GLORIOUS GRASS - Adds drama and dimension to your garden.

Ornamental grasses can change the face of the landscape and they look great all year long. I love how some decorative grasses develop into graceful, weeping mounds of thin blades that wave in the summer breeze.

Some grasses form tidy clumps, while others spread. Large varieties make great privacy screens or stand alone.

Smaller grass used for border

Smaller grasses are ideal for borders, ground cover and rock gardens.

Colored or variegated types provide interesting contrast.

All photos - Copyright - ©2011 - La Casa e Il Giardino – picasaweb

Tall, columnar grasses make an attractive backdrop for shorter annuals and perennial flowers.

Rock garden - work in progress - 2nd year

Presently

As flowers fade and die, lush mounds of grass remain attractive.

Caring for grasses
Best time to plant ornamental grasses are in the spring.
Most ornamental grasses do not need fertilizing.
Divide ornamental grasses before overcrowding chokes out the center of its clump. Divide cool-season grasses every two years.

HOT WEATHER MEAL

All photos - Copyright - ©2011 - La Casa e Il Giardino – picasaweb

Yesterday, it was 105F in the shade and the AC was acting iffy all day due to the surge in electricity demand.  Here is the meal I prepared for my husband and I that defied the heat and took advantage of our first tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden.






Tomato and cucumber salad

Insalata di pomodoro

Grilled chicken

Pollo alla grillia con peperoni sottoceto
Grilled chicken with vinegary cherry peppers

Crusty bread

Pane a ciambella

Tomato Salad

Serves 2

2 or 3 garden fresh tomatoes

2 cucumbers

Small red onion

1 green pepper (we prefer hot)

2 celery stalks with leaves

1 clove of garlic

Few sprigs of parsley and basil

1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatoes, celery, green pepper and cucumbers. Add chopped garlic, red onion, basil and parsley.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Add salt and pepper.  Mix well.

Fried Sardines - Sarde fritte

As I mentioned in previous posts, we like sardines because they are good for you.

Today, I visited my fishmonger and he recommended the small sardines.

Small sardines
All photos - Copyright - ©2011 - La Casa e Il Giardino – picasaweb

Large sardines are great on the grill (grillate o sulla brace).  

These sardines are small and they are great fried.

Fried Sardines

1 pound fresh sardines

1 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup flour

Salt and pepper



Procedure

Remove heads from the sardines (grab the head with two fingers and pull down towards the stomach). Rinse them thoroughly.

Coat the fish with flour.

Shake off excess flour.

 Place oil in a frying pan. When smoking hot, add coated sardines few at a time.

Fry for 5 to 6 minutes.

 Add salt and pepper and serve hot or at room temperature.

I am sure, you'll agree that there is nothing like it.

LOCAVORE - Before the Term Existed

Locavore – A person who eats food grown locally.

Italians were locavores long before the word even existed and my family is no exception.  My husband, his sister and I have been locavores all our lives. 

Spanish lettuce

My husband and sister attend to the vegetable garden and I attend to my perennial flower garden.  The vegetable garden, for my sister-in-law (95) is her fountain of youth.  She is forever weeding; many times coming in touch with poison ivy.

Our perennial flower garden

You will never see us relaxing on lawn chairs or poolside.  It’s not our style.  We sow, turn over soil, spread manure, weed and harvest the crops.  In Italy,  my parents were known as contadini (farm workers).  We cultivated our taste for seasonal ingredients in Abruzzo, Italy, post World War II.  We ate tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and eggplants in the summer and cabbage, beans, cornmeal pizza and polenta in the winter.  Our desserts were fruits - watermelon, peaches and grapes in the summer; apples, oranges, walnuts, almonds and dry figs in the winter.   






I can still smell those tiny apples called (mele zitelle) encased in a drawer of a large dresser just below the linens.  
Che profumo!

Like all other Italians of our generation, we attend to a grapevine and a fig tree.  We can tomatoes and we make wine.

Now, that Mrs. Obama planted the White House garden, growing one’s food has become fashionable.  To us cafoni (poor peasants), it’s always been common sense that fresh food tastes better, it’s healthier and good for the environment.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/want-great-longevity-and-health-it-takes-a-village-1432304395