What are you eating from your garden in 2016

[applestar]

Thanks for the idea!

Currently baking pasta subbed with zucchini slices lasagna using largish (9" Butta) zuke and a white comet eggplant -- number of zukes in the fridge is now down to 2 large, 1 med, and 3 small ). Had no ground meat but had leftover pot roast. No ricotta but had cream cheese. Used garden harvested onions and garlic, a green pepper, and herbs.

Don't know yet if it's going to turn out delicious or not... But it sure SMELLS YUM

Oooh this zucchini lasagna DID turn out YUM! I had 1 and 1/2 serving. I could go back for more but will wait and see if family will decide to try eating it or not. I often end up eating my "healthy choice" by myself so there might be "more for me" . I had two "reference" recipes but made it up as I went and left it to bake at 375 for 45 min. Then checked the recipes and went back and added 5 minutes according to one of the recipes. Should have trusted my instincts because it finished when I wasn't looking and burned the cheese in a couple of places. But I like that tangy "caramelized too much and will have to be called burned" flavor sometimes, so I don't mind too much.

This is one of those things I won't be able to make exactly the same way again. I used diced Swiss raclette cheese in the middle layer because I didn't have enough mozzarella and had to reserve that for the top. Raclette is -well- kind of "stinky" I guess a bit like Asiago maybe? But, being in the middle of everything, the flavor melded well. I wonder if the others will notice? Using the eggplant in thin long slices same as zucchini was a good addition because the shape and visual texture are similar but the mouthfeel and flavor are different and it's fun to get that extra surprise punch of eggplant flavor. Chopped up pot roast tasted great, and the finely chopped good Parmesan and Locatelli really made the flavors shine.

I really like that Butta and White comet are so pale and both play pretend-pasta really well.

Oh and I forgot that I also added some de-stemmed kale and garlic chives as well as all the little blossoms from a garlic chive flowerhead. I should also mention I used blossoms and immature seeds of parsley rather than the usual oregano, etc. and used Newman's Own Organic Fire Roasted tomato sauce, since my own tomatoes are still green....

[applestar]

Heh, it doesn't look like there will be more for me. DD is calling this "Ratatouille Lasagna," and DH who had declared very LOUDLY this morning "I don't EAT zucchini" was serving himself a hefty 2nd portion. Once I was sure he liked it, I told him this is zucchini while DD called out -- " I told you...!" He said, "But this ISN'T zucchini. It's GOOD."

[Gary350]

zucchini bread

[pepperhead212]

I just made a Thai curry, with eggplant, butternut, okra, onion, and bitter melon from the garden. Those, plus garlic and shallots in the curry paste, plus finishing it off with Thai basil. I probably forgot something!

It's been too long since I made a Thai curry!

[HoneyBerry]

:hehe:
This is a picture of some honey berry wine that I just squeezed from a jar of home grown honey berries that fermented in the fridge. It is soooo good. I just need more of it.

[Paulgarden]

Australia has some very nice veggie gardens,
Is there any Aussie gardeners here?

[HoneyBerry]

Not me, but I did have an Aussie friend. He worked for Microsoft for a while and then moved back to Australia. He gave me 2 postcards: Aussie Sheila and Aussie Bloke. 'Wanna cuppa?" That's all I remember.

[kayjay]

Applestar, glad it turned out! I should have mentioned a few tricks: one is to salt the zucchini slices for 20 min or so, then blot off the water with paper towels. Another is to use a really, really thick sauce. This fights the watery-ness of the zucchini.

My picky SO likewise wolfed it down and said, "I don't even miss the noodles."

[SPierce]

I already picked another batch of potatoes, I have several tomatoes that will be ready tomorrow and I picked some beans this morning!

[rainbowgardener]

Just canned up a couple pints of fresh tomato salsa almost all from the garden.

Garden ingredients: tomatoes, green peppers, jalapeno chili peppers, (one) carrot, onions, parsley*, basil

*I put parsley in it instead of cilantro, because I can't stand the taste of cilantro.

[applestar]

it sounds like everyone's gardens are doing really well
(My tomatoes are WAY late due to the TRM setback, but finally starting to trickle in with the cherry varieties, and I've been getting zucchini and eggplants, cucumbers, etc. and the mostly dependable perennials as in fruits)

Applestar, glad it turned out! I should have mentioned a few tricks: one is to salt the zucchini slices for 20 min or so, then blot off the water with paper towels. Another is to use a really, really thick sauce. This fights the watery-ness of the zucchini.

My picky SO likewise wolfed it down and said, "I don't even miss the noodles."

Thanks so much! I will try again with these instructions and see how it turns out. I think I will need to "enjoy" these zucchini bounty as my zucchini plants have been struck by the SVB's and they are likely to be going down any day now.

But other things are coming in. Maybe I should salt and blot then freeze the zukes for later cooking? Would that work?

