What's for Dinner?

Direct from the garden: Stir Fry.

We were meeting friends at the pool late this afternoon, and I was fretting a little about dinner earlier in the day. I wanted to have it ready when we got home because the kids are usually fried after swimming and I didn't want to cook in the evening anyway. Our CSA box hadn't arrived yet, either, which was where I was planning to get the veggies for dinner. It finally occurred to me that we have a rather large garden right out the back door! I'm also pleased to say it's starting to produce nicely. Above is what I harvested in about 4 minutes in the garden: Japanese eggplant, some carrots, an onion, peas, and a pattypan squash. I could have also picked a zucchini, dug some potatoes, picked kale or Swiss chard, and even picked the very first string beans. And had I needed herbs, I could have gotten flat leaf parsley, curly leaf parsley, one of four kinds of basil, rosemary, chives, thyme, oregano or mint. And in a couple of weeks we'll have tomatoes, too.

Maybe I should start thinking about canceling our CSA box. We love getting the fruit, though!

This is what the above harvest turned into:

My dad introduced us to Tofu Pockets. He keeps us in good supply, which is handy because Rhys loooves them. I make rice and a vegetable stir fry (sometimes with fried tofu), and we fill our pockets at the table. It's one of the meals at which I can pretty much guarantee Rhys will eat vegetables. Yay for the garden and tofu pockets!

Garden Goodies

 

A few of the garden goodies from last week: 

Peas and Kale

I picked the last of the spring beets, but they were bitter. I must have planted them too late. 

The garden is really starting to seem productive: the tomato plants are robust and full of green tomatoes, and the zucchini and pattypan squash plants are large, leafy and full of baby squashes. Even the peas are still producing. And we've had such a nice carrot crop this year!

Homegrown Cowboy Beans

Aaron had been itchin' to plant us some pintos, so we done did it last summer. And we were able to harvest a (small) mess of 'em. Here half of 'em are in one of our favorite recipes: Cowboy Beans (thanks, Dad!). They were pretty durn tasty, iffin ya ask me.

Cowboy Beans:

2 or 3 strips of thick-cut bacon (or whatever you have available)
2 can pintos, undrained (or homegrown crock-pot cooked equivalent)
1 onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped (or one can)
a couple of roasted chilies or poblanos, chopped, depending on taste
about 1 cup of corn kernels

Brown the bacon in a stock/large pot. I usually cut it up in the pot as it cooks. Add the onion and let it cook for a few minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir. Let simmer about 30 minutes. Serve with grated cheese and cornbread. Yum!

Cuke till you Puke

These are lemon cucumbers. We discovered that the lemon cucumber vine is particularly... productive. I estimate we've harvested 150-200 cucumbers this summer (from just one plant!), with more still on the vine. They're starting to go at this point, but I think we're going to make some refrigerator pickles with them this weekend. The skin is a bit tough, but the inside is quite delicious, juicy and sweet. Much, much tastier than the traditional kind.

Yummy Dinner

 We had this dinner several weeks ago- a mixture of our garden begs, farmer's market vegs and farm eggs. We enjoyed it!

Eggplants, Peppers, and Beans, Oh my!

So that you don't have to be subjected to yet another photo of produce, I'm just going to post in words about the garden. It's tasty and productive right now: eggplants, peppers, 3 kinds of string beans, almost cucumbers, almost cantaloupe, the last of the peas. The pumpkins are ripening, as are the tomatoes. Yum!

Dinner

I harvested several things from our garden for dinner last evening: red beets, golden beets, a purple onion, chard, lettuce, radishes and peas. With the addition of potatoes and sausage from the farmers' market, we had a delicious meal.

June Garden

This spring was cold and damp, and we had a pretty pathetic spring garden. The summer garden is finally coming on, though, and the spring vegetables are finally producing. We've had radishes, lettuce, chard and spinach, and now the peas have pods. The zucchini bloomed for the first time yesterday, and there are some miniature peppers on a few plants. The beans, strawberry popcorn and eggplant seem to be thriving and I finally got the cucumbers in the ground on Monday. I even have a holy basil plant, some parsley and sweet-leaf basil plugging away, with some nasturtiums, cosmos, and marigolds. Oh, and the onions have been doing quite well since early this spring. Yippee!

Garden Beautiful

....Our only carrot of the season (yes, it's supposed to be small and round)

and the first ear of red popcorn....

....tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes...

...eight foot tall sunflowers....

....more sunflowers (and the unproductive raspberries,
and the blackberry bush)

....and finally, this huge– and I mean pretty darn big– spider and her web.This was taken out front, and I couldn't get the camera to focuson the spider because there was no background close enough.This spider, in the position it's in in the photo, was easily thesize of the top knuckle-to-fingertip of my middle finger. With its legs stretched out, it would probably be and inch and a half in diameter. Its web was about 18 inches in diameter, and was anchored by webby strands that stretched another 18 inches to 2 feet beyond the web. My interest was particularly piqued by the still-wriggling sack of lunch the spider was guarding in the center of the web. I checked on it later and found that it had moved its lunch to a more secluded place to eat. This spider has become a small obsession for me; I looked in on it this morning as I was loading the kids up to take Rhys to preschool. I don't know where it was hidden, but I know I kind of want to keep tabs on it just so it doesn't find its way into the house or something...

Recent Images

Busy August Days:

Brother and Sister playing together

Napping with the Dog

Garden Harvest– Blackberries, Green Beans, and Tomatoes

Hiking in the Sangre de Cristos (one of our favorite activities!)

Green Chile Pesto and a Snake

We are harvesting like mad from our garden, which means at least some of my creative time is spent watering and weeding, harvesting, and cooking. It is so wonderful to have an abundance of fresh, organic veggies! We've been eating Japanese eggplants (grilled or in sautees), green beans (steamed until tender-crisp and topped with butter, or just munched on fresh and crunchy), swiss chard. I harvested our first sweet corn a couple of days ago, and our 2-year old is learning the fine art of eating corn off the cob. The peppers are coming in now, and I need to figure out what to do with lots of serranos. We've been roasting and eating the anaheims, and tossing them in with whatever else we're cooking. A couple of days ago, I finally made the pesto I've been threatening to make for a while (the basil is overflowing from the pots it's planted in) and added roasted anaheims. The result: delicious!!


And, perhaps it's the drought, or perhaps it's our charming personalities.... I had a Day of the Critters earlier this week. First, I finally found the big, nasty tomato horn worm that has been terrorizing one of the tomato plants. I had to pull it off the plant since it was obviously not ready to give up its tasty buffet, and its suckers were dang powerful. The bugger was over 3 inches long, and about and inch in diameter. It was also very squishy (shudder). Later, as Rhys and I were coming in the back door, a 2 foot snake slithered inside in front of us and went straight under the china cabinet. I intellectually love and understand snakes, and I knew this one was harmless, but I still squealed a little and shied away from the china cabinet at first. Aaron came home less than 10 minutes after the little snake came in the house, and by chance, he (the snake) decided he maybe didn't want to live inside after all and made a break for the door again. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out the sliding glass door... Aaron caught him, and we got a good look at him.



Finally, I found a mouse in the drawer underneath the oven. And I squealed . I caught it in a big yogurt container, out of which he promptly jumped (no mean feat for a mouse the size of a small avacado seed inside a container with walls at least 5 times his size), landed on the floor and ran out the door (thank goodness it was cracked open wide enough). I squealed again.