159. Side Effects

Before reading today's very important missive (ha), go take a look at how Prunella's auction is doing.  I'll wait.  Click here for the auction.  When I last checked, 185 194 218 (it keeps rising!) people have it on their watch list and the price is going up-up-up.  Yay for you people.   

You back?  Okay.  Hi!  Read on:

A good side effect of the garden is..... I cook!  There is just something about having all that supah-fresh scrumptiousness right outside my door (well, OK, it's outside the door and up a hill that takes the legs of a mountain goat to climb, but I do have those legs...) that inspires me to cook and to eat well.

For example, some sample dinners and lunches we've had this week:

• Sliced roast beef over a salad of several greens from the garden, and radishes.
• Salmon burgers with braised baby beet greens and radishes from the garden, and grilled spring onions from the garden
• A huge salad of mixed greens from the garden topped with ginger-teriyaki chicken sausages, cut in half lengthwise and cooked on the grill, chopped red onion and apples, with maple-apple cider vinaigrette (standard vinaigrette made with apple cider vinegar, salt, dijon mustard, garlic, olive oil, and a touch of maple syrup....sorry, no measurements -- I just sort of did it.)
• Grass-fed-beef burgers with cheddar cheese, with, yes, mixed greens from the garden
• My favorite chicken legs, asparagus from the garden, broccoli from last year's garden (frozen) and roasted carrots.
• Spinach, parsley, onions and radish leaves from the garden, made into a ricotta pie with chopped red bell pepper, Italian herbs and sharp cheddar.
• Tuna salad made with fresh chopped parsley, scallions, and mint from the garden, celery, red grapes, and a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice
• Hard-boiled egg, hummus, and green beans from last year's garden.  Thank goodness I was moving the rose jam to the freezer in the garage.  I found a ginormous bag of lovely green beans just languishing in there. We cannot have the home garden produce just languishing.

Cripes, we haven't eaten this well in..... well, in as long as I can remember. My creative juices are flowing, my body is happy from all those nutrients, and what to make for dinner is as easy as a walk out to the back yard.

Another side effect is making friends happy.  Thanks to my grow beds and the perfect growing weather we've had, I have enough greens and radishes and onions to give some away.  This makes for a very happy mother, sister, physical therapist, and friends.  I've never really had enough to give much away before.  I love it. It's one of the true joys of the garden. 

Now we've got a damn heat wave this weekend, which makes me worry the spinach and lettuce will bolt (go to seed). 

There.  Now, wasn't that worth coming back for?  No?  Oh.  Well.  Uh.  Sorry.

Comments

[toni in florida]

Totally worth it.

(Question: Why will your comments thingy not remember my personal info??)

[marianne]

Yowza, are you kidding?!? ditto... TOTALLY worth it!

[Nora]

It was worth it for me - now I might be inspired to make something other than frozen pizza for dinner one of these days. My cooking mojo has gone awol lately. I love your simple, fresh ideas. All we have room to grow are tomatoes, cukes, peppers and herbs - so we've got a while to wait. Farmers markets should be booming about now, though, and I think it's time to visit!

[elizabeth a airhart]

yes it was well worth reading
more fun then a cook book

i live on the central west central coast of florida
it was 98 degrees yesterday more to come we do not
cool off not for many months-breaking records

i hope your greens survive fresh baby greens
are just lovely liz

[margene]

I got caught up in the auctions (I won one of them) and forgot to come back. I'm here now and wish I could enjoy some of the garden goodies.

[Roxie]

Wish I was your neighbor, for oh so many reasons. But then, I'd have to live in (shudder) Maine, and it (shudder) snows all the time up there (in the winter.) Ever consider moving to the temperate, fertile, verdant Wilamette valley?

[Marcia Cooke]

I've covered my peas and lettuce with shade hoops this year: skinny PVC pipe covered with floating row cover. This is partly to keep the critters at bay (knock on wood...successful so far) and partly to shade. Nothing bolted yesterday, so we'll see if it works for another two or three days. I'm also trying some "summer lettuce" under lights..those seedlings will fill the holes. We've been getting a salad a day from the garden, but nothing else is anywhere near ready to eat yet. Give me a virtual internet kick in the pants next year, will ya? I am SO late this year!

[--Deb]

Oooh, yum! It all sounds delicious, Norma! And it reminds me of the Baby Blues comic strip in this morning's paper. Did you see it?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/comics/babyblues.html

[Cookie]

Yum!

I am so jealous. It's too late to grow anything salad this season. Isn't it wonderful when your garden can provide such bounty?

[Teresa]

I have an herb garden that is wonderfully productive, but I don't cook much and never know what to do with it all, so aside from being pretty it is a bit of a waste. I envy you the energy and focus.

[Seanna Lea]

Definitely worth it. Even with my brown thumb (I tend to kill plants, but only through gross neglect or creative care), I love the idea of getting most of my fruits and veggies so close to home. Though without gardening space, here it would be through a CSA.

[Beth]

I wish I could cook from my garden, but all I can grow has to fit in a pot on my deck :-(

[Diane T]

Please -- when you do your canning/freezing tutorials this fall, include some on green beans. I've done it a couple of times and the beans were kind of yucky. I followed directions *just so* with the blanching and rapid cooling and the beans still weren't great when I cooked them. Or maybe I just don't like the texture of frozen green beans!

[Kristen]

Well, the last "recipe" works for me! ;) So far my greens are holding steady, but they are under the deck roof so they're shaded from all but the morning sun.

[chris]

Ohhh, that is incredible, the bounty you already have from your garden! You're totally inspiring me to put in a couple more raised beds (we have one going right now, that's all) and grow so many more things next year! I'm planning to do some fall/winter crops here too, but it's already too late for me to plant much else -- we're having days in the mid-high 90s already.

I wonder if my husband would let me fill the (small) backyard with a huge veggie garden . . . maybe if I stress that then there would be no mowing to do back there?

[ellen]

I'm really enjoying your garden pictures. I'm not flower gardening this year, and I have always had a black thumb for veggies. Yours look fabulous. I do have a good tip for you, though. Where you have trouble with slugs strew coffee grounds under your plants. They can't tolerate the caffiene and die, but you don't kill anything else. As a nice bonus, the grounds are good for your soil. If you don't drink enough coffee to get all you want, open up your spent teabags and add the (free) grounds you can get from Starbucks. I swear this works a treat - I had hostas with no bites out of them for years!

[claudia]

That sounds incredibly delicious.

[Dani in NC]

I found your blog through Ravelry and I have been reading the gardening posts you've made for the past month. This is my first year gardening after several years of dreaming about it and your experiences have been encouraging. I look forward to reading more.