Seed Starting Day! Eggplants in New England?

[HoopyFrood]

We're both from Maine. He leans towards traditional meat and potatoes fare. If I don't have a huge heap of veggies on my plate, I feel slighted. He likes hot and spicy, I can't take the spicy hot. There is a ? Thai restaurant in down town Bangor that folks tell us we need to try. One of these days, we'll do so.

Hehe... well I don't mean to offend, of course. We just have noticed a tendency for Mainers to not have adventurous pallets.

I'm all about the plate o' veggies! But I'm also all about spicy If you check out that Thai restaurant, please let me know what you think!

Guess I should have started a cooking thread, huh?

 

[lazy gardener]

Certainly no offense taken! Yes, Mainers are not known for their adventurous palate! Unless you are talking about wild game, foraged veggies, and such. Even then, it's more of a rarity than main stream. This is your thread. If you want to talk about cooking on your thread, you can talk about cooking! Besides, don't a lot of these recipes have egg plant in them? Nuff said.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Those recipes sound wonderful Rose! I consider meat to be more of a condiment than a main part of the meal.

I try to treat meat as a flavoring when I can so I'm always looking for ways to either sub in extra vegetables for part of it, or increasing the existing vegetables in a recipe so I can cut back on the meat a little. I'm always tickled when I serve something and my husband comments that it tastes rich and meaty even though there's very little actual meat in it.

Guess I should have started a cooking thread, huh?

Or a "I grew it, now what?" Given that I really dislike zucchini my hubby had a good laugh when I finally got one going late last summer and walked in with an armload of zucchini one day. We did end up eating most of it (I pulled out every recipe that I had that used zucchini!) though the chickens got a bit too.

 

[lazy gardener]

When the kids were little, I would often make Lentil Stew to stretch the grocery budget. One day, my son asked me if I'd cut the meat up smaller the next time I made it! (vegetarian dish!)

 

[HoopyFrood]

Hehe... blow their minds by substituting tempeh for ground in any earthy dish. We make "meatballs" out of them that I prefer to actual meaty meatballs! Originally we made "unicorn meat" out of crumbled tofu as a ground meat substitute. You can make it like taco meat, sausage spiced, curry spiced... but it is a bit of work. We found you could just add tempeh directly as a ground meat substitute.

When we decided to start getting away from meat (I'd say we're 85% vegetarian now, always increasing) tempeh was one of the first things I tried... and found I loved it far more than any ground meat. And it's really good for you! Since it's fermented the estrogen mimickers that people are concerned about in soy products are eliminated. You can't say that about tofu. Tempeh also has a rich, nutty flavor (again something you can't say about tofu).

Next season will be my first attempt at growing soybeans. If I get any harvest I'm going to try making tempeh myself

We actually like zucchini so I'm not sure I should offer thoughts on it We throw it in at the last bit of stir frying and really like it that way. But we'll put it raw in salads, so use that to judge our culinary compatibility

 

[lazy gardener]

My BIL used to make Tempeh. When they would come to visit, he'd have his Tempeh fermenting on top of our refrigerator.

 

[drewskimac]

I think I started my tomatoes WAY too early, they are now 1-1.5 feet tall and had to be moved to gallon sized pots. We are a week past our frost date and getting frosts every day. COME ON SPRING, COME. ON.! I love growing eggplant. Man, those plants grow slowly though. Mine are about 4in tall right now.

 

[lazy gardener]

If you have to, you can bury your tomato stems horizontally. Yeah, the cold weather is never ending.