I harvested a lot of basil today, about a third of what is in my plot. I will puree the washed and dried leaves with olive oil and freeze for use in the winter. I find that just freezing the basil in oil makes it more versatile for cooking and it keeps better. I use it to top soups or as pesto for pasta, pizza, potatoes or chicken. I just add the cheese and pine nuts (for pasta) later during cooking.
Today’s produce harvested other than basil. (My first red dahlia is finally blooming!)
Baguette with slow-roasted tomatoes/garlic/herbs, sheep feta, parsley plus freshly picked cucumber. All the veggies and herbs on this plate are home-grown.
My three tomato plants are heavily producing. I put them in late, but now at the end of August they are giving me plenty of delicious fruit. Despite my best efforts, I have too many tomatoes to eat raw (e.g. Caprese salad, Greek salad, fresh tomato/mozzarella/basil pasta sauce, or just plain on bread). So, I slow-roasted about three pounds together with garlic and fresh herbs and will either turn them into pesto or top some bruschetta in the next couple of days.
I quartered the larger Brandywines and halved the Momotaros and put them on a parchment-lined, lightly-oiled baking sheet together with some garlic cloves and fresh rosemary and oregano. Seasoned everything with salt and pepper and drizzled with olive oil. I slow-roasted them in a preheated oven at 325 F for about 2 hours. I let them cool and put them in a mason jar in the refrigerator for use within the next few days.
I signed up to be one of the harvest volunteers at City Natives in Mattapan and today was my first day. We harvested (and weighed and recorded) tomatoes (8 pounds), eggplants, bell peppers, hot peppers, turnips, cabbages (Savoy and Oxheart), kale (Rainbow Lacinato and Red Russian) and 26 (!) pounds of callaloo. All of the produce will be donated to a nearby food pantry. I will be helping out once a week during the months of August and September.
Ping Tung eggplant 
Mixed peppers: Bell peppers, Anaheims, Banana peppers, Islanders, Little lemons, Serrano.
My share 🙂 (The tomatoes are from my garden).
EDIT: A few days later, I made this recipe. Yum!!! Served with rice, green beans with chili sauce and ginger chicken.
Thursday: Swiss Chard, cucumber, tomato, green beans, basil, flowers. I will make another pesto potato salad for another party on Saturday. Also on the menu, Caprese salad and a Swiss Chard omelette for breakfast.
Tuesday: cucumbers, green beans, tomato, Swiss Chard. Dinner tonight: Fettuccine with Swiss Chard (from today’s and Friday’s harvest), mushrooms, garlic, feta and pine nuts.
Sunday: onions, radish, green beans, cucumbers. The cucumbers will go in a Turkish cucumber salad, together with those harvested over the last few days.
Saturday (no picture): green beans and a lot of basil. Turned the green beans (and some more harvested in the last few days), basil and home-grown garlic into this delicious pesto potato salad, which we brought to a party this afternoon. I pretty much followed the recipe except I roasted the potatoes. Yum!
Friday: First heirloom tomato, cucumbers, Swiss Chard, a handful of green beans and basil
So many cucumbers this year! About two a day. From three plants bunched into one single seed pot. I am not even sure what the variety is, I think I might have panic-bought them at Whole Foods after my direct-sowing experiment failed. This picture shows about 3 pounds of cukes.
I chopped those cucumbers up and turned them into this tasty Turkish-inspired cucumber salad, minus the dill. It was very refreshing. I served it with spiced lentils with yogurt and feta, roasted broccoli, sauteed chicken breast and rosemary focaccia.
Sunday: Kale and green beans. Dinner included green beans with feta.
Friday: carrot, beans, basil. Dinner tonight included a large Greek salad (I used up all home-grown lettuce and the cucumber harvested yesterday).
Thursday: first cucumber, the very last lettuce, beets, kale and green beans. Dinner tonight did not involve anything in this picture, but this (with carrots and herbs from the garden) and homemade rosemary focaccia, roasted broccoli (daughter is vegetarian) and sauteed chicken breast (son is not).
Wednesday: more green beans that together with the harvest from previous days were turned into this deliciousness.
Monday: Swiss Chard, lettuce, green beans, mint and the first cherry tomatoes. On the menu: Swiss Chard, mushroom and sun-dried tomato frittata, and a Greek salad with feta, parsley (from my back porch) and mint.
Some of the last lettuce from the garden. It will go in a side salad tonight with radishes, cucumbers and carrots and a creamy cilantro dressing.
Pizza last night with all toppings form the garden (except the cheese of course). I made a garlic scape pesto (with scapes and basil from my garden) and topped it with fresh kale from the garden (chopped and briefly massaged with a bit of olive oil and salt), fresh mozzarella slices and shredded cheese. Yum!
I only have a limited amount of scapes this year as I primarily planted soft-necks. In fact, all the scapes are from hard-neck volunteers that I left in the ground last year.
Garlic scapes right before harvesting about two weeks ago (I kept them in the fridge until now and they were fine).
Garlic scape pesto.
Just before going in the oven.
Today I spent a couple of hours getting the plot ready for winter. I ripped out spent plants, pulled weeds and turned the soil. During the process, I found a number of potatoes I had left in the ground, a welcome basis for today’s dinner of roasted potatoes and carrots and pork tenderloin with mushrooms.
The rain kept me from cleaning up more than I had planned to, but I still got to pick some flowers for a little bouquet. Planting more flowers this season was definitely a good idea. I loved having fresh flowers every week this summer and fall.
I also harvested carrots (which we had for appetizers, dipped in hummus), kale, Chard and parsley. I still have carrots, radishes, leeks, Chard, kale, leeks, onions, dandelion greens, herbs and flowers growing in the garden. It has been an extremely warm fall and one of my plot neighbors has some strawberries growing in his plot. Crazy.
Dahlias, Jerusalem artichokes, parsley and foliage