Beautiful spring day

It's the end of our fiscal year and one can only carry over so many vacation hours.  I did not plan well this year because I had about 2 weeks worth of vacation to take in April.  Emma and I went to Savannah for one week and I'm now taking the rest of the time off, a day here, a day there.  That's Brian you hear in the background playing his tiny violin!

I spent the morning in the vegetable garden.  I sifted several wheelbarrows full of compost and added it all to a couple of planting beds.  The potatoes are late arriving this year but the email just came from Territorial Seeds that they have been shipped.  So the bed for the potatoes is now loosened and compost worked in.  I also prepared the bed for the asian long beans and edaname.  Those were planted today along with more carrots, onions, purple beans, cilantro.  Rocks keep appearing so I spent too much time picking them out of the beds.

The first real harvest!

Mint.  Brian has been asked for minty limeade. 

Mustard Greens.  These wintered over and are about done.  I think I will saute in bacon grease.  Add a splash of vinegar.  Yum

Lettuce that wintered over.  The new seeded lettuce is coming up strong. 

Leeks!  These are beautiful.  Not sure what to make.  Either leek and potato soup or a tart of some kind.

How goes eating from the fridge?

Pretty darn well

Day 3 - Monday
Cereal for breakfast - finished the raisin bran
Ate lunch out with a friend
Dinner - greens with garlic, salad, zucchini sauteed with tomatoes and leftover chicken curry.  All vegetables were in fridge.

Day 4 - Tuesday
Scrambled eggs with chopped tomatoes
Lunch - leftover curry and zucchini
Dinner - more greens sauteed with garlic and sausage, mixed with pasta.  Tomato and mozzarella salad.

Sean and I went to Costco Tuesday night.  Hoo boy, I spent the most ever - stocking up on dry goods and food for the freezer.

Also tonight I took a couple pounds of green beans and blanched them and froze them.  Grated the big zucchini and froze that.

Day 5 - Wed
Breakfast  croissants from Costco, with homemade jam.  Peach smoothie
Lunch - leftovers from fridge
Dinner - out with Sean and friend Patricia

Tonight I took a chicken that had been defrosted and boiled it up for a couple of hours.  Strained out broth - tomorrow I will make chicken and dumplings

Stopped by the garden today with my friend Patricia and picked a few things.

Tomatoes!

Garden Harvest this week - July 16

The vegetable garden needed some TLC so Sean and I spent 3 hours there this morning.  He staked the tomatoes (they were staked but are heavy with fruit and many branches had fallen over) and I weeded my little flower garden.  Then I tackled weeding the vegetable garden.  Sean picked the edamame and decided he didn't like picking.  So he watered and I picked the everything else that was ready.

The harvest!  From lower left:  red potatoes, edamame, zucchini, carrots, parsley, beets, shallots and onions, tomatoes and kolrahbi on the far right.

What to do with all this?  The potatoes I stored.  The zucchini and kolrahbi went into the fridge.  The onions and shallots will stay outside to dry.  The carrots were washed and stored.  The beans and beets were also washed.  I boiled the beets, skinned and vacuum sealed.  I blanched some of the beans and froze on a tray.  They will also be vacuum sealed.  The parsley is being dehydrated.  The edamame was boiled and then shelled and frozen.  No wonder I'm tired.

Fresh Edamame.  This is the first time I've grown it and it's a big success.  This vegetable will be back next year.

Ready to be frozen

I weighed all the cucumbers and found there is enough for a batch of dill pickles with some cukes leftover.  Tomorrow I'll make the dills but in the meantime, I made a batch of refrigerator pickles.  Layer sliced cukes with chives, rosemary and sage.  Boil cider vinegar and salt and then add cold water.  Pour over cuke mixture.

Last week I pulled up all the garlic.  These heads were a little squishy so I decided to roast them. I'll then squeeze them out and freeze the garlic paste.   The rest of the garlic is in storage in basement

Tomorrow we are going to pick peaches so that means more preserving. 

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!

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.

The garden harvest

Today it topped 90 degrees.  The spinach and arugula are done and starting to go to seed.  I had a chat with my gardening neighbor Marina and she gave me some tips on letting the greens go to seed and spreading the seeds around for fall sprouting.  I will give it all a try.

In the meantime, only one broccoli plant of the 8 or so I planted survived and I cut the head today.  The snowpeas are coming in like crazy - I will freeze a batch this weekend.  Everything else is coming up very well - I planted the sweet potatoes last week and they have started to look normal now that the weather is hot.  I will try to remember to take the camera to the garden this weekend and take pictures.  In the meantime, you can see a shot of my plot in this story. 

I stir fried the snowpeas, broccoli and tofu with black bean sauce - delicious.

The snowpeas

The one head of broccoli

Kale from a rogue plant that self seeded

Lettuce.  My gardening neighbor Marina has a huge patch of the red lettuce - all that self seeded from last year.  The red here is from that patch. I traded her snowpeas for lettuce.

