Harvest Monday - July 8, 2013

There's something other than zucchini, cucumbers, and broccoli in the harvest basket this week!

My husband took a tour of the garden the other day and his eyes lit up when he spied his favorite kale.

"Are those ready to eat?", he said.

Uh, yeah...

Can we have that dish you always used to make? (meaning, back when we ate tons of bread)

Uh, well, there's some bread in the freezer, so, yeah.

Yes!

So here it is, just over a pound of Lacinato kale, amazingly free of aphids.

And here's a link to my recipe for two versions of Kale on Garlic Toast (Kale Bruschetta).

And, by the way, there were zucchini, cucumbers, and broccoli in the harvest basket this week as well.

And a few Sugarsnax carrots snuck into the basket too.

And what I'm not showing you is the 5 other harvests of zucchini. Yes, there was only one day last week that I did not harvest zucchini.

What did I do with all that zucchini? One day I whipped up some zucchini and broccoli in tomato sauce. Sorry, I don't have a recipe for that, it's just sauteed zucchini and onions with some blanched chopped broccoli to which I add some of my ready made tomato sauce from the freezer - top with some grated pecorino romano and it's lunch. I made a batch of Scarpaccia (a thin zucchini tart/pancake), to take as an appetizer to dinner with friends. And I roasted some with the green runner beans that I've been accumulating and then tossed the mix with some fresh basil pesto. Last night we had Zucchini in Agrodolce. And I experimented with another version of Zucchini Gazpacho, this time with coconut and lime, which came out good but Version# 2 is still the best. Other than that I've been putting them in dated bags and piling them in the refrigerator. But... our friend with whom we had dinner the other night said she would take some because her husband didn't plant any this year and she's missing them. She may be sorry she said that!

Sorry Daphne, but I've given up on the zucchini chips, it's a fussy time consuming process with just fair results, really not worth the effort.

As is typical around here after a heatwave, the fog pounces and cools things off.

Temperatures July 1 thru 7

Here's the harvests for the past week:

St. George runner green beans - 2.5 oz.
Di Ciccio broccoli - 4.4 oz.
Purple Peacock broccoli - 2.3 oz.
Green Fingers Persian cucumber - 6.2 oz.
Tortarello Abruzzese cucumber - 1 lb., 9.4 oz.
Red Janice garlic - 2.9 oz.
Lacinato kale - 1 lb., 1.4 oz.
Ortolano di Faenza zucchini - 1 lb., 13.4 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 6 lb., 11.1 oz.

Yes, that's 8.5 pounds (3.9 kilos) of zucchini in one week from just 2 zucchini plants, mostly one zucchini plant - insane. And there were no overgrown inflated zucchini boats in that lot either.

The total harvests for the past week came to - 13 lb., 1.5 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for the year up to - 196 lb., 15.3 oz. (89 kg.)

Just a couple days of zucchini harvests shy of 200 pounds. Oops, to clarify, that's not 200 pounds of zucchini, that will be 200 pounds of veggies for the year.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers from around the world have been harvesting lately. Hopefully not too much zucchini.