GARDENING, FOOD & TRAVEL--WHY I BLOG

Recently, when my parents were moving to Florida, my Mom gave me a bag filled with drawings, paintings and clay sculptures I had created when I was in school. She still displays some of my childhood "masterpieces" in her house. I even remember selling one of my works at an art show in high school. But, alas, obtaining my engineering degree put my artistic abilities on hiatis. I credit gardening with rekindling my creative spirit.

About twelve years ago, my husband and I built a house on a 4.5 acre piece of mostly unwooded property. I finally had enough space to plant a garden. The year after we moved in, we tilled a 50' x 100' section and fenced it in to protect it from about 20-30 head of deer that liked to frequent the backyard. We live at the top of a glacial moraine at the southern end of the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, so tilling was a bit of a challenge. I like to say that we have pretty decent soil, but you first have to liberate it from a matrix of 8" long rocks. Even after eleven years, I still find them during my annual tilling.

Though the garden has undergone several improvements--buried chicken wire around the

base of the fence to deter groundhogs and rabbits, the transition to raised beds, and the addition of a small greenhouse--my philosophy about what gets planted in my garden remains the same. If I can buy it at the local market, I don't usually grow it. I try to find unusual varieties of garden standards like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans and eggplant. This year I grew an intersting heirloom, Tlacalula Pink (pictured). It was really stunning when sliced and was full of flavor.

I also try to grow less conventional things like artichokes, kohlrabi and mache. Try is the operative word because sometimes my growing experiments have disappointing results, but the learning experience is invaluable. I even grew okra one year just to see what the plant looked like. I'm the only one in the household that eats it, so it didn't make it to the table very often. Good thing I compost. I also grow about 17 different kinds of herbs, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries.

Of course when you have a large garden, you need to learn lots of different ways to prepare what you're harvesting at any given time. As a working mom, I started to create weekly menus to simplify the grocery shopping and eliminate the stress of trying to figure out what to cook after a busy day at work. I also subscribed to several cooking magazines and researched online for recipes to utilize what was coming from the garden. There are days when I go down to the garden to harvest and need to decide what main course to prepare with the vegetables du jour. This reversal of thinking has become normal during the months that the garden is producing. It's also been a great way to train my family to eat what's in season.

I found cooking to be relaxing and after some time and increasing confidence in the kitchen, it became an artistic outlet. The dinner plate became my canvas and I began experimenting (sometimes much to the chagrin of my family) with ever increasing varieties of ingredients. Making the same thing twice became boring, and I was always looking for the next cooking challenge. I watched the Food Network constantly and sought out restaurants offering unique twists to everyday foods. I searched for new ways to make use of as much of the vegetable as possible, including making pesto from radish tops. I had suddenly become a "foodie." Apparently, this conversion is a natural progression for many. I think this blog by Adam Cortell sums up the transition from gardener to foodie best, "Gardening fosters a strong connection with our food source. It becomes a logical transition to celebrate a garden’s bounty by preparing amazing food in creative ways."

My love of travel has only fed into my culinary appetite, and has actually brought things full circle. When I'm away, I try to avoid the "touristy" places and delve into the local culture. I eat what and where the locals eat as much as possible, and I especially love strolling in the local open air markets, which are a delight to the all the senses. Most recently in Munich, I was able to experience first hand the aroma of durian. (Yes, it smells of rotting garbage, but as the young man tending the stand said, we eat stinky cheese, don't we?) I was also introduced to an interesting little pointy cabbage I had never seen before--Spitzkraut. I was intriqued by it's conical shape and have already identified a similar variety in my Baker Creek Seed Company Catalogue that I will grow in my garden next year. I've already found some great recipes to try (in German, luckily I can translate). It's this type of inspiration that keeps the cycle of gardening, food and travel going.

For years I've been torturing my Facebook friends with photos of my culinary "materpieces" and travel experiences, but I needed an outlet where I could share my foodie journeys in more detail. So, I started this blog, Kim's Kulinary Adventures. There's so many new things to try, and so little time. I hope you will enjoy!

#gardening #cooking #food #travel