It was a week of light harvests, not because there wasn't much in the garden, but because there was too much in the fridge. The harvests were mostly destined for salads, basically.
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| Three Heart Butterhead Lettuce |
This head of Red Iceberg Lettuce was used in lettuce cups, kinda like a salad, with chopped leftover roast chicken, celery, radishes, and scallions (onion thinnings), served with blue cheese dressing and toasted walnuts.
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| Red Iceberg Lettuce |
I'm going to run out of radishes pretty soon, a few are just starting to bolt and the rest are all nearly large enough to harvest. I have more sown and they've germinated nicely but it will be a few weeks before I can start harvesting them.
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| Pink Punch, Malaga, and Helios Radishes |
There's lots of short scallions available, they are short because they are the thinnings from the bulbing onion plantings and bulbing onions are planted more shallowly than onions grown for scallions.
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| Onion thinnings, Malaga, Pink Punch, and Helios Radishes |
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| Onion thinnings |
The celery and celeriac plants are starting to bolt, so there will be more of these in the harvest basket in the coming week.
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| Dorato d'Asti Celery |
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| Gustus Brussels Sprouts |
Late yesterday afternoon there was a break in the rainy weather so I was able to dash out to the garden and harvest a bunch of Brussels sprouts. The aphids were colonizing the bases of a number of sprouts and some sprouts were elongating as they were on the verge of starting to bolt, but I was able to wash away most of the aphids and the sprouts were still quite sweet and were good shredded on a mandolin and quickly sauteed with some bacon, pine nuts, shallots, and dried cherries.
Earlier in the week I made a soup that featured Purgatory beans from my stash of dried beans, plus frozen fava and green beans, and frozen sauteed onions. I've still got butternut and delicata squash left that should be eaten soon, so I made a sauce (like a pasta sauce) with ground veal, dried porcini mushrooms, frozen sauteed onions, canned tomatoes, celery, carrot, and other seasonings and served the sauce atop the roasted halves of squash with a sprinkle of grated Parmigiano.
Here's the harvest totals for the week:
Gustus Brussels sprouts - 1 lb., 7.4 oz.
Dorato d'Asti celery - 10.4 oz.
Red Iceberg lettuce - 12.3 oz.
Three Heart butterhead lettuce - 9.9 oz.
Spring onions (scallions) - 5 oz.
Helios radishes - 4.5 oz. (radishes weighed w/o greens)
Malaga radishes - 6.9 oz.
Pink Punch radishes - 5.1 oz.
Total for the week - 4 lb., 13.5 oz. (2.2 kg.)
2016 YTD - 57 lb., .5 oz. (25.9 kg.)
Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave on his blog
Our Happy Acres, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.
Those lettuce cups sound yummy, especially if blue cheese dressing was involved. The aphid population in my greenhouse has exploded, which makes cleaning the greens a chore. The shredded Brussels sprouts sounds good too. I can almost taste the salty bacon and the sweet cherries! Shredding them is now my favorite treatment, though roasting is also nice.
ReplyDeleteI sowed some radishes yesterday bit you have several things on your list that refuse to grow for us - celery, celeriac and spring onions (scallions).
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of stir frying our sprouts too/
I am SO looking forward to some fresh salads...all the more so when I see your beautiful heads of lettuce. And lovely celery - that one is on the short list of new veg I want to grow...perhaps next year. It feels so odd when you say that you were "having a break from the rainy weather" - how happy you must be to actually needing a break from it!
ReplyDeleteMmm ... blue cheese dressing! I've only just sown my first radish in the greenhouse, and looking forward to them. Yours are very pretty, mine always seem to have some scabbing on the skin (not sure what causes that).
ReplyDeleteI have grown celery only once and managed to only get the leafy part. I had read that you have to hill the dirt around them to keep them so light coloured (to blanch them?). Is that what you do?
The celery I grow is light colored and mild flavored so it's not necessary to blanch it. I tried wrapping the stalks in newspaper once and found it wasn't worth the bother, but the bugs really liked it in there!
DeleteI too am starting to shred brussels sprouts for a quick stir-fry, will try adding dried cherries as well. Love the sauce you made for your squashes.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and colorful radishes... but they are too papery for me...
ReplyDeleteWow, your lettuces look such perfect specimens! It's going to be a fair while before I have any in my garden. I sowed some seeds a couple of weeks back, but none have germinated yet. Your recipe with the squash, ground veal, porcini etc sounds fab - one I'd love to try.
ReplyDelete