Forgot to post a quick weeknight dinner I made a few days ago. Pasta with roasted tomatoes, kale, chard and sausage. All veggies (tomatoes, garlic, kale, chard) are from the garden plot, the rosemary comes from my back porch.
Garden Dinner
Category: Cooking
Garlic Scape Pesto
A few days ago, I finally got around to make garlic scape pesto with my harvested scapes. As usual, I froze it in ice cube trays and then transferred the pesto cubes to freezer bags for later use. Yum!
Garden Dinner
Earlier this week, I made (up) a Greek-inspired quick dinner. I fried up leeks, onion, garlic and a bell pepper and added ground beef to it. I added tomato paste to make it more like a sauce and seasoned it with paprika, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, oregano. Topped it with feta and fresh parsley and served over rice. Quick, easy and delicious.
The (overwintered) leeks and onions were from my garden plot, the parsley from my back porch.
Lettuce
We have had a few warm and humid days lately and the head lettuce leaves started to grow more upright, a sign that it will bolt soon. I harvested the remaining three heads in the plot and one big head from the porch. I still have some leaf lettuce growing with the hot pepper on the porch. I planted a kale seedling in the now empty container on the porch.
I also harvested garlic scapes and snap peas. The snap peas made it onto a crudités platter this afternoon for my now 14 year old son’s birthday party.
UPDATE: For dinner I tonight, made bibimbap lettuce cups with leftovers (meat and sesame spinach). Yum!
Spinach Frittata
Dinner: Spinach and goat cheese frittata with spinach from the garden, served alongside my staple salad: lettuce, cucumbers, radish, avocado with a sour cream-cilantro dressing.
Thinning Arugula
This morning I thinned the arugula/spring greens flat on my backporch. The greens are finally starting to grow, now that spring is here. I added the sprouts to my breakfast sandwich of maple-roasted turkey, Provolone and Zhoug on baguette. Delicious!
First Home-Grown Dinner
A couple of nights ago, we enjoyed the first (partially) home-grown dinner of the season: fettuccine with sauteed asparagus and mushrooms in a garlicky lemon-feta sauce. The (purple!) asparagus came from my garden plot, the parsley from my back porch. Delicious!
Last Garden Tomatoes
Last night’s dinner was Moroccan meatballs with harrisa, cumin-roasted cauliflower with tahini, Greek salad and rice. The five tomatoes in the salad were the very last ones from my garden. They had been ripening on the kitchen window sill for the past five weeks. They were so very tasty.
From my garden in my pantry right now: garlic, hydroponic basil I grew from basil cuttings back in early October (although the basil now is slowly dying).
From my garden in my refrigerator right now: carrots, leeks, beets (I roasted them a couple of days ago and we will have them in a salad tonight).
Still growing in the garden: leeks, kale, Brussels sprouts.
Thanksgiving
We spent Thanksgiving at our friends’ house and I was on appetizer duty. My daughter and I made these butternut squash turnovers, which in addition to squash are filled with mushrooms, leeks, garlic, goat cheese and thyme. They are delicious, and it made me very happy to be able to incorporate homegrown vegetables – leeks and garlic – into the dish.
Potato Leek Soup
Eating from the garden in November – potato leek soup. Leeks, garlic and parsley are home-grown.
Last two cloves of (volunteer) hardneck garlic. Now onto the softnecks.
Leeks and garlic sauteed in butter.
Add potatoes …
… and water , salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes and puree. To be served with chopped parsley, bacon bits and homemade croutons. Yum!