A New Year

I haven't posted in a while, as we've been really busy with holiday travel, work, and just life in general. In regard to the container gardening there really hasn't been that much going on--other than a freak Las Vegas snowstorm that wiped out everything! Yes, we returned from Norway to find all of the plants dead--killed by snow! Unfortunately that included the Black Krim that had been the topic of my weekly updates. At least I had cut a few green tomatoes before we left and placed them in paper bags to ripen while we were away. So, the fall tomato planting wasn't a total wash. Anyhow, I am now preparing to start some seeds indoors for the Spring. Hopefully I'll have these out in the containers by the last week of February or first week of March. Will keep you all posted.

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Okra Containers (foreground) and Tomato Plants (background) under Las Vegas Snow

Here are some pictures I took while hiking in Norway with Marianne's cousin Gaute and his very cool dog Mano. It's really a breathtakingly beautiful country.

Grilled Carrots

Last night, Marianne and I decided to try a new method of cooking carrots. Neither of us had ever considered grilling carrots until about a month ago. At our wedding's reception dinner at Bergen, Norway's Galleri Nygaten, Marianne's vegetarian meal included the most delicious carrots that either of us had ever tasted. We quickly decided that their smokey taste and slightly charred exterior indicated grilling, and that we should try this with some of our own carrots after returning stateside. So, feeling a bit adventurous, I headed out to the container garden yesterday, pulled a few, and started trying to decide how to recreate those exceptional Norwegian grilled carrots.

As my carrots are still small (they grow excruciatingly slow), I simply scraped off the skin and left them whole. I then marinated the skinned carrots in a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, coarse salt, and freshly ground pepper. After allowing the carrots to soak in the marinade for about an hour, I cooked them over a medium hot grill for approximately 20 minutes. The difficult part is to cook them until they soften up without burning the thin ends. For larger carrots I would recommend slicing them into thinner pieces to speed up the cooking time and improve the uniformity of the cooking.

Although our grilled carrots didn't quite meet the standard set by those from our wedding dinner, they were very good. They were sweet and tangy with a soft but not mushy texture. Grilled carrots have definitely earned a spot on our home menu from now on.