What are you eating from your garden in 2016

[rainbowgardener]

My first ripe tomato! That cherry tomato that I showed blushing was now dead ripe. I just picked it and popped it in my mouth. Sweet and tart!, yum, yum!

[applestar]

Mmm.... Sounds great!

I'm eating steamed broccoli -- I harvested a whole bunch today -- along with shredded Bibb lettuce and radish slices in a Korean cold soba noodle soup.

[rainbowgardener]

Last night's dinner was broccoli and pea soup with broccoli, peas, and basil from the garden. It also had potato, onion, garlic in it. It could have had new potatoes and green onion from the garden, but I didn't want to sacrifice them. Next year!

That was about the last of the peas; I am getting ready to pull them and replant.

[KitchenGardener]

Last night was salad of mixed lettuces and baby beet greens with baby beets, sliced raw snow peas, and thinly sliced baby onion from garden. On top, goat cheese and toasted slivered almonds (give me more time and I can grow those too! )

And I realize this is no fun without pics, so next time, photos before I dive in and eat!

[applestar]

Well, I thought about taking picture of my soup last night but decided not to Haha -- it was basically a creamed/blended kale (Red Russian -- leaves and kale-raab) and loose leaf bok choi (Osaka Shirona) and Komatsuna soup - made with left over take-out from Philippine restaurant chicken on skewers with BBQ sauce (removed from skewers), chopped King oyster mushroom, shallot, sautéed in butter and EVOO, then chicken broth and the greens -- lots of greens cooked until done -- then blended until smooth. Yum!

[kayjay]

My first garden treat of the year! Salad with 'Grand Rapids' lettuce I grew.

[rainbowgardener]

My lettuce is getting ready to bolt, so we are eating it as fast as we can. I don't know any ways to preserve lettuce; it seems pretty ephemeral. Broccoli is being very productive with side heads (baby broccoli in the grocery stores). Kale and cabbage and chard are going strong, though the kale and cabbage are under attack by slugs, which didn't seem affected by the sluggo type stuff I bought.
Cherry tomatoes are ripening a few each day now. The first of the regular tomatoes is blushing.

Basil is coming out my ears! I just went out and picked enough to stuff a gallon zip lock. And that's after we have had pesto dinner twice and I have frozen enough for three more dinners. And that is just from the plants on the deck. There's more out front I didn't get to. Harvested and dried a bunch more chamomile and a bunch of oregano. We had a garden party Sunday and I made two pitchers of mojitos from my mint plant.

We are going out of town June 9 -13 so I am trying to get everything ready to coast on its own. A little challenging since it will be sunny, 95 degrees (!) and ZERO chance of rain the whole time we are gone. I will water thoroughly the day before and hope for the best. I'm busy renewing all the mulch and adding it to beds that hadn't been mulched yet, to help conserve moisture.

[Lindsaylew82]

We got a HUGE take and bake cheese pizza prom Costco and topped it with stuff from the garden! A large green Marconi pepper, fresh basil, halved cherry tomatoes, shaved baby purple onions, and some mushrooms we got from our local co-op! It was SO MUCH better than plain cheese pizza!

Big Kid pulled a full on gag........but she don't know no good. Why do kids dislike veggies so much!?!

[digitS']

I remember looking at a study of teenagers and diet. Way low on recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. Something like 50% of those kids would not rate even 1 serving if pizza wasn't counted.

In the US, making one's own decisions is the first order of business for the new adult, or aspiring adult. Defiance is easy.

With girls, "do you want to be a good mother, someday?" That might just give them pause. A one line encouragement to "look up" ~ spinal bifida in newborns ~ could set them on a course of responsible behavior.

Children's seem to love fresh carrots. They often eat them readily - almost before you can get the dirt rinsed off them. Memories linger into adulthood. What am I eating from the garden ... carrots!

Steve

[Lindsaylew82]

This morning I made an omelette with basil and the last late-to-the-party asparagus. I've let most of them go to fern.
It was delicious. Big Kid proclaimed it's gag worthiness at the suggestion of me making her one, but ate several bites of mine all the same. Omelettes are about as cool as veggies on pizza....

