Harvest Monday - February 23, 2015

This past week the harvests were light because I've been trying to use up previous harvests. But the last of the winter brassicas left standing are now bolting so I've started removing them from the garden. Here's the net result from cutting down one of the Lacinato kale plants.

Lacinato kale

There were just a few aphids on this plant, actually you can see a few of them on the stone at the bottom of the photo, most of them were hanging out near the base of the leaves. This batch of leaves was torn up and steamed in a pressure cooker for 1 minute. Some of the cooked kale went into a frittata along with some dried zucchini, dried cherry tomatoes, bacon, onions, cheese and seasonings. Another bunch of the kale was warmed with some of the lemony confited garlic that I mentioned in last week's harvest post, then piled on top of toasted rustic whole wheat bread spread with spicy hummus, the whole lot seasoned with a bit of agrodolce vinegar, coarse salt, and fresh ground black pepper. I'll mention another toast and hummus combo that featured a preserved veggie from the garden, I've still got a few jars of preserved sweet peppers from last fall, I cut some of those into strips and piled them on top of the hummus smeared toast along with some crumbled feta.

Tonda Musona Bianca spring onions

When I set out my seed started onions I spaced them about 2 inches apart alternating the smallest seedlings with the largest and now I've started thinning out the smallest ones to use as spring onions. The bunch above went into a coconut curry featuring one of the Honey Nut butternut squashes from my stash, celery from the garden, mushrooms, and tofu.

I've been trying to use up previous harvests, most notably lettuce - we've had a lot of salads and another round of lettuce cups, this time with shredded leftover chicken that I had lightly smoked in the Big Green Egg. And I've slowly been using up the Romanesco broccoli - one night I roasted some florets with brussels sprouts (to accompany the chicken) and another night some went into a souffle.

The only other harvests for the past week were a few big volunteer Spanish Black carrots and celery, neither of which were photographed.

Here's the details of the harvests for the past week:

Spanish Black carrots - 12.3 oz.

Dorato di Asti celery - 9.8 oz.

Lacinato kale - 12.6 oz.

Spring onions - 2.4 oz.

Week - 2 lb., 5.1 oz.

Year to date - 61 lb., 2.1 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.