Sunday and Monday Libre

So part of our deal to each other is to have as many days off together as possible. In our current jobs we both take Sunday and Monday off. In a kitchen job these are the best days to have off. Sunday is obvious, after humping it out all week on the line with the climax being Saturday night's service you want nothing more than to sleep in on Sunday, have a late breakfast (whether it be a quick egg sandwich or brunch with cocktails) and chill the rest of the afternoon. Sunday we did just that with the addition of some shopping; mostly for seed starting kits for my new greenhouse.

A really great part of my new job is that the owner is very open to change and wants to give me every resource I need to succeed. So when Gene was talking about steps that the kitchen could make to become more environmentally friendly I casually asked what he though of putting a greenhouse on the roof. His response was that as long as there were no health code restrictions to growing and using our own veggies and herbs then it would be no problem. So a few days later we have our Apex greenhouse on order from Home Depot and here it is:
This is coming by freight and I only hope that it fits (unassembled) up the small hole which is our crawl hatch to get on the roof of the restaurant. I plan on having 20-30 different kinds of veggies and herbs up there, all in containers with a drip irrigation system. You might say that it is a bit late to get started on such an ambitious project but really it is just now warming up in Colorado. I have already started germinating the seeds as soon as they came on Sunday and Monday, here is the arrival of our seeds:

These are not all the seeds we plan o planting only about half, you'll notice that there are a lot of things that you would not see in a grocery store or restaurant, that is kind of the point of growing your own stuff. I can't wait to have fresh Aji Amarillo Peppers that i can use for either civeche or tiradito. A huge part of my influence in cooking is my wife, she being Peruvian i am taking what I can from her and adapting it to my own French influenced cuisine. Here are the Jiffy pots I used to germinate the seeds that I will be planting once they sprout and the greenhouse is built. You can keep up with the progress as I will chronicle the entire ordeal here. First step germinating the seeds in the Jiffy pots:

Pretty inexpensive actually at my local mega mart around 5 bucks each, I got 6. Here they are planted with a little heating pad underneath so that my tropical weather chili seeds will sprout:

The one on the bottom is all humid from the heat while the one on top had its lid removed so I could get a good picture of the pods. As more seeds arrive in the mail we will start more plants. When the greenhouse gets here I am sure we will spend an entire day putting that thing together and I will get some pics posted here... Chris