Harvest Monday - July 6, 2015

The harvests last week were dominated by zucchini and beans, beans and zucchini, and zucchini and beans...

There were a few radishes for color and spice.

Royal Burgundy and Slenderette beans

I've been using a lot of the beans in my nearly daily lunch salads, I like to steam the beans until crisp tender, shock them in ice water, then chop them into shorter lengths and add them to the other goodies in the salad. I steam up a bunch of them and keep them in the fridge so it's really handy to grab a handful when I want them.

I used more of the green beans in a salad that featured some of the Purgatory beans that I grow. The Purgatory beans are a small white dry bean that is perfect for bean salads. I'll be writing a spotlight post about these beans soon.

Some of the zucchini went into a batch of Zucchini Hummus.

The last of the Winter Density lettuce had to be harvested.

Winter Density lettuce

There was one volunteer head of Italienischer lettuce that needed to make way for a sowing of parsnips. This one was harvested just as I finished the last of the two HUGE heads that I harvested a couple of weeks ago. Those heads kept incredibly well wrapped in damp towels inside a not too tightly closed plastic bag.

Italienischer lettuce

I pulled one big Superstar onion, half of which was used in another Zucchini, Onion, and Ricotta Pie, made my way with onions instead of garlic and shallots and cilantro instead of parsley. I'll have to update my top 10 zucchini recipes to include this one.

The danged onions are still throwing up flower stalks...

I harvested the first Rossa Lunga di Firenze onion to use on a pizza, with some of last year's roasted peppers from the freezer, ricotta, and basil - it was a pizza bianca with no tomato sauce. We had another pizza with a tomato sauce, burrata cheese, prosciutto, and the arugula shown below. I learned a new and super easy tomato sauce for pizza, it's simply canned tomatoes (my own) that are placed in a sieve or colander to drain off the juices, use just the tomato solids and add some olive oil and salt, herbs if desired and smash it all together (use your hands, it's fun to squish the tomatoes through your fingers). No cooking, no fuss, and super delicious.

I don't weigh the herbs that I harvest, but here's a look at a handful of Rak Tamachat cilantro. And there's some Corsican (purple) and Italian Mountain basil shown above.

Rak Tamachat cilantro

The cilantro is all bolting, but that's just how it is in the summer. I sow cilantro just about every week at this time of year and harvest the plants as they start to bolt. It's nice to let a few of them bloom to provide food for beneficial insects and then I get to harvest the yummy green coriander seeds.

I managed to photograph all my harvests last week, so here's the details:

Speedy arugula - 1.1 oz.
Royal Burgundy beans - 13.8 oz.
Slenderette beans - 15.3 oz.
Italienischer lettuce - 10 oz.
Winter Density lettuce - 2 lb., 1.4 oz.
Superstar onion - 17.9 oz.
Rossa Lunga di Firenze onion - 18.1 oz.
Helios radishes - 2.2 oz.
Petite Dejeuner radishes - 4.3 oz.
Pink Punch radishes - 1.8 oz.
Purple Plum radishes - 2.1 oz.
Romanesco zucchini - 3 lb., 5.6 oz.

Total for the week - 10 lb., 13.6 oz. (4.9 kg.)
2015 YTD - 376 lb., 3.4 oz. (170.6 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.