Making Food Blog

I did not grow up farming and gardening. That is why growing, harvesting, cooking, and eating my first batch of collard greens while living in an apartment in the late fall season is such a cause for celebration to me.

Many people, including my wife, grew up growing some of their own food. Victory gardens and “salsa” gardens are quite prevalent across the country as I’ve seen by living in most of the major regions of the United States of America. That being the case, the luxury of gardening is often reserved for those with space and time to cultivate food. But what about the rest of us?

I live in an apartment in a mid-sized city, which means I have no outdoor gardening space at my disposal. I also work 40+ hours a week as a cook, and that drains my energy pretty well, so I do not have a surplus of energy to come home and tend a garden. Unfortunately, I was not born with the gene that finds comfort and relaxation in gardening, but I am growing a fascination with cultivation, so maybe one day I will.

Recently, on a near whimsical desire for more living elements inside our apartment, I purchase a small 4-pod hydroponic gardening kit. I planted Japanese Indigo and Marigolds, and to my surprise they flourished. Seeing those successful thriving plants inspired me to buy more hydroponics, and grow more plants.

I had a bag of various seeds, so I just started buying hydroponic kits and planting random things to see what would flourish. The truth is that 80% of what I put in the kits grew, so now I have bunches of little plants flourishing in my apartment.

The collard greens were one of the first food plants to outgrow the hydroponic setup, so I decided to harvest and cook my first success. I slow simmered the greens for 3 hours with onions, garlic, and burnt-end pork belly cubes. The finished dish was much smaller than I expected, but the flavor was there. Maybe it was partly because it tasted like success, and maybe it was partly because it was organically grown under ideal circumstances.

Regardless of the reason, the joy of that experience caused me to decide to share my food-making experiences with you. I believe good nutrient-dense food, with extraordinary flavor, is the right of every human. Organic whole foods should not be the exclusive privilege of the wealthy or elite. This blog is going to take you on a journey that ends when we figure out how to bring whole foods to the masses. Let’s begin!