I try and give her the ol' 1,2, future-mommy-guilt-trip-punch! Hahahaha! It will get her thinking! Until the last month or so, she was a very GOOD eater! Ahhh, but the impending 5th birthday make healthy foods lame and "deeegustin".

I do not fear my child going hungry. She's get loads of crappy food at her government run food grant school...I'm not allowed to pack her lunch yet.! I'm the parent that has zero extra time, and catering to an almost 5 year old who all of a sudden can't stand decent healthy fare, brings about a nice choice of, "You can go to be hungry, if you'd rather not eat!"

She does love carrots though! And cherry tomatoes! I have some carrot seeds to start in the fall.

[applestar]

For breakfast, we had broccoli (and some kale raab) in scrambled eggs -- I say scrambled, but I walked away and the eggs solidified before I got back so I guess sort of unfolded omelette -- with Swiss cheese melted in and dried dill from last year. (This year's dill is still growing).

For lunch, I made cold fresh Korean buckwheat/soba noodles from H-mart refrigerated noodle section. After cooking and ice-watering, Kids ate with just nori folded and cut into slivers with scissors with the bottled soba noodle sauce (too lazy to make from scratch and we found a brand we like), but I made mine into cold soba noodle SALAD with bottom half of the bowl filled with shredded Bibb lettuce, then the top half of the bowl filled with iced cooked soba noodles, then a mound of -- I think this was either French Breakfast or Bunnytail -- radish sliced into slivers (pretty mound of translucent white and magenta), minced carrot greens, Purple Passion asparagus and garlic chives blanched in the noodle cooking pot, then chilled in the ice water with the noodles -- garlic chives were chopped fine and asparagus was thinly sliced diagonally, and THEN topped with nori slivers and sauce poured over the top like dressing. OH Yum!

[digitS']

I didn't realize that the Big Kid was only going on 5, I thought more like 15

Okay, I know I had the "your body is not just your own" guilt laid on me as a kid, and I'm a guy! It's what you get from some Christian denominations ...

Asparagus and a 5 year-old?! Hey, I don't know that I'd ever eaten a tomato that was smaller than a 5 year-old's fist, or had one offered to me, until I was an adult.
Honestly, I don't think we had what kids would consider "attractive" tomatoes until the advent of both supermarkets and better lighting. At first, however, we'd wandered around the aisles and compare our blue skin color. Until they both came together, the produce department didn't present the bright colors and interesting displays it has today. I'm not sure if the produce itself looked much better than what was thrown over the corral fence into a feed trough. On the other hand, the green grocer of today looks like he's walking through the pages of a coloring book!

Noodles! I've said it before on the forum, noodles have the most responsibility for increasing my daily servings of greens!

My "greens" for lunch today ... are a little purple! No, not back to Purple Orach! I'm having beet greens ... with chicken sausage ...

Steve

[Lindsaylew82]

Oh! We had beets! And she does still like those!!! (For the moment....) I roasted them with EVOO! Red pee for everyone!!!

[Gary350]

We are eating Garlic, oregano, and parsley.

[Lindsaylew82]

I ate the little white ones right there. They pair well with Oatmeal Porter.

[digitS']

Beets. I like them right down to the thinnings, when it's difficult to come up with a single serving. That's okay with DW. She is suspicious of the color of red beets. She's coming around, tho. That took growing white beets in the 2015 garden, golden beets in years previous, didn't help. Oh, and she has learned over the years living with me, that the purple stains on the dinner plates will actually wash off with soapy water. That must have helped .

We've had red beets for weeks. The whites may have had a tougher time with the unusual spring heat. Anyway, they showed up yesterday.

While we are eating, DW said, "the red ones have a little better flavor." Could have knocked me over with a feather! She has eaten enough of the reds to have an opinion. I tried to stay cool, "which do you prefer?" Perplexed expression on her face. Quickly changing tack, "the whites are okay, aren't they?" "Yeah ..." Perplexed turned to puzzled ...

Steve
golden beets next

[imafan26]

I made chili with the bell pepper from my garden. I still have chayote and I picked a Meyer lemon. I haven't figured out what I am going to do with it just yet.

[rainbowgardener]

OMG!! The season of abundance is here. Tonight we ate SWEET CORN!! AND potatoes!! And tomatoes!

