- Hey guys.
We are right in the middle of mid-summer
here in southern California,
and one of the things that I thought would be fun
is to share some of my favorite summer recipes
over the next couple of weeks.
Many of these recipes have been inspired
by my vegetable garden.
A lot of you have asked me questions about this garden
and wanting to know more about it
so I thought today would be a great opportunity
to actually take you out there and
show you what I'm growing.
If you wanna know the story of this garden,
'cause there is a bit of a backstory
with some dramatic before and after pictures,
you can click on the thumbnail above
and there you will see my summer
dinner party menu for kin.
At the top of that episode is a
really great backstory of how this
garden actually came to be.
Let's head outdoors.
For this vegetable garden,
I was really inspired by the vegetable gardens,
or potagers of France.
When you travel in Loire Valley,
which is where my husband is from,
you see a lot of these chateaus with
beautiful vegetable gardens laid out
in a very ornamental fashion.
For me, I loved it because it was neat and tidy
and still looked pretty.
I didn't want a vegetable garden
that looked overgrown and would become
kind of a big eyesore because I
do see this garden from my kitchen window.
We divided the garden into 10 equal plots,
or parterres as they're called.
The parterres basically hold one type of vegetable.
Sometimes I like to mix and match but for the most part,
I like to try to dedicate one specific
vegetable to one parterre.
We lined each parterre in boxwood.
Boxwood is just a really beautiful hedge
that likes to be clipped and makes
the garden look a lot neater and tidier.
It's also great in the winter time
when there isn't much growing out there
because then the garden still will always look green.
It was really important to me to be
able to eat in this garden.
I just love the idea of growing things
and actually having a table where you
can entertain and eat outdoors
and enjoy all the fruits of your labor.
As you can see, in the center is a big table.
I wanted to make sure that the table
will be big enough to seat at least 10 people,
but we have put extensions on each of
those tables to fit 20 and that's quite a party for sure.
The first parterre I'm gonna show you
has some beets growing in it.
I love to grow beets because they
just have so much more flavor than
the ones that you can buy in the store
and that's the thing though I love about gardening,
that you will find that if you grow your own vegetables,
they're so much more flavorful and fresh
and if you like to cook,
you always wanna make sure that
you have the freshest ingredients available.
Because imagine, these vegetables have not
been sitting on a truck traveling somewhere,
they then don't sit in the store
under fluorescent lights and get manhandled by everybody.
When you're actually ready,
you just pick them and you only
have to walk a few steps into the kitchen.
Then in my big planter under my window, I grow mint.
Here's the thing about growing mint,
it's really aggressive and will completely
take over anything that you put in.
I didn't realize this at first and the
planter used to be an assortment of herbs
until the mint just completely took it over.
I decided why fight it,
I'll just go with it and I pulled out
all the other herbs and just let the mint have at it.
Mint does attract little bugs and aphids
and one of the things that I've learned
to try to control that is by releasing some ladybugs.
At your local nursery,
you'll see usually in a refrigerated section,
they'll sell little ladybugs.
You release those ladybugs and by the morning,
those aphids are all gobbled up.
They're the best pest control.
Then in little planters, I also have some kumquat trees.
I love to keep a variety of citrus
growing at all times because they
fruit at different times of the year.
I love kumquats because they're bitter on the inside
and sweet on the outside, the reverse of an orange
so you actually do eat the rind.
You just pop them in your mouth all at once
and it's the most amazing flavor combination.
One of the things I really believe
in growing my own vegetables is to make it organic.
I don't like to buy produce that has pesticides on it,
so why grow it with the pesticides?
As you'll see as we go through,
I'll give you all of my tips for
counteracting bugs and all kinds of pests,
which is natural organic methods.
Now the crowning glory of this garden are my tomatoes.
I really am greedy when it comes to tomatoes.
At the beginning of the season,
I set out and I think I'm gonna keep it under control.
I'm gonna limit myself to three or four plants,
and it always ends up being eight, nine, or 10.
I end up having so many tomatoes
that I have to actually give them away to friends
just because I love a great homegrown tomato
and so does everybody else.
