What's in bloom for June 20, 2011

Lots of things in bloom this week.

Russian Sage

Daylily - Sabra Salina

Agastache - Apricot Sunset

Coneflower

Lily

Butterfly weed - lots and lots of it

Bee balm

Ornamental grass with Blanket flower

Last Week'sCSA

I'm a little late in describing last week's CSA.  I picked it up on Tuesday and the rest of the week, Sean and I went out every night.  That never happens, it just so happened we had events all week.  So I didn't actually see what I had gotten until Saturday

In this week's bag was lettuce,  Japanese White "salad" turnips, Spring Onions
Cabbage Greens, purple "new" Gourmet Potatoes and  "Green Garlic"

I boiled up and fried the potatoes for breakfast before I was able to take a picture of them.   I also used up the spring onions too - diced them and sauteed with black beans.  Had this with scrambled eggs for breakfast with the fried potatoes.

There are radishes, greens, eggs, and turnips. I haven't used any of these yet but I will have a salad tomorrow with the lettuce, radishes and turnips.

These are beans from my garden.  I made shrimp, pea and fava bean risotto for dinner and had the beans steamed with butter.

Risotto!

Garden Harvest this week - June 10

Purple Kohlrabi!  this is delicious, just peeled and sliced thin and eaten raw in salads

This is the dinner I made with layered potatoes, chard, chopped ham and fontina cheese.  Bake until potatoes are done.  Cut into slices.   Chard from the garden

Chard, Ham, Cheese

Side dish of sauteed garlic scapes and fava beans - both from garden

Lots and lots of lettuce

Scapes from my garlic!

Favas - this is about it, I didn't plant that many and only a few pods grow on each plant.

What the garden looks like today

I finally remembered to take the camera to the garden.  My neighbor Edouard is away for the month so I am watering for two.  Went out early this morning to water and pick a couple of things.  The peas are ready to be pulled - I think I will just plant more green beans.

Beans in forefront, potatoes in upper right

Garlic with dill

Spent peas on left, tomatoes in back, squash to right

A new kind of bean for me this year - red! These should be ready in a couple of days

Kohlrabi - delicious, raw and sliced in salads.

Radish flowers. I let them go to seed because I think the flowers are so pretty

Sweet potatoes

Fava beans

Edaname - first try for these, there are flowers so I hope there will be soybeans

Preserving the harvest

The snow peas this year were crazy. I planted too many of those and not enough of the regular shelling peas.  The peas are done now, the plants will need to be pulled out pretty soon.  Not sure what to plant in their place.

Snow peas - lots and lots of them

Blanched and ready to be frozen

Frozen first, then vacuumed sealed

Had the last batch of arugula from my garden (it's now gone to seed.  I'm letting it go to seed with the hope that it will reseed and grow in the fall.  I'm trying the same thing with the spinach).  This is pesto made with the arugula.

Shelling peas.  Right to the freezer

Fava beans!

Fruit picking

Last week, Sean, the kids and I went fruit picking.  The kids weren't too keen but I twisted their arm.  We went to Homestead Farms for strawberries and sour cherries.  With four people, the picking goes fast.

I think we ended up picking close to 20lbs of strawberries and maybe 10 lbs of sour cherries.  The first thing I did was to clean several trays of berries and freeze them - once frozen, pop into bags.  Emma likes them in her smoothies so this will last for the year.  The next task was to make a batch of jam.

My helper

The beanies, picking cherries

Sean can reach the high branches

Cherries

More cherries

Strawberries

Mashing the berries

The jam!

For the rest of the strawberries, I made a mousse with pureed berries and whipped cream.  Then I pureed up the rest of the berries with sugar, water and mint and froze in ice cube trays.  Been having strawberry daiquiris!

For the cherries, I pitted them all and froze them.  My colleague gave me a recipe for a chocolate cherry snack cake that I will try this weekend.

First CSA share

I'm exhausted already just thinking about my garden and the CSA and what to do with everything.  My first delivery of the season was today.  A bag of vegetables plus eggs - thank goodness I share all this with my friend Kathryn, who also has a plot in my community garden.  I'm going to try and blog every week about what I do with the vegetables in the share.  This is the 4th or 5th season of getting a CSA from Fresh and Local, a farm in Shepherdstown, WV.  To be known in future posts as Farmer Allan.  All my chicken and pork also comes from Allan.  Today I discussed with him how to tell if the fava beans are ready.  He told me his field of Favas look wonderful so I can't wait.

here is what was in my bag today

Broccoli and eggs

From left to right:  spring onions, turnips, lettuce, garlic scapes

Greens of some sort

What to do for dinner?  I asked Brian to come into the kitchen and figure it out with me. I laid out everything on the counter, took a look in the fridge and put out some suggestions.  Brian settled on a frittata with broccoli on the side.  In the frittata,  he asked if we could each have a section and I said of course.  So my section had sauteed garlic scapes and cheddar cheese while he put chopped chicken and cheese in the section for him and Emma.  Brian then got to work and pretty much made the whole frittata himself except for putting the pan under the broiler.

Scapes being sauteed. These are so delicious.

The master chef at work

This is a side dish for me.  I picked chard from my garden on Sunday so there are more garlic scapes in here, plus chard and salt and pepper.

Dinner!  Frittata with garlic scapes and cheese, broccoli and chard.