This weekend was full of good eating from the garden. Since it's almost the end of November, I can hardly believe it. Mind you, if I had a larger garden and more storage, it would not be all that unusual to still be eating root vegetables, winter squashes, and maybe even some cabbages if special care had been taken in their storage, even this far up in Vermont. But for me, with my tiny little patch and the lazy methods of storage I employ, it is quite something.
Friday evening I made a spicy bean and kale soup. I didn't use a recipe, but just followed my instincts, using the ingredients I had on hand. I used the wonderful Dolloff beans that I grew and dried. These were my first-ever attempt at growing a dried bean, and not only that, the seeds were a gift from a fellow Northern Vermont (but on the other side of the mountain) gardener. I loved these beans and am very excited to grow more next year from the beans I saved for seed. I only ended up with enough this year for one pot of soup, because it was my first experiment with them and I didn't give them a whole lot of space in the garden. Next year I will devote three bean towers' worth of space to them. In the wonderful soup pot were onions and garlic and kale and canned tomatoes, all from my garden. I spiced it up with some Liquid Smoke and cayenne pepper, and because I was a bit too heavy-handed on the cayenne, I added a small splash of sherry and a small splash of half-and-half cream right at the end to cool the cayenne down a bit.
It was delicious and different, and as I'm writing this I wish I had more, but it's all gone. And I forgot to photograph it for the blog.
Then, because my kale is still growing and I know I will kick myself later if I don't use it while it's here, for lunch on Saturday I made a kind of kale pesto. I chopped and steamed two dino leaves (as Manise calls them) of Lacinato kale, then I put it in a blender with some walnut oil, pecorino cheese, pine nuts, and garlic, and poured the pesto over an omelet and sprinkled it with a little more cheese.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'll say it was......
.....delicious.
And different.
And holy cow.
At the risk of sounding repetitive again, I wish I had some more!
And I forgot to photograph it.
I was too busy devouring it.
Then Saturday evening I made chicken stew. In the stew pot were onions, garlic, parsley, and carrots -- all from the garden -- and the one bag of peas I froze from the garden this year. I added mushrooms, celery, sherry, frozen corn and some herbs, and let the whole thing simmer for a long afternoon while I did my studying and knitting. I treated myself to some miniature parsley dumplings on the top of the stew.
Delicious.
And yes..... different. And we feasted on that for two days.
And we saw that It Was Good.
All the better because so much of it came from our own backyard.
The inventory of riches from this year's garden is dwindling. There are a few carrots left -- enough for another stew or another two meals of buttered or roasted carrots, or the addition of grated carrots to several salads. There is a gallon-size bag of beets. There are four bulbs of garlic. There is a basketful of yellow and red onions. There are about nine pints of canned tomatoes, and a quart of frozen zucchini and two quarts of frozen green beans. There are two jars of pickled beets, and about six small jars of rose petal jam, and one quart of frozen asparagus, and two big buttercup squashes. The kale is still growing, as is the parsley. The broccoli is, too, but it's producing hardly any florets -- still, a handful once in a while is better than nothing. And the Swiss chard is still limping along, as well.
I'm thankful for what is there, and I treat it with great reverence. But if we had to survive on this, it wouldn't take us very far. I wish there were some parsnips with those carrots and beets in the crisper bin. Next year I will plant parsnips. Please remind me.
I forgot to photograph all the bounty of the weekend's table, so I'll give you a sneak preview of something I'm knitting.
Heh. I took about 20 photos under the Ott Lite, but this is the only one that accurately reflects the colors. So there you have it. Quite the sneak preview, eh?
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