Harvest Monday - June 16, 2014

The hybrid Romanesco zucchini is already going crazy, but I won't bore you with photos of all my harvests, just one.

Oh well, make that two. One of the zucchinis snuck into a photo of my jumbo radishes. I'm always searching for tasty but easy dishes that use plenty of zucchini and this week I found one in Vegetables From An Italian Garden. It was certainly easy, just ricotta, eggs, and salt beaten together, then flour (I used whole wheat), diced zucchini, and shredded zucchini blossoms folded in, spread in a buttered baking dish and baked for 15-20 minutes. My husband loved it so I'll be making it again, next time I may tinker with it and and some sage leaves browned in butter, maybe top it with some shredded Parmigiano or pecorino.

Need a little perspective on just how jumbo that Long Scarlet radish is? My clippers are over 8 inches long (20 cm.). The radishes were a bit too mature to slice into salads, but they were delicious cooked. I took some notes on my preparations which you can read here.

The garlic is nearly ready to pull and cure. I harvested one head to roast. I usually roast my garlic in the oven, but this one was cleaned up, roots removed, top sliced off to reveal the tops of the cloves within, then wrapped in aluminum foil with some olive oil, salt and pepper and put on the BBQ and roasted until tender. We consumed it just squeezed out onto bread, oh my how sweet it was.

I keep pulling fresh heads of garlic from the garden, it's so wonderfully mild before it's cured. And I'm pulling onions to use fresh also, we love them sliced and grilled. I used one of these last night, grilled on my stovetop ridged griddle, they accompanied some grilled asparagus which was topped with sauteed ground lamb that was seasoned with garam masala, fresh fresh garlic, chopped onion, and pomegranate molasses and cilantro. I'm going to have to write that recipe up so I don't forget it, my husband loved it.

The chard requires regular harvesting also, the Flamingo chard is producing side shoots that I'm cutting off and the Peppermint Stick chard keeps putting out huge leaves. I also harvested some huge leaves from the Golden Chard which did not get photographed. No new chard recipes to report, but I'm always searching for those too!

I don't tally my fruit harvests, but I do like to show them off. I have two blueberry bushes growing in pots. The harvests aren't big but the berries are very tasty, I like to let them get extra ripe.  This is a mix of Sunshine Blue and Misty.

The strawberries keep trickling in. I try to harvest these as ripe as possible also. They don't sit around long enough to spoil.

Here's all the harvests for the past week:

Capers - 5.1 oz.
Chamomile, dried - 3.1 oz.
Flamingo chard - 7.2 oz.
Golden chard - 1 lb., .3 oz.
Peppermint Stick chard - 1 lb., .2 oz.
Inchelium Red garlic - 2.9 oz.
Red Janice garlic - 10.4 oz.
Red Candy Apple onions - 2 lb., 2.1 oz.
Pea Shoots - 2.8 oz.
Long Scarlet radishes (inc. greens) - 1 lb., .3 oz.
White Icicle radishes (inc. greens) - 3.6 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 3 lb., .9 oz.
San Pasquale zucchini - 2.4 oz.
Zucchini blossoms - 11.1 oz.

The total harvests for the week were - 11 lb., 4.4 oz. (5.1 kg.)
Which brings the total harvests for 2014 up to - 276 lb., 1.3 oz. (125.2 kg.)

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.