It feels good to finally start incorporating home-grown vegetables and fruit into our meals again. Tonight we had a caramelized leek tart with a simple side salad. I tweaked this recipe, using Gruyere instead of Blue cheese. First time I made this. So good!
For dessert, it was a simple strawberry-rhubarb compote over vanilla ice cream.
Forgot to post my first real harvest of the year (May 11). A handful of rhubarb, which I turned into a strawberry-rhubarb compote served over vanilla ice cream for dessert. So good!
I harvested the first tomatoes (Stupice) on July 23 and then a few more Stupice, Scotia and Ailsa Craig the following weeks. Things started to really get rolling by August 10. On August 17, I picked my first Green Zebra and Dr. Wyche’s Yellow (two of my favorite varieties). Since then, I have been harvesting about two to three pounds every other day.
There have been a lot of Caprese (and other tomato) sandwiches and tomato salads on lunch and dinner rotation, like this tomato and peach salad with whipped goat cheese, for which I like to use Dr. Wyche’s Yellow.
I also made two batches of slow-roasted tomatoes, which I packed in olive oil and froze. For this, I used mainly smaller red tomatoes.
My daughter made an amazing tomato galette the other day (using red tomatoes only), with home-grown garlic and basil. It has been an exceptional tomato season so far!
Notes for next year: The Ailsa Craig tomatoes were prone to cracking; Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, Ananas Noire and Black Krim to catfacing (not a big problem and also unavoidable with the strange weather earlier this summer); and Ananas Noire and Black Krim were prone to rotten spots. Brimmer was a bit crowded out by the other tomatoes and stayed small as a plant (but did produce a few very tasty tomatoes, like the large pink-red one in the picture of August 31). Same growth issue for Stupice, which was crowded out by the calendula flowers.
Made my first batch of “pesto” yesterday. I forgot to take pictures of the actual product (which is just basil, olive oil and salt for more versatility). I pureed everything and scooped it into an ice cube tray and covered it with more olive oil. This morning, I moved the frozen cubes to a ziplock bag. There will be several more batches, and I will make one that is an actual pesto with garlic, nuts (likely sunflower seeds), and cheese. Nothing better than to pull a couple of cubes from the freezer in the middle of winter to add to pasta or use as pizza base, focaccia topping or over chicken or fish.
This past weekend, I made rhubarb crisp with the rhubarb from my garden plot. The first use of home-grown produce this season, yay! I used Mark Bittman’s recipe, but substituted sliced almonds for the pecans because of allergies in the family. So good!
First harvest of the year! This is my new rhubarb’s third year and the plant is thriving. I cut the flowers for decoration and pulled a good number of stalks. So many more to go! I see a lot of strawberry rhubarb galettes in my near future (recipe here). After four years, I am so excited to finally grow enough rhubarb again for baking!
The red currants are ready, so I harvested around 4 cups this morning. Cleaned them (which despite using the speedy fork method seemed to take forever) and froze 3 cups in a Ziploc bag to be turned into red currant crumb bars later. None of my kids are in town at the moment, so I will make the crumb bars later this summer. I will enjoy the remaining currants macerated over yogurt or ice cream, or eat them fresh.
There are still tons of currants waiting to be harvested. I will harvest and freeze more in the next few days.
Yesterday, I harvested about three cups of red currants. This hardly made a dent in this year’s bounty. The bush in our backyard has grown a lot over the past couple of years. This morning, I decided to make these red currant crumb bars for breakfast. They came out perfect.