One of the things that I've learned about tomatoes
is that you have to really put them in planters.
They are weeds at the end of the day
and they will also take over a garden.
I love to put them in planters and then
use what is called a tomato cage.
It makes them really architectural
and just gives some wonderful height to your garden.
It also gives them something to train themselves up against.
They really need the support and a
tomato cage is the way to go.
When it comes to tomatoes,
I really love all of those sort of
what they call ugly tomatoes.
They're all the heirloom varieties.
An heirloom variety is a tomato or any vegetable really
that's been around for over 100 years.
Not the plant itself, the actual seed.
The seed has been in constant production for over 100 years
and I love that.
Imagine eating a tomato that somebody
ate over 100 years ago.
I just think it's so terrific.
If pests move in and they do strike,
and one of the biggest enemy to a tomato plant
is the horn worm.
It looks like a little green caterpillar.
One of my tips for battling this little creature
is to use some cornmeal or some polenta.
Just sprinkle it on the leaves and
in and around the plant and the horn worn will come,
it'll munch on it and it'll kind of
disturb its digestive system.
I know, nature is not kind,
but it does make it disappear and they will not come back.
Then I also love to grow a selection of fresh herbs.
I have some rosemary, some thyme,
and then I love to grow a selection of basils.
Right now I have a purple ruffle basil growing which I love.
It has a beautiful licorice taste to it
and it just looks so beautiful in a salad.
Then I've got the traditional green basil,
and then I also have some wonderful lemon basil.
The trick with basil is it really loves to be pinched.
In fact, the more you use it, the more it's gonna grow,
but when you start to see those little seeds,
the little flowering pops up,
that means that the plant is at the end of its life cycle
and you really wanna clip that off
because you don't want that plant to go to seed on you.
The other thing I have growing there are some nasturtiums.
Nasturtiums are actually an edible flower
and as you know as the mom of two girls,
when I told my daughters there were
such a thing as edible flowers, we just had to try it.
I love to put them in freshly tossed salads.
They make for a beautiful garnish
and they're also delicious.
They have a wonderful mustard, almost peppery taste to them.
They're also wonderful to drop into a cocktail as well.
(upbeat violin music)
Then on the other side of the garden,
I have things that need a little
bit more shade like lettuce.
Lettuce, it likes a lot of sunlight,
but it doesn't like a lot of heat.
In and among my lettuce,
you can see that I have some marigolds growing.
This is another solution for organic gardening
to keep the aphids away.
This is what's known as companion gardening.
Companion gardening takes the principle
of taking two plants that actually
grow really well together and help
fight off diseases and pests for each other.
When it comes to lettuce, a marigold is its best friend.
I tell my daughters that these are
the bodyguards of the lettuce and
my lettuce has never looked better.
The one thing to know about lettuce is when it gets hot,
and it has been very hot here,
it will have a tendency to bolt.
Bolt means that the lettuce starts to
actually grow all the way upwards and you'll see,
I have left one plant so that you
guys could see what that is.
When it gets like that,
you wanna actually cut it down.
One of the things that's so great about lettuce
is that it's self-regenerating.
As you can see, I have a few small plants
and you can see the leaves are starting to grow again
and it'll actually turn into another head of lettuce.
The other thing that I have growing is eggplant.
I love to grow eggplant.
It's so great to make fresh baba ganoush
or eggplant Parmesan and it's a really
easy vegetable to grow.
I actually don't have any fruit at the moment,
but you can see my plants are very healthy,
they're looking good, they just started to flower,
and probably in the next two weeks or so,
I'll start to see some fruit.
Then I also love to grow garlic.
You can actually just go to the grocery store,
buy some organic garlic, peel it,
get the raw garlic and then you'll see at the end,
you'll see where the little root is,
that's the part that you actually
wanna insert into the dirt.
Cover it up and in a few weeks,
it will sprout and will turn in to a beautiful garlic plant.
The other thing you wanna know about garlic
is to stagger the planting of it
because if you plant it all at the same time,
it's all gonna be ready at the same time
and can you imagine?
