What are you eating from your garden today?

Fresh Dino Kale Salad.  The first, tender leaves from this year's Lacinato Kale. Loved it!

The order has been give to me .   " Darling ........the purple sprouting broccoli  looks fantastic ,  we will be eating some tomorrow night with pressure cooked minced up beef & pork( Friday 26 mar 2020 )  The tops of the last two sprout plants  a home grow leek & home grown carrot ass fried in a bit of butter carrots baton & some buttered mashed potatoes . 

 It's an everlasting mince . Monday it was  on top of Spaghetti . Wednesday ( the flavour inproved with a few herbs )& some 2 yr old home made pressure canned  Po Beef stock to become a delicious minced meat , potatoes and home grown perennial kale . 

Question :-  What do you guys & gals over the pond call what I know as " Savoury minced meat with load of very fine chopped onions in a fairly thick gravy base " ?

Savory mince.

Hash, corned beef hash, southern hash may be close relatives. My hash is diced left over beef, onions, potatoes, maybe diced bell peppers, S&P, dash of hot pepper powder in a skillet, and at the end, beaten eggs stirred in to hold it together. Restaurants may serve a poached egg on top.

Still just radishes, but they're awesome (de Jour 18).

Lunch of a delicious Grilled Chicken Salad with fresh lettuce, spinach, green onions, and radishes from the garden.

Celery cuttings...finally have them down to one/container.  Kids have been eating the strawberry freezer jam over vanilla ice cream!  Super yum!

My first Sweet 100 cherry tomato of 2020, from a cutting taken last year from a plant I brought in. This little tom actually started life in a vase of water in our MBR.  

I cut it in half and shared with Bob. It was delicious -- not tasteless, like most stuff I grow inside.

Green lettuce, Merveille lettuce, Russian kale, cilantro, radish, kohlrabi -- ingredients for tonight's chef's salad:

Today we made some air fryer Kale Chips, and they were delicious!  Only problem with Kale Chips is that they do not last very long.  DW said that if I don't quit picking the small new leaves to make Kale Chips we will never get any full size leaves to enjoy. 

Eating more home grown carrots , tonight with salmon in a béarnaise sauce ,  mashed potato . Home grown peas blanched , vac packed & deep frozen  September 2018 ,  & mashed swede with even more carrot , done the same time as the peas in 2018 

Found some very frost burnt peas from 2014   in the big deep freezer .. tiny pinholes along the hot sealing  line ( from droplets of moisture on the bag sealing area when vac packing ? ) … they are now in the compost bin .

Finally lifted all the carrots,  getting another 8 pounds up for pressure canning tomorrow . 

We are aiming to grow , pickle , freeze & can a lot of veg this year to prevent people stealing it out the veg beds . 

 I've got the feeling that veg might be in short supply in the shops come the end of summer this year due to the massive impact of the corona virus  on poorly paid land workers .

It's always been a nice skill to be able to put up some of our food. Now days, it's also comforting to know we can and will do it.

I made butternut squash soup a few days ago using a squash I grew in the SFG last year.  I left some parsnips in the SFG over the winter so I can't wait to see if they are any good.  I expect that since our frost goes down about three feet they will not have survived.  We are using basil, dill, sage and lettuce grown indoors in the Aerogardens.

I am still eating dried apples from my tree last year. I eat a few every day and it keeps me r------.   I still have canned veggies, carrots, beans and even a few new potatoes.  Tomatoes of course.  Plus dried bananas which I love. And also four year-old canned cherries that I had forgotten I had and they still taste scrumptious. I am trying to get all eaten before I leave for England, but I will give them away if I had to.

I will still preserve anything that I grow just in case.  After all I never envisioned this Virus upsetting my plans, one never knows how long it will be before I get to England; it may not happen, one never knows.

Short 'n Sweet carrots. They're about the size of a radish, sweet, and tender. I don't ever want to be without these. I can grow them on the balcony. They don't need a deep planter.

@countrynaturals wrote:Short 'n Sweet carrots. They're about the size of a radish, sweet, and tender. I don't ever want to be without these. I can grow them on the balcony. They don't need a deep planter.

I’ve never heard of these, CN!  They are cute as a button!  And tasty?  Even better

I find kohlrabi stems make a fairly effective asparagus substitute when chopped up fine:



Harvested this little thing to allow the remaining eggplants to grow better. It was gently sautéed and then added to the night's stir fry.

@Kelejan wrote:I am still eating dried apples from my tree last year. I eat a few every day and it keeps me r------.   I still have canned veggies, carrots, beans and even a few new potatoes.  Tomatoes of course.  Plus dried bananas which I love. And also four year-old canned cherries that I had forgotten I had and they still taste scrumptious. I am trying to get all eaten before I leave for England, but I will give them away if I had to.

I will still preserve anything that I grow just in case.  After all I never envisioned this Virus upsetting my plans, one never knows how long it will be before I get to England; it may not happen, one never knows.

 That's very sensible Kelejan , I don't think you will be heading in this direction anytime soon .

Stay lucky (   make / grow your own ) 

Dave & Family .

@countrynaturals wrote:

Cool. When did you plant yours?

@markqz wrote:Cool. When did you plant yours?

Migosh! This puppy was planted from seed 9/1/19! That's a long time to wait for a cauliflower harvest!

This evening we enjoyed a half-dozen of the 18-day radishes, that had been in the garden 20 days from planting seeds. They were delicious. I meant to take some pictures of them, but they got eaten before I got to it... 

Creamed Asparagus Soup, with a fresh salad of leaf lettuce, spinach, green onions, and radishes.

I took the last three of the seasons beetroot out the veg bed yesterday afternoon. All were boiled for 1/2 an hour in well salted water , one was hard but not woody the other two were nice & soft . I diced the hard one and had it for my evening meal veg, Alison had one of the softie's thinly sliced as her one of five a day veg .

The biggest of the softie's was thin sliced and quickly slipped into a solution of 35 gram of white sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of cracked  black pepper &half a cup or so  of boiling water to dissolve the sugar and a lot of malt vinegar to cover the beetroot slices then covered in kitchen film & put in the fridge to steep overnight .. Hopefully this evening it will emerge on the plates as a nice side salad addition .

 If you've never had simple well boiled warm sliced beetroot an hour or less out of the garden IMO you should try it .  It does not get the earthy taint that beetroot well boiled and left in the boiling water tends to pickup .


 Tonight's ANSFG veg will be a starter of several 3/4 inch thick buttered grilled asparagus , some sort of meat dish with potatoes home grown leeks and a lot of purple sprouting broccoli .

 The PSB just keeps giving and giving now it's been fed with dried blood,  fish & bone meal & brought into the automatic misting watering plan .  We are desperately trying to make the most of it & eat it before it breaks into flower .  Some days we've even just taken the best sprigs off & composted them to stop it flowering .

Philly Cheesesteak sammies with last season’s frozen bell peppers!

Day 17 of the 18-Radishes.  Couldn't wait another day!