Harvest Monday - January 25, 2016

Welcome to Harvest Monday, this will be my last day for hosting, at least until our usual host Dave needs another break. Be sure to head on over to Our Happy Acres next Monday, February 1, to check out the Harvest Monday action.

The weather around here has been wet and a bit warmer than in December. We haven't had any frost or freeze in weeks. The Brussels Sprouts are responding to the wetter and milder weather by finally sizing up. I harvested  almost 2 pounds of sprouts last week! One picking was roasted along with parsnips and sweet red onions, butter and sage.

Gustus Brussels Sprouts

More Gustus Brussels Sprouts

The other picking was shredded and wilted with bits of Honey & Habañero Bacon from El Salchichero in Santa Cruz (the best butcher shop in the Monterey Bay area), red onion, and slivers of Medjool dates and a splash of wine vinegar.

The snap and snow peas keep coming in a few handfuls at a time.

Golden Sweet Snow and Super Sugar Snap Peas

I'm almost done clearing out the bed where I'll be growing the tomatoes and peppers this year. This week I'll be sowing a cover crop of mustard into the bed. The last edibles to come out of it were beets. They were a bit funky looking but were fine after they were trimmed and roasted. The Chioggia beets occasionally produce an all white beet like the one below. The roasted beets are in the fridge just waiting to be included in one of the many salads that we enjoy.

Chioggia Beets

Red Baron Beets

Back in 2014 I let some Romanesco fennel bloom and set seed and the seeds ended up scattered all around. A few of them volunteered in the center path in the garden and actually produced a couple of decent bulbs. This one isn't perfect but it's good enough to eat after a bit of trimming, it'll add flavor and crunch to a salad or two.

Volunteer Fennel

Actually, half the bulb went into this dish, a warming medley of veggies including fresh broccoli, favas and roasted peppers from the freezer, and onions. I sauteed the veggies and then poured in stock flavored with some homemade tomato paste to cover, brought it to a simmer and then nestled some eggs into the pot, then simmered until the eggs were soft cooked. That was a nice warming dinner after hiking on a showery afternoon.

My heading lettuces are nowhere near ready to harvest as heads, but they are large enough that I can cut leaves from a couple of the Winter Density plants on a cut and come again basis. It is nice to have some fresh lettuce for my salads again. I got my celery and celeriac plants in ridiculously late and they've been just pouting through the cold short winter days. The celery is finally producing some baby stalks worth the trouble of harvesting and I figure I better take advantage of those before the plants start to bolt. I haven't sampled the leaves yet but I'm hoping that they might be mild enough to add to a salad or at least to some soup. And the reliable Batavia broccoli offered up some more nice side shoots.

Winter Density Lettuce, Dorato D'Asti Celery, Batavia Broccoli

Not photographed was the final harvest of tiny shoots of Apollo brokali that I harvested as I cut the plants down to the ground. I also harvested the rest of the baby Red Iceberg lettuces, extra plants that I put in to get my by until the main planting heads up. I also cut more thinnings of Rishad cress and started thinning the Speedy arugula. I'm afraid those will both bolt before they ever amount to much so I've sown more seeds for both of those.

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

Speedy arugula - 2.2 oz.
Chioggia beets - 16.5 oz. (after trimming)
Red Baron beets - 6.8 oz. (after trimming)
Apollo brokali - 2.6 oz.
Batavia broccoli - 11.1 oz.
Gustus Brussels sprouts - 1 lb., 15.3 oz.
Dorato D'Asti celery - 2.1 oz.
Rishad cress - 2.1 oz.
Romanesco fennel - 16.7 oz.
Red Iceberg lettuce - 1.4 oz.
Winter Density lettuce - 1.9 oz.
Super Sugar Snap peas - 4.5 oz.
Golden Sweet snow peas - 3.2 oz.

Total harvests for the week - 6 lb., 6.4 oz.
2016 YTD - 23 lb., 5.1 oz.

Harvest Monday is a place to showcase everything harvest related, what you've harvested, how you are preserving your harvests, and how you are using your harvests. You needn't be harvesting anything new to participate, write a post about how you've been using your preserved harvests and then link up. I'm sure we could all use some inspiration when it comes to using up the canned tomatoes and frozen veggies that we all worked so hard to produce and preserve. If you want to join in the fun just add your name and a link to your post in Mister Linky below. Then stop by the other linked posts to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting and cooking up lately.

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