It was charcoal grill night. So we grilled the first three sweet corn ears in their husks. (Actually the corn probably would have filled out more, left to grow a couple more days, but it was tender and juicy and delicious.) Roasted the potatoes in foil on the grill with a little bit of olive oil and some garden herbs put in the pack. The tomatoes went in the garden salad, along with a bunch of baby broccoli, the last of the sugar snap peas, chard, kale, mixed lettuces. We had a cole slaw with garden cabbage and a couple of garden jalapeno peppers.

Life is good!

[digitS']

Snap peas, flowering bok choy and en chiffonade Portuguese kale ..

. all in the same lunch . (en chiffonade is the correct term for a Portuguese leafy green, right?)

Oh, and there was some thinly sliced beef, bacon and minor ingredients to go with the veggies over rice.

Steve

[sunflower13]

We are harvesting green onions, radishes and raspberries right now. I need to go picking at a local farm for some other things. I have more things growing but won't be ready for awhile.

[MOFishin]

Some green onions a few days ago in a salad were the first thing eaten from my 2016 garden. Then tonight's salad contained more of the green onions and these sweet banana peppers, enjoyed with a few family members celebrating father's day. The salad also contained tomatoes purchased by my mom at a farmer's market which looked like Cherokee Purple. I had never had them before (Have some growing myself) but they were small and seemed to have a tough skin.

[kayjay]

Salad with my lettuce.

20160618 lettuce.jpg (43.98 KiB) Viewed 2831 times

[ButterflyLady29]

Lettuce and green onions today! I made taco salad with them.

I need to pick peas and kale again. Peas and kale would be good with ramen noodles, a couple chopped hard boiled eggs make them even better.

[jal_ut]

Lettuce, radish, spinach, turnip. I did not plant enough turnips.
Still getting a bit of asparagus. Its about time to stop cutting it though.

[Lindsaylew82]

Green beans, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes!

I made a Mean Green juice this afternoon because I've been eating junk and stressing over sick kids, work and school....I got myself a summer cold. I used kale, lettuce, parsley and cucumber from my garden, and green apples from my moms tree. Along with store bought celery, lemon and ginger (lots of ginger!!!) it was SO GOOD! And I think it made me feel better, too.

[applestar]

I like smoothies and veg juice when I'm sick, too. I've been feeling the summer heat stress.

I made a Korean cold buckwheat noodles the other day. It comes in a package with 2 servings of thin fresh noodles and 2 bags of "radish broth" I was trying it for the first time and had no idea what to expect, so ate 1st serving as is. Yesterday, I made the second serving by blending several huge leaves of Bok Choi, kale, radish and broccoli with the packaged broth into very dark green smoothie, then pouring over the cooked chilled noodles. Torn up nori on top as garnish. Very very green and yummy.

[rainbowgardener]

Tonight's dinner was green salad and stir fry veggies over couscous.

Green salad had from my garden: mixed lettuces, swiss chard, baby broccoli, cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas.

Stir fry had from my garden: potatoes, onion, jalapeno pepper, kale, lots of basil, plus some store bought ingredients.

Last night was the bean cheesy chard recipe from Recipes for a Small Planet. I thought it was interesting. You know how FaceBook pops up "memories," what you posted on the same date last year or two years ago or whatever? FB came up with my post from two years ago, same date, talking about making the bean cheesy chard from my garden chard. When you eat from your garden, you tend to eat the same things at the same times of the year!

[Taiji]

Will eat some of this tonight. This is one of my most beautiful cabbages ever. Almost felt sad to harvest it. No worms, no aphids, nada! I've taken to growing Early Copenhagen mostly. It does well here, I think it outgrows the pests better. I start it indoors from seed.

[jal_ut]

Nice cabbage.

[Gary350]

Garlic, onions, potatoes, yellow squash, zucchini squash, blue lake bush beans, bell peppers, oregano, parsley.

[ButterflyLady29]

Garlic scapes with my canned pinto beans for lunch.

[Lindsaylew82]

Garlic scapes with my canned pinto beans for lunch.

Was gonna say "like a propah suthnuh!" But then I saw Ohio. better getchu some Cornbread to go with them beans!