[imafan26]

It all sounds so good. I just have upo squash, calamondin limes, and herbs. Today at the community garden we had our annual pot luck. Lots of good food, it was enough for lunch and dinner. There was pork and pumpkin, kim chee, wakame salad with daikon from the garden, about 4 pans of pancit (Filipino fried noodles), chicken adobo, Filipino sweet spagheti, hot dogs,corn on the cob, mungo beans (it was gone by the time I got there) We had roast pig and a quarter hind of beef. Lots of desserts including watermelon, mango cake, Leche flan, biko (mochi dessert with coconut), and chocolate dobash cake from Zippy's. And of course there was rice. No meal here is complete without it. Someone even brought brown rice.

[applestar]

Did you ever post what you MAKE with Upo? I'm really curious now. I bought a short one at the Hmart -- am looking at it wondering what to do....

Also bought a Korean melon....

[Gary350]

[applestar]

This is a picture of some honey berry wine that I just squeezed from a jar of home grown honey berries that fermented in the fridge. It is soooo good. I just need more of it.

That looks like fun! I imagine you relished every drop

[applestar]

Did you ever post what you MAKE with Upo? I'm really curious now. I bought a short one at the Hmart -- am looking at it wondering what to do....

I looked around and noted that imafan kept mentioning soup. So I grabbed a couple of reference recipes from the Internet and made a Turkey and Upo soup.

Yellow color (aside from the stove hood light) is from my MIL's tomato -- I think it was a Yellow Brandywine -- very yummy front end and middle flavor notes with strong acid finish. I thought it would go better with the left over roast turkey, color wise, than a red tomato. In addition to the standard onion and garlic, I added a small green jalapeño and used about 1/2 cup of kimchee radish broth from a store-bought cold noodle kit in addition to fish sauce to up the flavor. Mung bean cellophane noodles, too. Very yummy.

I cubed and froze the other half. I hope that will be OK for using later.

[KitchenGardener]

Yesterday's dinner was a saute of summer squash, sugar snaps, onion, basil and tomato with a good handful of beet greens thrown in at the end all from the garden (it also had leftover corn cut from the cob but that was from the farmer's market). And grilled steak. Big yum!

Tonight, I was feeling uninspired, so pan fried a frozen Mahi Mahi burger, and picked every padron pepper I could find and then sauteed them in good olive oil with a sprinkle of sea salt. So good - I dream about them all year long! Oh and a handful of cherry tomatoes. I can make a whole meal of appetizers and tapas from the garden!

[jal_ut]

[Taiji]

Will be eating this tonight. Tasty Green hybrid cuke; Stringless green pod bean, radishes, greyzini, a Rutgers. Also, the last 6 Ambrosia corn ears.

[rainbowgardener]

tonight was just picked Silver Queen corn, plus pasta with fresh basil pesto and cherry tomatoes from my garden.

[kayjay]

20160802-veggies2.jpg (35.8 KiB) Viewed 2382 times

My haul from yesterday. I made a big salad out of the chard, pepper, and some leftover 'Red Robin' tomatoes. Tonight, I'll be doing cucumber chips in the dehydrator and maybe zucchini pasta with the spiralizer for dinner.

I'm pretty happy about that head of cabbage, even though it's undersized. I'll probably do cole slaw and probably some cabbage + bacon.

[applestar]

I made cornbread with fresh blueberries in the batter and then drizzled blackberry sauce I made from the rejects, then scattered dollops of strained berries that were used to make the sauce with that were still clinging to the underside of the strainer



I had my THIRD piece topped with more blackberry sauce and a scoop of ice cream on the side.

[applestar]

My children have discovered it only takes 20 minutes in the toaster oven to roast potatoes cut into home fries, coated in oil and sprinkled with sea salt. They are going through the harvested potatoes for imperfect tubers to cook and eat -- I think I just heard the toaster oven beeps for the third batch finishing

[applestar]

Used some of the squash and overgrown cucumber, onions, carrot, garlic, jalapeño, herbs, etc. and made Creamy Yellow Zucchini, Cucumber Boat and Mushroom soup

[HoneyBerry]

Now you really did it Apple. Cornbread with blueberries and blackberry sauce? That sounds sooooo good. What time's dinner?

[HoneyBerry]

My garden is small this year due to lack of time. My tomato plants are doing great. And I love my beautiful blanket flower plant. Here are some pictures from today.

San Marzano Heirloom Tomato

Sweet Million Heirloom Cherry Tomato

Blanket Flower Plant (I think that's what it is.)

[digitS']

Lots of tomatoes (cherries) and cucumbers :

Some of these are the very first off the plants. The pink beefsteak on the left will need a day or two for ripening.

"First off the plants" is also true with the Lemon cucumbers. Often they are quite late altho I like them best while they are still green and before they look so much like a lemon. The Mediterranean-types (Muncher, here) are often harvested while they are tiny. I haven't found the need to do that and have been enjoying them and their American slicer neighbors for a week or so . Now there are some Alibi pickling cubes which I don't really need, not being a pickler .

