Harvest Monday - February 16, 2015

Weird Weather resumes. Truly, if the days weren't still short I would swear it's summer. Actually it's better than our typical summer. Highs around 80ºF and lows around 50ºF. My winter veggies aren't necessarily loving it, especially the lettuce. I'm in the process of clearing out the lettuce patch, trying to keep up with bolting heads and fungal diseases brought on by the warm weather while the garden is still drying out after the previous rainy weekend.

Rhapsody butterhead and Ruby Gem romaine lettuces

That's the last of the butterhead and Ruby Gem lettuces. The outer leaves on the butterhead were turning brown and the Ruby Gem was bolting and getting a bit moldy on the oldest leaves, most of the leaves were still very good.

Mikado turnips and stray radishes

The baby turnips are getting to be about golf ball size (just in time for the AT&T), but are still sweet. I sliced a few very thin on the mandolin to include in a salad of most of the Ruby Gem romaine, the last radishes from the garden, and shaved fennel. I experimented with a new version of my confited garlic by adding a small quartered Meyer lemon to the garlic. The salad dressing included one quarter of the confited lemon and some of the confited garlic, both minced and whisked with fresh Meyer lemon juice, part garlic oil and part fresh extra virgin olive oil, plenty of fresh ground pepper and a dash of Red Boat.

Romanesco fennel

The fennel patch is an interesting mix of new bulbs and bolting bulbs. The new bulbs aren't as fat as bulbs that would form on new plants (the plants were sown a year ago), but they are tender enough to shave and use fresh in salads. They're also good for cooking.

Not photographed last week was a big Spanish Black carrot, another celery root, and a few stalks of celery. I used the carrot and celery root in a braise that included some of the Romanesco broccoli harvested the week before.

It's a bit of a challenge at the moment to work my way through the glut of winter veggies that I've had to clear out of the garden. I'm almost through all of the Tronchuda Beira cabbage, I used a few of the largest leaves to make stuffed cabbage, I blanched the leaves and filled them with a mixture of sweet Italian sausage, rice, cheese, and seasonings and baked them in tomato sauce. You can find the recipe here. I've got just enough cabbage left to try Okonomiyaki, one of Daphne's favorites. There's still a couple heads of Romanesco broccoli to get through...

Here's the harvests from the past week:

Spanish Black carrot - 7.1 oz.
Dorato di Asti celery - 8.6 oz.
Monarch celeriac - 8.5 oz.
Romanesco fennel - 12 oz.
Rhapsody butterhead lettuce - 1 lb., 7.7 oz.
Ruby Gem romaine lettuce - 13.2 oz.
Helios radishes - 3.1 oz.
Selzer Purple radish - 1.6 oz.
Mikado turnips - 1 lb., 12 oz.

The total harvests for the past week were - 6 lb., 9.8 oz.
Which brings the total harvests for 2015 up to - 58 lb., 13 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.