KGI Newsletter: May 2007

Contents:

Gardening:

-Nasturtiums: eat the view

Carve out a cozy niche for cold-sensitive plants

-Home-grown asparagus: the payoff is spears yor years

Food and Cooking:

-Outfitting the no-frills kitchen

-Strawberry pie and tarte recipes

Food for Thought:

-Alice Waters: delicious revolutionary  

KGI News:

-KGI celebrates NYC Grows 2007

-KGI launches the "Grow-Off Show-Off"

On the fence about joining KGI?  Become a supporter today!

It's going to take a lot of people working together to bring about the home-grown, locally-grown revolution that KGI envisages.  If you've been reading this newsletter for a while and have been saying to yourself that's time to get off the fence and support us, let this be the day!

-Join by online payment

-Join by mail-in check

Surf's Up!

More and more of you have changed the way you surf and search the internet to help support KGI.  There is a search engine called "Good Search" that uses the same search engine as Yahoo and yields the same results.  The difference is that every time you search for something with Good Search as opposed to Google or Yahoo, you earn 1 penny for a nonprofit organization of your choice.  Click here to learn how you can help KGI in this painless, pennyless way.

Link Up!

Do you or your group have a website?  Please consider adding a link to ours: www.kitchengardeners.org . Thanks.

 www.growoffshowoff.org      

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Longtime readers of this newsletter know that when it comes to promoting home gardening and home-made foods, we'll pretty much try anything. We've appealed to people's "higher" emotions, their sense of reason, and their desire to create a better, healthier world for their children and grandkids. Now, we're trying something new: bribery.

Well, not really bribery and not really new. We're not actually paying off people to advertise their gardens and gardening passion, but encouraging them with the lure of international fame and fortune.

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Grow-Off Show-Off contest where the gardeners of the world have a chance to strut their organic stuff! One part Victory Garden, one part American Idol, the Grow-Off Show-Off pits gardeners against one another in a friendly, light-hearted creativity competition to see who can come up with the cleverest and most effective ways of singing the praises of home-grown foods. 

Junkfood and processed food companies spend billions of dollars a year pitching their products to us and our families.  While we can't outspend them, we can "outcreate" them and we can use something that they can't: the truth! 

We're tickled pink to have Mother Earth News as our co-sponsor.  They'll be kicking in our grand prize of $500 and helping us get the word out via their great magazine and website.  Other companies donating prizes include Mantis, Patagonia, Johnny's Selected Seeds and Neptune's Harvest, over a $1000 worth of prizes in all. 

As you'll see from the contest website, we're really open to just about any type of entry.  Whether you choose to paint your car with garden slogans, make a yard sign, direct your own YouTube video, or film yourself walking around in public with your buddies dressed as your favorite vegetable is entirely up to you. 

I'm hoping you'll have some fun with this and give it a try.  Anyone or group (a community garden, school garden, etc) may enter.  We welcome international entries and entries in other languages.  In the case of the latter, please include a an English translation (or transcript, in the case of a short online video). 

And remember: it's alright to show off a bit when you've got a good thing to show...and we do!

Until next month,

PS: This year's Kitchen Garden Day is Sunday, August 26th.  Please start bringing some gardeners together in your area to plan an event.  Let me know by e-mail how I can help you.  That's what I'm here for!