Tonight I sautéed onions, squash, purple Marconi peppers, baby spinach and garlic with some evoo and s&p. Made it into a "cream" sauce by adding almond milk and veggie broth base. Thickened it with a little tapioca flour and nutritional yeast (sounds gross...awesome parm replacement!!!). Added some fresh green peas and a big blob of white miso paste at the end. We served it over broken lasagna noodles, cause lame-o numero uno right here thought we had pasta but didn't check PRIOR to cooking sauce... It turned out GREAT! Big kid ate it! Wee kid ate it! I got some left over for lunch tomorrow!! (Yay!)

[digitS']

Escarole! With chicken sausage and potato cakes ...

The escarole is a perfect accompaniment for my Saturday brunch . There is quite a bit in the garden. It makes a good change from bok choy and broccoli, and before the cabbage is ready.

I think I'll get some beans soaking for Sunday's lunch. Escarole and bean soup!

Steve

[KitchenGardener]

Tonight I sautéed onions, squash, purple Marconi peppers, baby spinach and garlic with some evoo and s&p. Made it into a "cream" sauce by adding almond milk and veggie broth base. Thickened it with a little tapioca flour and nutritional yeast (sounds gross...awesome parm replacement!!!). Added some fresh green peas and a big blob of white miso paste at the end. We served it over broken lasagna noodles, cause lame-o numero uno right here thought we had pasta but didn't check PRIOR to cooking sauce... It turned out GREAT! Big kid ate it! Wee kid ate it! I got some left over for lunch tomorrow!! (Yay!)

Lindsay: that sounds so healthy and if it was delish, count me in! Any way that you can provide a recipe, or is that it, lol?

[Lindsaylew82]

Lindsay: that sounds so healthy and if it was delish, count me in! Any way that you can provide a recipe, or is that it, lol?

Hahaha! Unfortunately I'm WAY too lazy to write anything down. I cook very touch and go. It's kind of funny that I have SOOOO MANY cookbooks. It's an obsession. A cook book is a great gift! Especially if it has pretty pictures! With such a love for them, I NEVER use them...EVER! I grew up watching my nanny cook everything by taste, feel, and look. I cook exactly the same way. I generally look at cook books for general ideas, and then go with it my own way. Very rarely, it hasn't paid off. Resident Man can't fill a handsworth of fingers of the bad meals I've put in front of him. (But the bad were BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!) (and some he ate anyway, bless his heart.)
I'd say it was roughly:

1 red onion sliced
3-4 medium zucchini/squash
1 long purple Marconi pepper (think red bell) sliced
4 cloves of garlic smashed very hard
Sauté in evoo-maybe 1-2 tbsp. Until softened.

Add 3 chunky handfuls of spinach, and cook until mostly dry.

Add enough unsweetened/ unflavored almond milk, soy milk, or regular milk to JUST cover the veg. Then add:
2 cups of cooked white beans
2 Tbsp vegetable base (it's a paste)
3 or so tbsp of tapioca or arrowroot powder (first mix it with 1/2-ish cup of COLD water until lumps are gone.)

Bring to heavy simmer. It should thicken quickly and then add:
Salt and pepper to your seasoning taste
1/2 cup Nutritional Yeast
1 cup of peas

Pour over a whole box of cooked pasta. Simmer with pasta for a minute or two, and then serve.

[applestar]

[Lindsaylew82]

Oh! I forgot! Add a big blob (3-5 tbsp.) of white miso paste right when you add the sauce to the pasta! It's salty, so you may want to account for that when you season with s&p.

[KitchenGardener]

Thank you so much!

[Lindsaylew82]

El gusto es mio!

[rainbowgardener]

Had company for dinner last night to share the bounty! Dinner was green salad, pesto potato salad, corn on the cob, and rotisserie chicken for the non-vegetarians.

EVERYTHING (except chicken!) from the garden. Salad was heavy on chard and kale with cherry tomatoes. Potato salad was garden potatoes, with my own pesto, chopped up big tomato, bell peppers, and a bit of jalapeno. Everything but the little bit of mayo in it from the garden... And a whole big bowl of fresh picked corn! More than we could eat!