Garden Works Blog

Hello Garden Volunteers,

Next Friday, January 29, the Urban Ministry Center Community Garden will be having another of our famed work day/garden party extravaganzas.  We will be setting up light tables in preparation for starting our spring seeds, along with cleaning up and organizing our storage area.  Then we will be enjoying a yet-to-be-determined treat from the garden, most likely kale pizza with clover and alfalfa sprouts.  Afterwards, we plan to view a slide show of the garden from past seasons and talk about starting seeds.

Please join us at 9 am to begin cleaning up and setting up light tables.  At 1:30, we will have pizza, followed by the slide show.

Don't be afraid to RSVP to Erin Cheever, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , (704) 926-0606.

Hello World,

We are now on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/urbangardenclt

USDA Food Safety is following us.  You can too!

And Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Urban-Ministry-Center-Community-Garden/213562148047

Also, I am inspired by this photo:

I can't remember where I found it but will update later to credit.

Hey y'all!  Last Friday the Urban Ministry Center gardeners channeled our inner Paula Deen's to put on a fabulous, deep fat-fried garden party.  At the center, we try to make use of every resource available to us--and that goes for volunteers and vegetables alike.  So when we uprooted most of our tomato plants at the end of September, we gleaned the hard green fruits first.  Fast-forward two weeks: five pounds of green tomatoes set out on a shelf outside my office had mostly maintained their unripe firmness.  Some turned red, and these I chopped into a pot of black beans at home.  The rest we cooked up into fried green tomatoes.

It was all a glorious collaboration: I had the idea for fried green tomatoes.  Quinetta provided the recipe, the one her great-grandmother made on the farm in South Carolina.  Paul donated the propane grill.  Nori brainstormed serving the tomatoes with pesto.  Sandra furnished the melba toast rounds, leftovers from the Homeless Helping Homeless candidates forum.  Ray Ray plugged his boom box into forty feet of extension cord to bring the music.  And the thirty-odd people who showed up to cook and eat these gourmet hors d'oeuvres actually made the magic happen: from 11 to 1 we chilled out in the garden and noshed on some down-home cookin'.

Here's the recipe.  I have always kind of felt that baking is a science, but cooking should be fun.  This recipe doesn't have measurements, and it doesn't need them.

Fried Green Tomatoes a la Urb

crackers, toast, or other bread-y substrate

basil
olive oil
garlic
salt
walnuts

green tomatoes
flour
cornmeal
salt
pepper
oil

1. Make the pesto.  This is about a thousand times less arduously expensive when you grow your own basil.  Pull off the leaves, rinse them and then stuff a couple handfuls in some half-horsepower kitchen appliance with spinning razor-sharp blades (like a blender or food processor).  Put in a handful of walnuts, some salt, a clove of garlic and a glug of olive oil.  Blend for a second, then assess what you need to do to further amalgamate the mixture into a smooth paste.  Maybe put in some more olive oil, or if the mixture is too oily, add walnuts and basil.  Taste, and maybe add some more garlic to keep away the H1N1.

2.  Make the FGT.  Heat a couple of inches of oil in a skillet.  Or, if you wish to shallow-fry instead of deep-fry, lightly oil the pan.  Chop all your tomatoes into quarter-inch slices.  (If you see any red spots on the inside, it means that they are ripening and already at a more tender stage which does not bode well for cohesion upon immersion in hot oil.  Into the compost bin.)  Fill a small bowl with half-flour, half-cornmeal.  Add a pinch of salt and pepper and stir to mix.  Put a tiny pinch of the flour into the pan to test.  When it briefly foams almost at the level of baking soda and vinegar, you're ready to fry.  Trounce the tomato slices through the flour mixture, coating both sides, and lay them down in the skillet in a single layer.  They are done when they start to get a little golden brown.  Remove them to a cooling rack or a plate lined with (paper) towels.

3.  Assemble the canapes: put a slice of FGT (you may need to halve them) onto the bread substrate.  Top with a dollop of pesto.

Voila!  Putting this into three steps may be slightly misleading, but it really is simple! 

The heat and humidity wear away at every plant in the garden, and at everyone who ventures out in the broiling sun to pull a weed or pick a tomato.

We had visitors today anyway - Tessa Graves from NC State's Farm to Fork program, Rich Demming of Area 15 and many other projects in Charlotte, and Nadine Ford, of Mecklenburg County Waste Reduction. We chatted with Cleo Miller in the garden, with towering sunflowers doing  their slow, bowing pavane over our heads.

Click here to read how we try to express ideals of social justice, food security, a common humanity, and environmental stewardship through our garden program.

To learn more about the history of our garden, please visit our blog's archives at