Category Archives: Recipes

Garden to table

The good news: I survived the potato harvest and garden day on Monday.

The bad news: We have A LOT of potatoes in the ground still.

The good news: Those potatoes look much better after Matthew completed some hard core weeding.

I experienced extreme soreness (mostly in my quads, from all the squatting) and serious exhaustion from blueberry picking on Saturday and wasn’t sure that I would make it through the garden blitz on Monday.  Somehow, I did.

We started the day with a quick stop by the inner garden (AKA our bed at the community garden).

Beets and carrots at our inner garden

Next up, THE garden (AKA the commuter garden in the ‘burbs).  We harvested potatoes from the dead or nearly dead plants and left the rest to grow a bit longer, hoping to increase our yield.  We followed that with some general maintenance, including weeding and mulching.

Left to right: winter squash, peppers (somewhat hidden), tomatoes

After working all morning, I headed into Pam’s kitchen to make a garden-to-table lunch.

Clockwise from top: Sauteed summer squash with garlic, pasta with basil pesto, roasted tricolor potatoes with dill, steamed Swiss chard with olive oil.  Pretty much everything on the plate came from our garden, most of it picked that morning — good fuel for a day of hard work!

We’re giving a garden tour to some family members this weekend.  Won’t they be surprised when we hand them shovels and pitch forks and point them in the direction of the potato patch!  Hands-on tours are the best kind, right?

In season

If you buy really fresh (i.e., picked that day, or maybe the day before) local sweet corn, try eating it raw for a refreshing treat.  Fresh corn (sans fungus) graced our dinner plates last night, and I was well into my ear when I thought to take a picture.

We’re also enjoying local blueberries and peaches.  In honor of the peaches, we baked some sweet biscuits*.  For a delicious and relatively healthy treat, crumble a biscuit, spoon on fresh peaches, and top with a bit of whipped cream.   I often add some of the juice from the peaches and a bit of milk (soy milk works fine) to get it just right.

*Our sweet biscuit recipe comes from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles.  If you’re looking for a good cookbook, vegetarian or no, check this out.  It is our go-to cookbook for delicious main dishes, baked goods, soups, and much more!  If your library has it, you can take it for a test run, or look for a used copy.

Thyme for lunch

Last weekend, I attempted to recreate the delicious borscht I enjoyed at Local Harvest Cafe.  My first thought upon tasting my creation?  Major flop.  Great sadness ensued.

But not all was lost.  The leftovers tasted good — I learned a few things in the process of coming to like it.  First, you can serve borscht warm or chilled, but I HIGHLY recommend chilled.  Second, add creamy white stuff, either sour cream or yogurt (pictured above) — this is important!  Third, it’s kind of a salty soup.  I’m a bit of a salt-phobe, so this one is hard for me, but again, important here.

I enjoyed the leftover borscht (properly chilled) for lunch today, along with a quickly concocted rice-lentil salad.  I started with leftover cooked lentils, to which I added brown rice, cucumbers, raw garlic (minced), olive oil, fresh thyme, s&p, and a bit of leftover vinaigrette from a previous salad.

Summer eats and treats

I kicked off the weekend with a strawberry banana smoothie, made with frozen local berries, homemade yogurt from local milk, and The Last Banana, recovered from the depths of the freezer, served in a green glass.

Delicacy or discard?  That funky looking growth is huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on corn (known in the U.S. as “corn smut”).  It’s edible, and in Mexico, it fetches a high price, much higher than the corn itself.  Matthew handled the prep work.  I avoided touching it until he cooked it.  (If he’d been feeling ornery, he could have chased me around the apartment, threatening to touch me with it.)  Once cooked, it looked and tasted much like any other cooked fungus (i.e., mushroom).  Click here to read more details, including potential health benefits.

At my urging, Matthew bought a tomato at the farmers’ market.  (He liked the idea of our first tomato of the season being from our garden, but we’re not quite there yet — soon!)  Dressed up with basil (courtesy of our neighbors’ plant — hope they won’t mind 😉 ), olive oil, and s&p.  Yum!

Partial results of another oven extravaganza: zucchini bread and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.  I have not purchased bananas for a year-and-a-half, due to their large carbon footprint (which gives you a sense of the age of the banana that went into the aforementioned smoothie).  As predicted, these two quick breads make great alternatives to banana bread.

Sneak peak of “Summer eats and treats — Part II” coming tomorrow: homemade pizza and ice cream sandwiches!

Just dip it

A little elf  prepared this meal — I found it ready and waiting when I got home from work one evening last week.  I took a few bites, and, though it was quite good, knew my meal needed more veggies.  I sliced up zucchini “chips” and chopped some broccoli as an additional dipper.  Much better.

Start with a layer of refried beans, top with chopped tomatoes, corn, [spicy] cheese, salsa, and green onions (the last three ingredients were local).  Compared to our normal meals, this one involved a good bit of “prepared” food: canned refried beans, canned tomatoes, frozen corn, and tortilla chips.

Try one or more of these options for a  fresh, locavore version: homemade refried beans made from locally grown black beans, chopped garden tomatoes, and/or local corn off-the-cob.  If you really want to get crazy, you could make your own tortilla chips.  Or eliminate the chips altogether and stick with fresh veggie dippers.

This not-quite-seven-layer dip, with the veggie addition, makes an ideal quick, tasty, healthy meal.