Harvest and First Batch of Pickles!

I stopped at the garden on my way home tonight and realized that I now need to go every day or so.  The greens are all ready to harvest, the peas and fava beans are in bloom, the radishes are getting big.  All my beautiful broccoli has seemed to die except for a couple of plants. Don't know what happened with that but my gardening friend, Edouard has told me I can have his broccoli since he doesn't eat it!    It's been so dry lately, it's time to water every day.  I planted zucchini today and will probably plant more green beans tomorrow.  Still waiting for the sweet potatoes to arrive.

This is lettuce from the cold frame although there is plenty of lettuce to pick in my garden.

Chard.  Ate it tonight, sauteed with olive oil and garlic

Rhubarb!  I am going to make Vanilla Rhubarb jam but there isn't quite enough here (will pick more tomorrow) and need to buy pectin and a vanilla bean.  This will be the project for a night this week.

Beautiful radishes.  There are tons of radishes - I plant them along with the carrot seeds - the radishes come up first and break the soil for the carrots.  I usually let some of them grow large and flower as it it very pretty and attacts the bugs.

Arugula.  Made pesto with it and ate it with penne.

What to do with all those radishes?  I tried pickling them.  These will just live in the fridge.  Rice vineger, a little rice wine, water, ginger, garlic, sesame oil and sugar.  Heat and pour over radishes. I hope they are good.

Freezer Woes

It's that time of year again. Time to buy my 1/2 hog from Farmer Allan.  Or in this case, this year it's only 1/4 hog.  1/4 hog this year is weighing in at 70lbs of meat and I still have pork leftover from last year.

There is no room in my freezer for 70 lbs of pork!  Luckily, Sean is going to share with me and hopefully another friend will buy some pieces so maybe I'll have 30-40 lbs to store.

Sean helped to take inventory today.  I need help thinking of menus to use this food over the next 6 months!  If you read this blog, you MUST send me an idea or two.  With all this food in the freezer, I'm also thinking I should invest in a small generator, just in case.

My freezer!

Freezer door

Counting

Inventory - this is just from the downstairs freezer.  This doesn't count the upstairs freezer, nor the pickles, shallots, garlic, sweet potatoes, squash and potatoes I have in storage!

blackberries
peaches
bacon
chard
ham steaks
tomato puree
crushed tomatoes
plum tomatoes
rhubarb
shredded zucchini
green beans
beets
tomatillos
hot peppers
sliced apples
blueberries
mizuna
strawberries
carrots
4 whole chickens
sausage
pork chops
tilapia
pumpkin foccacia
naan
toffee bits
coffee
pecans
butter
bread flour
vegetable soup base
chicken soup base
roasted red pepper soup base
dried hot peppers

Bitter Melon

Last week in my CSA share, there was a bitter melon.  Having never encountered this vegetable, I had no idea what to do with it.   I have a wonderful reference/cookbook called Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, by Elizabeth Schneider and there was a section on bitter melon.

The melon

Sliced, a 1/4 inch thick.  Salt and let sit in a colander for 30 min.  Rinse and pat dry

Heat oil and stir fry until brown

Drain on paper towel, then toss with paprika, salt and lime juice.  Delicious!

I had some leftover rice so stir fried with soy sauce, ketchup and brown sugar.  Added edaname and peas.

What's for dinner

I think I'm having blog fatigue!  I'm running out of ideas - maybe because the gardens are winding down - although winter planting has begun and lots of my greens have started to sprout.  November is the time to plant garlic for next year and I can't remember if I ordered garlic or not - need to check on that.

The only thing left to harvest in the  vegetable garden is one last amber cup squash and the sweet potatoes.  My garden pal Edouard has planted parsnips for me so I can start digging those up all winter as long as the ground isn't frozen.  The greens (lettuce, arugula, spinach, mustard, kale) should start to be ready in a month or so.  There will be preparation for winter in the garden - digging in compost, fixing the entry door, spreading wood chips on the path.

I dug up all the potatoes a few weeks ago so Tuesday night, I decided to try potato pancakes.  The kids are now in full swing of activities so on Sunday we all sat down and planned out some meals for the week.  I'd like to keep doing this - I don't need to shop for too many ingredients since my fridge and freezer are bulging with food.

Along with the potato pancakes, there was homemade applesauce and sauteed bok choy - a weird combination but Emma wanted the Choy and it was fresh this week from my CSA.

Grate potatoes in food processor.  Let sit in cold water for several minutes, drain and rinse.  Combine with flour and egg, salt, pepper.

Fry in hot oil

Serve with applesauce and/or sour cream

For the bok choy - heat some oil and saute some peanuts with red pepper flakes.  Remove from pan.  Add chopped bok choy and saute until wilted.  Add splash of soy sauce and a water/arrowroot mixture to thicken.  Add peanuts and serve.  This recipe is from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I need some homesteading ideas to write about!  I'm committed to getting a worm composter this season.  Stay tuned.