Day 100 / Day 8 - Cooked fantastic Recipe in the Aerogarden Manual for Roasted Garlic, Tomato, Basil Pasta, but starting to worry about the Tomatoes.

So, bad news first. According to the Aerogarden Seed Pods for the cherry tomatoes, all three were supposed to start sprouting in 4-7 days. It's Day 8 of the cherry tomato Aerogarden, and I'm starting to worry a little. You could see the picture I took of one of the Red Heirloom pods sprouting a little tomato plant yesterday, but the other Red Heirloom and Golden Harvest pods still have nothing in them, and I don't even see any hint of them sprouting.

I'll give it a couple more days, but this might be my first little hiccup in what has otherwise been a fantastic experience.

In more promising news, it's Day 100 of the Basil Aerogarden, and I am thrilled with the results. I decided to make the second recipe in the Aerogarden manual, which was for Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Toasted Garlic, and Basil.

I harvested and chopped my basil:
And then followed the recipe to cook my pasta (I decided to use fettucine instead of spaghetti, because that's what I had lying around), thinly slice my garlic, fry it up in olive oil, and then warm the tomatoes in it.

Then, after that, I threw in half a cup of shredded parmigiano-reggiano cheese (grated using my brand new Kitchenaid Grater Attachment that I also got at Linens N Things clearance), and then my coursely chopped basil.

Here's how it ended up:

My apartment was (and still is) filled with the smell of toasted garlic, but that is totally what made this recipe sooo good. I served it up a bowl, deliberately keeping the serving size small.

But yes, the recipe made 4 servings, but after a couple rounds of "seconds", I went ahead and ate 2 1/2 - 3 servings.

Day 99 / Day 7 - Success...sort of...

So, I took the ice cream bowl out of the freezer, and I put my chilled mix of lime juice, basil puree, and sugar into it. Whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr.

It still didn't look like it was working. And then I took a close look at the recipe book, and saw a line I didn't see yesterday:

- 2 cups water

That's right. I tried making sorbet and forgot to add water. So just as I felt like my head turn into a cartoon lollipop yesterday, today I felt it turn into a donkey (let the reader understand).

So, I quickly dumped two cups of water into the ice cream maker, and lo and behold, the "whirr-whirr-whirr" turned into "crunch-scrape-grrrr". Before long, I had this.

Now I know what you're thinking...it looks just like the basil mashed potatoes he made a couple weeks ago...and probably tastes like them too.

Well, I'm happy to say that it did come out fine and tasted like...well...lime and basil. It was really odd at first, bordering on just plain bizarre. I felt like one of those chefs on "Iron Chef" who cooks things like lobster ice cream or chocolate-covered squid sundaes.

But to be honest, after eating a glass of it, I'm kind of craving it now. Maybe it was the consistency of the stuff, which was a lot of like a very smooth gelato or italian ice. And the flavor of the basil did sort of balance out the sweetness of the tartness of the lime and the sweetness of the sugar. Or maybe my brain is just telling me that because it knows how much effort went into all of this!

I'm not sure who came up with the recipe for lime-basil sorbet, but one thing's for sure. That person probably had to get rid of a lot of basil!

I think the next thing I cook will be something much more traditional, like the other recipe in the book (basil, garlic, and tomato spaghetti).

If you're as sick of me talking about basil as I am, here's some hope for you:

Day 98 / Day 6 - Oh, Basil-Lime Sorbet, Why Do You Mock Me?

So, our local Linens N Things is closing, so everything is 30% off. I got an amazing deal on a KitchenAid 10-piece cookware set, saving about $100 off the original price.

Before you get too impressed with me, I'm embarrased to say I got caught up in the moment and used most of my "winnings" to buy myself...a very expensive pillow. I figured, a pillow is one of those things you use every day, so why not get the very best? But as I stood on the checkout line and they rang up my non-returnable order, I felt like one of those cartoon characters who turns into a big lollipop with the word "sucker" written on the wrapper.

Anyway, back to indoor gardening stuff. I also picked myself up a nice Cuisinart blender. And you know that that means. All of a sudden, I can make a ton of recipes I haven't been able to make before.

So first on my list was "basil-lime sorbet", one of two recipes they give you in the Aerogarden manual. The recipe was pretty straightforward...take a cup of basil leaves...

...and after you take a picture of it with your Canon camcorder camera with the freakishly bright flash, blanch it in boiling water for 10 seconds. Then, throw it into your blender along with 3/4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lime juice. Puree for 30 seconds:

And then throw into your ice cream maker.


Here's where things started to go wrong. I use a KitchenAid mixer with an ice cream attachment, and after 30 minutes of whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr-whirring, I ended up with...exactly what I started with.

There are a couple possibilities here. My theory is that because my kitchen was about 85 degrees at the time (we're going through a heat wave here in New York), plus the fact that I didn't chill the basil-lime mixture, it never got a chance to freeze.

So, I poured the mixture into a measuring up and put it in the fridge. I cleaned the KitchenAid bowl and put it back into the freezer. Check back again tomorrow and catch the rest of the exciting saga!

(Oh, and P, Linens N Things had SoundSpas, but not the one you were looking for)

Day 93 of the Basil Aerogarden...Day 1 of the Cherry Tomato Aerogarden!

Today is a momentous day for me. Granted, I have no life, but that's another thing altogether.

For the first time since the mid-1980's, I have planted tomato seeds. When I was a kid, I used to live in central New Jersey. Our neighborhood was literally built on the site of an old potato farm, so the soil lived up to the state's moniker as "The Garden State". My banner year came when I was in high school. Once summer, I had so many tomato plants growing that by the end of August, I literally couldn't pick them anymore...I had eaten or given away tomatoes to everyone I knew, so I just had to leave them on the vine. (Sadly, back then, I didn't know what I know now about making tomato sauce and canning tomatoes).