Potatoes and beans! Green bush beans. They are great numbers coming off the Jade bean plants! We froze quite a few but it will remain to be seen if DW has much interest in those thru the winter. She is very much a fresh fruit and veggie person.

The potatoes are mostly Red LaSoda. They are supposed to be a midseason variety but are going down hard. I also haven't figured out if I'm growing a common soopermarket veggie with Red LaSoda. This is my first season with them and they have produced just fine! This, despite record-breaking early June heat which seemed really hard on the potato patch.

I didn't grow potatoes for about 25 or 30 years because they are so commonly and cheaply available. Then, curiosity got the best of me and I've enjoyed one new variety after another in recent years. I suppose it's okay if I've worked around where I'm just back to what I could buy in the store. Having good success with a crop is important to me and I have them new and fresh at this time of year . Purple Majesty and Purple Viking are also coming out of the garden. The Purple Viking is another very productive early variety for me. I wish shipping wasn't so high on seed potatoes but I continue to promise myself a late winter drive of only about 150 miles to avoid paying it .

Steve

[applestar]

I LOVE your tomato picture, digit'S. Another reason to grow all the different colors and shapes, too.

[Lindsaylew82]

I made cornbread with fresh blueberries in the batter and then drizzled blackberry sauce I made from the rejects, then scattered dollops of strained berries that were used to make the sauce with that were still clinging to the underside of the strainer



I had my THIRD piece topped with more blackberry sauce and a scoop of ice cream on the side.

My goodness that sounds so yummy!

[AnnaIkona]

I collect more than 5 cucumbers each day and just now I've have collected 7 tomates!!! Yay! Also some elderberries, french sorrel, and kale

[jal_ut]

Today picked an armload of sweet corn.

[applestar]

Not sure if this was "delicious" -- DD and I both agreed it tastes good but for some reason, it's not something you want to drink too much of. -- but we split about 4 cups between the two of us and decided that was about the limit.

Sweet Cherry Tomato Slushy

2 cups dead-ripe Coyote that split when picked or split in the rinse bucket -- these are normally eaten that day or collected in a dedicated bag in the freezer
1/3 cup water

Heat to boiling, then strain, pressing out all the juices. pour over 3 cups of ice cubes in the blender then blend smooth with 1/2 tsp sea salt and 1/3 cup sugar until smooth and slushy. Beautiful pale yellow color.

...thinking maybe adding coconut cream, light cream, or yogurt might make it interesting
...wondering if fresh pineapple juice might be compatible

...wondered if anyone has tried making bloody mary or virgin mary slushy...

[sunflower13]

I have been picking herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers.

[digitS']

These are Candy onions. I also have 100% mature Walla Walla Sweets.

The SV4058 white onions are just now starting to fall (2, out of many). Of course, I have been enjoying all of these right up until this time, at all stages of growth. This is the first year for SV' in my garden ... I really wish someone would come up with a more appeeling name . Anyway, I get away with more time than I'm supposed to with storage in my basement for sweet onions but I'm hoping some variety will make it right through the winter.

Steve

[jal_ut]

Went out and wandered around.... found a handful of little red tomatoes and some broccoli.

[Taiji]

Some large cherry tomatoes, a California Wonder, some nice nantes, a short fat cuke that was supposed to be burpless hybrid but isn't, and the greyzini plant just keeps pumping them out.

[digitS']

Eggplant parmesan!

Sweet peppers!

Cantaloupe!

Sweetcorn, from the second sowing!

More tomatoes, almost every variety!

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

Dinner tonight was a veggie stirfry. This one had from the garden: peas (that were frozen from when we had peas earlier in the season), one onion, one carrot, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, fresh herbs, and one big yellow crookneck squash, from the plant that was treated with tanglefoot! Yay!!!

And we had fruit salad that included the last of our small harvest of apples, so good!

[ButterflyLady29]

I finally got some good tomatoes from my garden! Nothing beats home grown tomatoes!

[applestar]

I'm trying to make my first blackberry fruit leather. It turned out that the two fruit leather trays I thought I had belonged to a previous incarnation of dehydrator and were too big to fit in the current one, so I had to improvise with parchment paper.

I made some apple sauce and used the same food mill after changing the plate to smallest sized holes for straining the pureed blackberries, so there's a bit of applesauce in the mixture as well.

And afterwards, I'm such a miser that I swished the thick berry paste from all the tools -- blender, food mill, spatulas, measuring cup -- with filtered water, then strained in the smallest mill and ended up with this "beverage" -- somewhat tart but somehow, so very delicious.

The little bit of sweetened applesauce in the saucepan that didn't fit in the jelly jar has been finding its way into my tummy by spoonfuls, too, I wish we had some vanilla ice cream ....