4’x 6’ is way better than 40 x 60 I can promise you!
With just a few clay pots, you’re ready to begin. Add a few rocks in the bottom of the pots for good draining. I even love using wine corks–they are the bomb for this!
Most greens are best planted from starts you can get at most any garden center.
Radishes are always planted by seed and are the fastest to grow -yea they will be here in 28 days just in time to keep you from giving up!
Tomatoes can take the longest – so this is the time to learn about nature and her plan – patience and acceptance are the most promising lessons that come from gardening.
Another rule of thumb that will help is to plant the seed as deep as the seed is big and you will be fine – and don’t forget to water the soil well prior to planting anything!

Make sure you put your home garden in a place you have to trip over to get into your car! This way you will keep an eye on it and remember it needs care just like YOU. Begin with plants you love to eat; why grow a ton of squash if you don’t really enjoy it? I try to grow what I love, what is hard to find in the organic section, and what is best cut fresh – like butter lettuce!!! Remember this is an act of love- make it your canvas, make it fun, make it your meditation on what fuels your body. Food is a gift and if we treat it as such we are satiated with much more than just taste or even flavor. This is love – from our garden to our heart! What better way to say “I love you” to your body, health, and planet than to have a home garden! Ready set – BEGIN! I can’t wait to hear about your first sprout and how big your smile was!

Be well, eat well,

-Susan Huff

Susan Huff is an organic gardener, a chef and a slow food follower. For thirty years, Susan has been gardening and educating communities to design and create their own gardens.

In addition to her gardening pursuits, Susan has created three cafes, appeared in multiple television spots, and published several articles in Florida Gardening Magazine.

We’re joining Healthy Planet US this month to “take back lunch!” During May, you can join in this deliciously fun 21-day healthy cooking challenge. It’s easy to join: register at https://healthyplanetus.org/21daychallenge/. On May 11th, they will be giving away three Joyful 12 memberships, so be sure to register to receive daily updates and inspiration!

I was never a PB&J kid. I didn’t like sandwiches at all. Orange squares of cheddar cheese, atop salty crunchy Triscuits with a medley of fruit—this, I relished. But the sad bologna squares my friends ate with their Cheetos were not for me. From a very young age, I knew lunch was more than calories to fill my stomach. It was a chance to laugh and talk with my friends while munching on a small meal that satisfied my precocious need for variety, texture, and colorful bites to sample.

Not much has changed. When I’m cooking with kids or teaching adults in a class, I love to expand their ideas of what a tasty but simple lunch can look like. Ingredients are paramount, and my preference is to start with the vegetables first and build the rest of the meal around them. That’s fairly easy, when you begin with what’s in season. Right now, I’m seeing peas, radishes, and strawberries everywhere, so that’s where I begin.

When our partners and good friends at Healthy Planet US, Bryan Jersky, Chief Grower and CEO, and Erinn Butulis, Head of Storytelling, asked me if I’d like to share a fun recipe for their take back lunch challenge, I knew I’d need to channel my inner child to share a simple yet fun way to incorporate vegetables into the beloved sandwich—with an open-faced twist. My dislike for sandwiches hasn’t budged much in twenty years (or so!), but my love of savory and sweet spreads on artisan breads has just begun.

Toast bars and featured specialty toast menu items are all the rage now, and not just in San Francisco. Thick slices of homemade breads perfectly toasted with rich, creamy, and crunchy toppings satisfy customers’ basic needs to feel nourished and delighted. While, I’m a huge fan of supporting these restaurants, as a cook I know that in my own home kitchen, I can recreate these experiences, get more value for my dollar and even make them more vegetable focused.

This spring I’m making two cream cheese based spreads in the Joyful 12 that are made with radishes and are perfect on toasts and to dip spring veggies into as a snack for kids. Bringing back one of my childhood favorites, strawberry cream cheese, I mix fresh radishes, strawberries, and cream cheese together with just a hint of honey to produce a creamy pink spread that’s perfect on bagels and toasts alike. Using the same method, I can quickly switch up the flavors by using the ranch flavorings in my “Easy Homemade Ranch Dip”, mixing dried parsley, granulated onion, salt and pepper, with cream cheese and grated radishes. Just a warning—this dip can be very addictive!

The really fun part of making your own food is the twists and turns that can happen when you start with a recipe you know and trust but then deviate with whatever is on hand. This is exactly what happened with my pea toasts. I figured if radish spreads were delicious on toast, why wouldn’t a pea spread work as well! The French adore the simple pleasure of fresh, organic butter on toast topped with spring radish and a sprinkle of salt. Thus, my pea butter was created as a deviation from a classic that works—but with a pea perfect twist. Believe me, when you eat one of my creamy sweet pea butter toasts with crunchy sugar snaps on top, you’ll be glad you took back lunch by making it yourself!

A Rainbow of Radish and Spring Pea Toasts

2015-05-05 16:07:54

Serves 4

Save Recipe

Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

20 min

Total Time

35 min

Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

20 min

Total Time

35 min

Ingredients

Red radish, 1 bunch (divided)
Breakfast radish, 1 bunch
Sugar snap peas, 1 cup
Bread, your favorite toast bread (4-6 slices)

Sweet Strawberry and Radish Cream Cheese Dip

Strawberries (fresh), 5
Cream cheese, 8oz
Red radish, 5 (from your bunch)
Honey, 1/2 TBS

Savory Red Radish Cream Cheese Dip

Red radish, 5 (from your bunch)
Cream cheese, 8 oz
Parsley (dried), 1 tsp
Onion (dried), 1 tsp
Salt, 1/4 tsp
Black pepper, 1/4 tsp

Sweet pea butter

Unsalted organic butter, 4 TBS
Organic frozen sweet peas, ½ cup
Tarragon (fresh), 2 tsp.
Salt, ½ tsp
Zest of 1 orange

Prep

Take 5 minutes to get out all your ingredients, measuring and cooking equipment needed, and place them on a cookie sheet within easy reach.
Wash all produce.
Bring cream cheese and butter to room temperature.
If using fresh peas, blanch them in boiling salted water for 1 minute, remove and drain before using to make the pea butter. If using frozen peas, bring to room temperature before using to make the pea butter.
For the mixture of radishes you’ll use to top the toasts, cut into thin rounds and set aside.
Snap peas used for topping your pea butter toasts can be left whole or sliced down the middle to reveal their interior peas.

Assemble

For either of the radish dips, blend the 5 radishes that go into the dip in the food processor until finely grated.
Then, add all other ingredients, depending on which dip you’ve chosen, and room temperature cream cheese. Blend until smooth in a bowl with a fork or spatula.
To make pea butter: smash peas with a fork. Smash butter until creamy with a fork (or use your food processor). Combine peas, tarragon, butter and salt and set aside.
Toast your bread and build your toasts using the pea butter topped with sugar snaps, or a radish toast with either radish dip topped with thinly sliced radishes. Enjoy these delicious toasts as a lunch, a healthy snack, or use the dips with fresh veggies in your packed lunch!

By Chef Hollie

JoyFoodly http://www.joyfoodly.com/

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