Harvest Monday - August 12, 2013

It seems that I didn't get the camera out very much last week when I harvested, but at least I managed to get a shot of my latest tomato harvest. The dark tomatoes are Nyagous and the yellow ones are Jaune Flamme. Both of these varieties are cool climate/short season adapted. I used these in a salad with cucumbers, red onion, and Feta, dressed with red wine vinegar, olive oil, and basil. Yum!

And a couple of big beets. It's not obvious in this shot, but the Chioggia beet on the left weighed 2 pounds with it's leaves and over 3/4 pound trimmed. The Red Baron beet had fewer leaves so it weighed quite a bit less overall, but trimmed it was just 2 ounces lighter than the Chioggia. These were part of dinner last night. I wrapped each beet individually in heavy duty foil and roasted them at 400ºF for an hour. The Red Baron beet came out perfect. The Chioggia was softer and fell apart a bit when I sliced it.  And it seemed to lack the characteristic pink rings of that variety, when sliced it was completely white instead of a rosy color. I made a salad with them, sliced and arranged on a platter, topped with some Cambazola blue cheese, snipped chives, chopped basil, vinegar and olive oil. My husband noted how mild the Chioggia beet was, much less "beety" flavored than the Red Baron (which wasn't really strongly beety itself). I also served the beet greens, with a sofrito of pancetta, garlic, pine nuts, and golden raisins, seasoned with red wine vinegar. The greens were surprisingly mild also.

This was my second harvest of the beets for the week, I also pulled a couple more of the big Red Baron beets which were used in another sliced beet salad with goat cheese. That one was dressed with a fantastic Hazelnut oil that I found recently. But I don't remember what else I put on it. Ah well, the memory just isn't what it used to be...

I forgot to photograph the harvest of the first two eggplants of the season, but I did get a shot of one of them on the plant for my garden update (part two coming soon, promise). I got to pick two beauties like this. Salangana is the first eggplant to produce this year. I grew this variety last year also and loved it so it's back again this year. As you can see, it produces a good sized elongated fruit which is tender and not seedy. I prepared these last night also, sliced thin and pan fried and served with a drizzle of balsamico and some chopped basil and parsley. Oh wow, were they good.

And you may have seen this in my prior post about Super Carrot, the largest carrot that I've ever grown. This is a Sugarsnax carrot. Daphne says that under the right conditions that they can get to be even larger than this in her garden. I've got more of them left in my garden where they are keeping well (and hopefully will continue to do so) so we'll see what happens as I harvest them as needed. I just scrubbed it and munched it raw, it was quite tasty, mostly sweet but just a bit strong flavored near the tip. It would probably have been even sweeter if I had peeled it, but these days I'm not peeling my carrots because I think that you peel away a lot of the nutrients.

Also harvested but not photographed last week were a few more Pimento de Padron peppers, enough to finally fry up a batch to enjoy last night. And of course there was a LOT of zucchini, and I rounded up more of the other usual suspects.

I had a few inquiries on my last garden tour post about how I manage to eat all the produce that my garden puts out. So did you notice that last night we had beet salad, sauteed beet greens, eggplant, and Padron peppers? Well, that was it, no "main" course and no carbohydrate rich filler. That's a pretty typical meal around here. I generally prepare dinner based on what's coming out of the garden, it's pretty unusual for us to sit down to a traditional meal of protein/starch/veggie. Although a protein/veggie hold-the-starch meal isn't all that unusual. But the vegetables are almost always the main attraction. I'll often add some protein for flavor, such as the pancetta in the greens. But we have shied away from high carb meals the last couple of years so it's rare to find potatoes or grains as a significant part of the meal. What does that leave? Vegetables, lots of vegetables. I even eat vegetables for breakfast. Sometimes it's leftover vegetables with eggs. Lately I've been on a kick of Greek yogurt with cucumbers and tomatoes for the first meal of the day. And for lunch? Veggies. I usually have some sort of salad or leftovers from the night before. My husband likes to take his lunch to work and his favorite is a big wedge of a veggie stuffed fritatta, and always a carrot or 2 or 3, and some fruit.

Here's the harvests for the past week:

French Gold filet beans - 9.5 oz.

Runner green beans (St. George and Moonlight) - 12.1 oz.

Spanish Musica beans - 8.2 oz.

Chioggia beets - 2 lb., 3.8 oz. (including greens)

Red Baron beets - 4 lb., 1.1 oz. (including greens)

Renee's Golden beets - 2.5 oz.

Di Ciccio broccoli - 9.6 oz.

Purple Peacock broccoli - 10 oz.

Sugarsnax carrots - 8.7 oz.

Garden Oasis cucumber - 5.1 oz.

Green Fingers Persian cucumbers - 8.5 oz.

Tasty Green Japanese cucumbers - 5 oz.

Tortarello Abruzzese cucumbers - 3 lb., .7 oz.

Salangana eggplants - 13.1 oz.

Lorz Italian garlic - 3.5 oz.

Pimento de Padron peppers - 3 oz.

Jaune Flamme tomatoes - 3.1 oz.

Nyagous tomatoes - 5.7 oz.

Ortolano di Faenza zucchini - 1 lb., 5.4 oz.

Romanesco zucchini - 4 lb. 11 oz.

The total harvests for the past week came to - 22 lb., 1.6 oz.

Which brings the total harvests for the year up to - 294 lb., 3.6 oz.

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.