Blog Elements

Catania is an old city on the south-east coast of Sicily, fronting the Ionian Sea. During the Renaissance, Catania was Sicily’s most important cultural, artistic, and political hub due in part to its major seaport. In 1434 the first university in Sicily was founded and today it is one of the main economic centers of the island and an important hub of technology and industry.

Cantine del Cugno Mezzano, located on the Via Museo Biscari is one of the chic restaurants in the old downtown that are reviving the ancient farm cuisines and elevating them to fine dining status. What is notable is that the flavors need no “freshening” or “elevating”, only the surroundings and atmosphere is needed to create the fine dining experience. The old recipes and locally sourced farm-grown ingredients are what make the flavors so memorable. The chef drives out to the surrounding countryside every weekend and goes from farm to farm on a well-established routine buying the foundations for the next week’s dishes.

This is a substantial and deeply satisfying, yet not heavy winter soup that has sustained farm families and farmhands for many generations. It is eaten during the cooler weather in Sicily on the farms, but is in demand year round in the restaurants. Get the best quality sausage possible, as it is the foundation of the flavors here. The smoked sweet and bittersweet paprika will add an intriguing depth of flavor to the soup, with the oregano backing them up. Another option to broaden the flavor profile is to use a home made beef stock instead of the water in the lentils, or split it in half. This freezes well to provide a delicious backup when time is short or plans change during the week.

Add some thick slices of fresh artisan peasant bread with butter and a good beer for a taste of what our ancestors ate after a long workday in the fields!

Zuppa Di Grano e Lenticchie

1 Cup Wheat berries
1 Cup Lentils
6 Cups water
3 Oz Italian sausage, diced
2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
2 medium carrots, sliced thickly
5 Oz Swiss chard or Kale leaves, stems removed, rinsed and coarsly chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Optional seasonings- 1/8 Tsp each of smoked sweet and bittersweet paprika, 1/2 Tsp oregano
Dollop of sour cream

In a small heavy bottomed pot cover the wheat berries with plenty of water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Once boiling, remove from heat, cover and let sit for 1 hour. Drain and reserve the cooking water.
Using a cast-iron pot or flame proof clay pot, add lentils and cover with 6 cups of water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat so that the lentils are just above a simmer until they just start to turn tender, about 15-20 minutes.
While lentils are simmering, heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and onion and sautee for 5-7 minutes, until the onion just turns golden. Lower the heat, add the celery and carrots and cook until the carrots are just tender, about 10 minutes. Add the Swiss chard or Kale, stir in and cook until dark green and just wilted, about 3-5 minutes.
Add wheat berries and sausage and vegetable mixture and stir well. Season with salt, pepper and optional seasonings if using. Add enough wheat berry cooking water to cover slightly and bring back to a boil, immediately reduce heat to a bare simmer and heat soup through, about 3-5 minutes.
Add small dollop of sour cream if desired

Makes 6 servings

by Stephen Scott

Vegetables

Heirloom Gardening for Backyard Chickens

Raising backyard chickens is becoming increasingly popular, no matter where you live. There have always been rural chickens, but now there are small and large city chickens, happily living in coops and backyards all across the country. Chickens can do a lot for you, both in the garden and in the kitchen. First off, they give you a real measure of food security and increase your resiliency. The eggs are a great bartering tool, as very few folks that we’ve talked to weren’t interested in some fresh home-raised eggs. Chickens are great for bug control, light soil tilling and fertilization. The chicken manure is very high in Nitrogen and is a great addition to your compost. Home raised eggs are some of the highest nutritional content of any chickens, including free-range. The reason is that most home raised chickens are pampered and given extra nutrition and care. It is very easy to provide a highly nutritious and healthy diet for your backyard chickens from your home garden. We will look at several heirloom vegetables, herbs and flowers that you can easily grow in your garden that will not only provide some tasty treats for your chickens, but give you some great greens as well.

Almost any of the greens and vegetables that you enjoy your chickens will love. You have probably seen them get really excited if you share salad fixings or old veggies from your refrigerator. Think of how they will get when they know that the garden is providing treats for them all of the time! You don’t have to plant a special garden just for the chickens, as they will happily devour any greens that come their way.

The question is often asked of why grow your chicken’s food, why not just buy the 50lb. bag of chicken scratch and call it good? There is nothing wrong with going this route, and realistically you will most likely need to have some commercial feed available as your garden may or may not produce enough greens and grains for your flock. This will vary depending on the size of your garden compared to the size of your flock. The real answer to growing fresh greens for your chickens is the same answer as to why you would want to grow your own garden- taste, nutrition and choice.

A plant growing in the dirt on a sunny day.

Spring Chicken

Let’s look at several varieties of vegetables and herbs that are easily grown in a home garden setting that will provide some tasty and highly nutritious greens for both you and your birds. Starting off in the cooler season with some cold-hardy greens will help jump-start the hens energy levels. Kale, Swiss Chard, mustard greens and beet tops are a great start to the season. They all like a cooler soil, sprout quickly and will provide some serious nutrition. Speaking of sprouting, sprouts are an absolute powerhouse of nutrition and are ready to eat in 4-7 days. Alfalfa sprouts are possibly the best known, but there are several different types of sprouts such as radish, mung bean and red clover that work well. Sprouts take up minimal space, use little water and need only the most basic equipment to produce a couple of pounds of fresh food. This is a technique that works especially well in the depths of winter when other greens are scarce and expensive. You can produce plenty of sprouts for yourself and a half dozen chickens from a half gallon jar with a sprouting screen lid on your kitchen sink.

Once the weather starts warming up more options open up for different vegetables and greens. Cabbage, chicory, mustards, spinach and a number of greens do well in the early spring once the soil has started warming up. These include Miner’s Lettuce, French Purslane and Aztec Red Spinach. Once the true spinach starts to bolt in the warmer weather, switch to the spinach substitutes such as red and green malabar spinach, the Aztec Red spinach and New Zealand spinach. All of these love the heat, won’t bolt and produce all through the hotter weather. Traditional winter cover crops such as alfalfa, clover, vetch and annual rye should be considered for later in the year.

If you have the space, pumpkins and squash- both summer and winter- can be excellent feed choices. Winter squash and pumpkins that can be stored until later in the winter give you an additional resource for high quality feed when nothing else is growing. Corn is another great choice, space permitting, as it is the base for the commercial feeds. Other grains that will grow well in a smaller home garden set up is Mennonite Sorghum, Amaranth and Quinoa. Don’t forget Sunflowers, as they can provide both shade and a wind break for your garden along with seeds for your girls.

Many folks don’t think of herbs when it comes to providing food for chickens, but there are some great choices here. Borage is one such, as it has lots of mineral-rich leaves as well as flowers that are edible and make excellent additions to a chicken’s diet. Comfrey is in the Borage family and is another great choice.

To help you get started, we have created a section on our website called “Backyard Chickens Collection”, appropriately enough. We list all of the varieties that are mentioned in this article to save you the time of looking throughout the website to find them. It is really easy to incorporate the chicken feed aspect into your existing gardening plan. Planting one or two extra plants of each variety for each half dozen chickens is usually sufficient, with grains such as Amaranth and sunflowers going almost exclusively to the chickens. As with most things gardening related, a little experimentation will prove the way as you see what volumes of fresh garden produce you particular flock of chickens needs.

by Stephen Scott