Monday, January 20, 2014

Harvest Monday - January 20, 2014

Not much new to report this week other than a handful of snap peas which were a nice sweet treat.


I harvested a few stalks of celery a few days for my lunch salads (made with store bought greens, alas) and I found a few nice carrots to add to the salads.


The Di Ciccio broccoli continues to pump out shoots. These were harvested yesterday and haven't been consumed yet. I had a similar bunch from last week which was used in two preparations - the largest leaves were used in a frittata and the shoots were steamed and served with a garlic sauce that I've been making lately. I use a whole head of garlic, peel the cloves and cut the largest ones in half, put the cloves in a small copper butter warmer, add a few tablespoons of good white wine, a pinch of salt, and cover with a generous pour of olive oil and simmer for about an hour (or even just 30 minutes) until the cloves are soft. Carefully mash the garlic to a paste with a fork (or you can remove them from the pan and mash or chop them, then add them back to the pan), melt a tablespoon or two of butter into the mixture, season with some pepper and serve warm. The sauce is great scooped up with artichoke leaves, or drizzled on steamed Romanesco broccoli, or cauliflower, or broccoli shoots. You can add some chopped capers to the sauce, or pepper flakes, or dried oregano, or fresh rosemary. It's really addictive and a great way to use up an abundance of garlic.


Well, it's official now, we are in a serious drought. I am certainly enjoying the warm sunny days, but it's a guilty pleasure. These kinds of temperatures make me want to sow some tomatoes, and eggplants, and peppers... But I'll hold off until the usual time in hopes of inclement weather to come.


On the other hand, it may be time to invest in a few new buckets. I remember the last time we had a serious drought, we had a bucket in every shower to collect the water to use to flush the toilet or to haul outside to water a few precious plants. I think those days are about to return.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

Di Ciccio broccoli - 1 lb., 10.4 oz.
Circus Circus carrots - 3.5 oz.
Sugarsnax carrots - 3.9 oz.
Dorato D'Asti celery - 15.1 oz.
Sugar Daddy snap peas - 2.5 oz.

The harvest totals for the past week were - 3 lb., 3.4 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for 2014 up to 6 lb., 13.7 oz.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.

4 comments:

  1. Nice to see some colorful harvest this time of year, the carrots and broccoli are beautiful.

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  2. Great to see some variety being harvested this time of year. About all we get from our cold frames are carrots and a few greens. I'm worried about drought in our neck of the woods too!!

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  3. I love the sound of that garlic sauce!!! I don't envy you the buckets - we do the same here during our droughts and although I still feel wasteful not doing it at the moment I certainly don't miss it. Having said that it's bound to return for us eventually too.

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  4. I hope you get some rain soon. And those peas look delirious even if there aren't a lot of them. I'm stuck eating frozen peas and they just aren't the same.

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