Then you're gonna have to find a use for 50 bulbs of garlic.
I like to stagger it about once every week.
I'll just keep planting new cloves and then that way,
I have a fresh supply of garlic pretty much all year round.
You'll know that a garlic plant is ready to be harvest
when you see the leaves turn brown.
Once that turns brown,
you can pull it up out of the ground
and you'll have a little garlic bulb.
You're gonna snip off the plant
and then you wanna let that little garlic bulb dry out.
I have a little one that I just picked
a few days ago that's actually drying out on my window sill.
It's a small little guy and I think
that I probably need to have my
garlic stay in the ground for a bit longer
to get it to be bigger,
but I was pretty impressed by my first
little garlic bulb of the season.
The other thing that I like to grow are peppers.
I have what I call a little pepper patch
and in the pepper patch I have some bell peppers,
then I also have all my spicy peppers.
Right now I've got some serranos,
jalapenos, and some spicy Thai peppers.
I love to use these peppers for salsas or for curries.
It's really great just to add a
little bit of heat when you need it.
The secret to gardening is also timing.
If you think that you're gonna want
a pumpkin or a butternut squash in October,
you need to actually plant it now in July
because some of these varieties can
take upwards of 100 days to actually bear fruit.
In one parterre, I have some butternut squash growing
which I'm really excited about.
I love butternut squash in the fall
and into the winter time.
It's so delicious.
In the other parterre,
I'm growing some little pumpkin pie pumpkins.
My daughter is really excited about
pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread so I said this year,
we're gonna actually grow the pumpkins ourselves.
Then I also have two strawberry plants
that are doing quite well this year.
In the past, I've put strawberries in the ground
and they actually don't do as well.
Their fruit tends to get wet and
you get a lot of critters that come up
and nibble on the fruit.
This year I took the advice of my nursery
and put them in strawberry pots.
Strawberry pots are just terracotta pots that have
little holes in and around the side
and you basically buy your strawberry plants
and plant them in the holes and it has
really worked out well.
The plants have a lot of room to grow,
they have space in and around their leaves,
and I've started to get a few tiny strawberries
so I think I'm getting success.
There you have it, that's the tour.
That about sums up the vegetable garden for this year.
(upbeat jazz music)
The appetizer recipe that I wanna share with you today
I love because most of the ingredients
come right from my garden.
When we have drop in guests,
all I need to do is run out and get some bread.
It's my cherry tomato bruschetta with two types of basil.
Here's how you make it.
You're going to take some red cherry tomatoes
and some yellow cherry tomatoes.
You're then going to cut them in half.
It just makes them easier to eat that way.
You're then gonna drizzle with a little bit of olive oil,
salt and pepper, and then I like to add
my purple ruffle basil and my traditional green basil.
If you can't find purple basil at the store,
sometimes that can be hard to find in a large supermarket.
You can sometimes find it at farmer's markets.
I do see it there quite often,
or you can just use all green basil.
That would work too.
In a small bowl, you're going to combine some olive oil,
some garlic, salt and pepper,
and some fresh flat leaf parsley.
You're then going to brush this olive oil
onto your bread on both sides.
Then on a grill pan or a barbecue set on medium-high heat,
you're going to grill each piece of bread on both sides.
Gonna arrange your slices on a platter
and then spoon those beautiful tomatoes on top.
You will see, you will have one delicious looking
summertime appetizer that I think
goes quite well with a chilled rose.
(upbeat jazz music)
I hope you guys enjoyed the tour of the garden.
I hope you guys give this recipe and try,
and if you don't grow your own vegetables, that is okay.
You can find all of these ingredients
at your local supermarket,
but if you do wanna support homegrown vegetables
that are organic, definitely visit your
local farmer's market.
Those farmers work so hard to grow
such beautiful produce for all of us
that I always like to make sure
everybody's supporting their local market.
I hope you guys give it a try and let me know what you think
and I'll see you back here next week
when I'm gonna share with you one of
my favorite summertime dinners,
my grilled chicken brochettes with grilled zucchini.
I'll see you then.
(upbeat jazz music)