Rainy Saturday in the Garden

Here's a panorama of the garden from just this past Saturday. Not as big as I hoped things would grow, but considering the terrible weather we had this year I'm pretty happy.

Left side of the yard that we built last spring (2008).

Right side that was all added this spring (2009).

Late Summer Meal Medley

Another quickie post: a collection of the past month or so's meals, all made with at least one homegrown ingredient (sorry for the bad lighting and blur, I need both a new camera and lighting source):
Chreezy B.akon, S.pinach & T.omato (& spicy sprouts) english muffin sandwich for brunch. With homemade dill pickles, edible nasturtium & chipotle hash browns (not seen). Eaten outside in garden. Chreeze = Gee Whiz spread again.
Lightly steamed Emerite haricot verts & carrots w/ quinoa and white bean herb gravy, garnished w/ toasted slivered almonds and edible gem marigolds. (herbs = chives, tarragon, marjoram, thyme & a bit of oregano + sage)
MmMmm this was so good. Marble poundcake & fruit salad w/ vegan sweet cream topping and shaved chocolate. Blackberries and mint were fresh from the garden. (though I saved some time and got the poundcake store-bought from Candle Cafe). Eaten outside in garden too.
This is a super blurry pic - sorry. It was dim romantic lighting. But wow did it taste good! From left to right: moroccan-spiced steamed green beans & carrots from my garden + a bunch of stuff from Trader Joe's - some kind of tasty millet-bulgar multigrain thing that takes 30 sec. in microwave, chik nuggets & indian chutney, + olives, garnished w/ edible nasturtiums & marigolds. This meal was like an explosion of flavor. The moroccan veggies were so good. Also, btw, low fat - everything I'm cooking lately uses only a few teaspoons of oil.

Here we have the haricot verts and grape tomatoes lightly sauteed. I'm not a huge fan of tomatoes - you would never see me picking a tomato straight out of the garden and eating it. But I do like them diced, pureed or in sauce - so that's why I like to cook them just a bit.
We had the sauteed beans and tomatoes that night, stacked with polenta, oatmeal-nut chreeze & basil. It was slippery and didn't quite cooperate with the plating in my head, but it sure did taste delicious! (sorry again for the mood lighted-pic)

And here's my favorite gazpacho recipe - spanish style. Made almost entirely with ingredients from the garden (tomatoes, cukes & peppers) I just needed to add a bit of garlic, vinegar, oil, & salt. I only used 1/8 cup olive oil this time, and it was still good.
Snacks - everything flatbread w/ oatmeal chreeze, grape tomatoes, jalapeno & bell peppers.

Another stack: Oat Chreeze Caprese. This one stayed put (in a tower) a little better than the polenta. Thinly sliced Rutger's tomato + oatmeal chreeze + basil. Also had a green bean basil salad in the background.
My favorite: texas caviar. I make it every New Year's Day for good luck and mentioned the recipe before in this post. Now it was even better since most of the ingredients were fresh picked in season - I also added diced bell pepper since I had them. I could seriously eat this stuff every day.
Texas caviar served on a multi-grain rice cake w/ more oatmeal chreeze.

Honestly, it is tough to actually use all of the veggies and herbs once you grow them! Harvesting and preserving is almost as much work as planting and cultivating. The good news is, it's TASTY work! I can't wait to eat the fall crop. :-)

Quick Catch Up

So many pictures, so little time! Once again summer has me outside and not on the computer. But, it has been a good month so I'm not complaining. Here's a quick slideshow of some garden highlights:J.J. taking time to smell the borage flowers.

Somehow both pink and purple flowers grew on the same borage plant.

Fresh picked blackberries went into my morning fruit salad for work.

The nasturtiums are doing fabulous in their new spot by the fence. Much better than the tiny one that grew then died in the hanging pot last year!

Just picked all of these kung pao peppers on Saturday. I can't believe so many grew on just three plants.

My partner the pepper lover pickled them yesterday.

This was all but one of the italian frying and bell peppers that I've picked so far. A bit dissapointing, but, with this crazy weather I'm happy I got any at all. Hopefully things will pick up in the next few weeks.

The tomatoes are doing better - not quite as good as last year, but still decent. Here's the first batch of Roma, plus some grapes which have been producing a few handfuls each day now.

The yellow and red grape tomatoes, plus jalapenos and cilantro from the garden got made into this delicious black bean salsa yesterday. You can't quite tell from the pic but the bowl is huge - a few handfuls a day really adds up nicely. The only things we had to add were a can of black beans, a little white onion and some lime juice.

This was the biggest haul yet from two weekends ago. Who needs the CSA! It is beet greens, rainbow and fordhook giant chard, the peppers, turnips, beets, some blackberries, tomatoes, a cucumber and a lone calendula flower that I accidentally cut off.

The Emerite haricot vert were outstanding. This was the 1st batch from earlier in July, and I picked two more even fuller bowlfuls after that, plus about a half a bowl this weekend. This was the second batch of carrots I picked, and even more peppers. I just planted a new crop of carrots this weekend - now I can hardly wait until November!