Then, college came and then I went out on my own. I lived in a co-op in Montclair, New Jersey for a couple years, and now I live in a co-op in Great Neck, New York. You guessed it. I don't even have a square foot of land to call my own.

So, the Aerogarden has let me exercise my green thumb again. And now that it appears that I've conquered basil, the next challenge is...cherry tomatoes.

My goal? Before the end of this year, I want to make an insalata caprese and a margherita pizza using only fresh-grown ingredients from my Aerogarden!

The first step was to open the box of cherry tomato seeds.

Next, I took my old Aerogarden (the one which was growing the mixed gourmet herbs), and cleaned it out. This was my first Aerogarden, which I haven't written about in this blog, but it's served it's purpose well for many, many months.

While the instruction booklet says to throw out the old seed pods, I decided to try to transplant the surviving herbs: the thyme, chives, mint, and basils into traditional soil pots (I had stopped harvesting the dill, parsley, and cilantro a long time ago).

I removed the bowl from the main unit and cleaned it inside and out with warm water and soap. The only slightly tricky part was cleaning the roots and a little gunk that had accumulated around the pump, but that cleaned up real good. I also followed the instructions in the manual to clean the innards by filling the unit with water and a cup of bleach for 1-2 minutes. Before you know it, my little Aerogarden was good as new.

The rest took a grand total of 11 minutes.

I filled the base with water.

Then, I replaced the top and put in the seed pods.

One interesting thing the cherry tomato set has that other Aerogardens don't is a "plant spacer". While some may be tempted to feel a bit short-changed by this, as an old tomato farmer, I know exactly why they do this. A tomato plant needs a lot of space to spread out, and counterintuitively, one plant with plenty of room to grow will produce many more tomatoes than two plants which are competing for room and light.

Here's what the unit looked like with all the seed pods.

Next step was to drop the two nutrient tablets in the green bag. I really like how Aerogarden makes these steps consistent across all the seed kits.

The next step was to select "Tomatoes/Peppers" from the control panel. Each setting regulates how much light and how often the pump runs in order to promote the best growth. I also made a point to start the cycle during the daytime, to give the tomatoes some totally "dark time", which is needed for the plants to thrive.

And so, here's the unit with the seed pods and the hoods over them.


And so, stay tuned. And for those still interested in the basil, they are drinking up water at an incredible pace now, and they started to hit the lights again, so I pruned some more. I plan tomorrow to go out and buy a blender/food processor so I can start making those additional recipes!

Day 89: Changing out the water of the Aerogarden

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, I was supposed to dump the water and rinse out the unit every four weeks. I didn't exactly follow the schedule that the user manual told me to, but it didn't seem to affect the growth of the plants.

This is actually pretty cool--check out what the root growth of the basil plants looks like now:

I dumped out the water, washed the unit out so it was like new, and then carefully replaced the plants, roots and all, into the unit. I filled it with water, and put two new nutrient tablets in.

As you might guess, the plants were hitting the lights again. I pruned the basil and don't really care anymore that I'm throwing it out anymore :)

I still have a long list of new recipes to try. The Aerogarden manual had recipes for spaghetti with basil and garlic and, get this, basil-lime sorbet. My friend Penelope sent me a recipe for tomato-basil soup which I'll make as soon as I buy myself a food processor. Maybe when I get that, I'll also try out the banana-basil smoothie recipe my friend Kim sent me :)

Also, stay tuned. Within the next week or two, we'll go on to my other Aerogarden and will attempt to grow...cherry tomatoes!

Day 86: Aeroponic and hydroponic technology at EPCOT in Disney World

I just returned from my first trip to Disney World in 10 years, and once again I took the "Living With the Land" boat ride. This is the ride that first got me excited about aeroponic technology back when I was young. Here's their basil garden:

It's funny, but in 10 years, the ride seems much the same as I remembered it. Of course, now they're growing a lot more varieties now than before, and they're using these in cooking all around restaurants all over the Disney World parks.

But in my wildest dreams, ten years ago I wouldn't have been able to imagine I'd be able to have my own aeroponic garden growing in my own living room. It just seemed the stuff of science fiction. Even today, people are still going on that ride and coming off it talking about how the technology is so far away. Little do they know you can have the same technology inside your house today.

If someone from Aerogrow is reading this, here's a potentially great marketing tip for you: talk with the Disney folks about selling Aerogardens (with Disney-licensed characters on the box, of course) in the gift shops in "The Land" exhibition at EPCOT. Chances are you'll sell a ton of them--you'll have thousands upon thousands of people who have just learned about the technology and would jump at the chance to bring one home. You can even put mouse ears on top of them ;)

Day 79: Best chicken and basil recipe

Well, the basil is still growing after more than two months. I've discovered that insalata caprese makes a great midnight snack...

...although it's definitely time I started to expand my horizons.

I spoke to my friend Kim from work about my overabundance of basil, and she proceeded to send me a bunch of cool recipes. There was a great one called Basil Chicken over Angel Hair at AllRecipes.Com. I happened to have exactly all the ingredients for that one--a couple tomatoes, some cooked chicken, garlic, and an onion. The one thing I didn't have was angel hair pasta, but I had some thin spaghetti which I thought should do the trick.

I proceeded to chop some basil from the Aerogarden. I took off a good 1/3 of each plant again, as I'll be going on another trip. The recipe called for 1/4 cup, but I ended up cutting a bit more.

This is what the sauce looked like once everything was put together.

And here's what it looked like with the pasta stirred in.

I have to say, it tasted great. I'll definitely be cooking it again, but next time I'll be sure to use real angel hair pasta.

I'm facing a real dilemma with all this healthy food I'm cooking. It's all so delicious I end up eating more than I should! :)