Last night, I harvested a bunch of Thai basil from my plot and made this delicious Thai basil pesto. It uses toasted sesame oil and peanuts, and gets a little kick from red pepper flakes. The kids and I had one of our favorite meals last night – crispy pork bowls topped with Thai pesto. I used this recipe for the pork. So good! I made a second batch of Thai pesto but left out the vinegar and lime juice, and froze it for future use.
I harvested my first zucchini (zucchino?) yesterday and turned it into a roasted vegetable goat cheese pizza. I roasted broccolini, red bell pepper, red onion, Brussels sprouts and zucchini, and spread those on a garlic bechamel. Topped it all with goat cheese and fresh mozzarella. (Recipe from the cookbook Eat Delicious). The pictures do not do it justice. It was delicious!
Earlier this week I harvested my garlic scapes and turned them into garlic scape pesto. I (loosely) used this recipe, but omitted the cheese as I plan to also use the pesto on fish or for other purposes where cheese might not work. I am loving the sunflower seeds in the pesto. They made it super creamy and tasty. As always, I froze the pesto in ice cube trays and transferred the frozen cubes into Ziploc bags for storage.
I also had several harvests of rhubarb, all of which were turned into strawberry-rhubarb compote to go over vanilla ice cream. The rhubarb plant is still young, so I did not want to over-harvest, but I got quite a good amount of stalks.
This is the first year that I did not get to harvest a single pea. I was very successful in protecting the peas from the rabbits by fencing them in, but they sadly were no match for the birds. I ripped out all plants this week. I will need to think about what I want to plant there now. Beans? Beets or carrots? More greens?
This morning, I sowed more flowers in my flower patch (Zinnias Queen Lime Blush and Queen Lime Red, and Cosmos Rubinato and Sensation mix) plus nasturtium (all over the plot) as well as a row of Golden beets. I also staked all my eleven tomato plants. I noticed that one (Black Prince) had a broken stem. It looked like it was cut in half. I will replace it with a new Black Prince seedling that I still have on my back porch. Luckily I had started two seedlings for each variety, and all germinated. A few days ago, I harvested a few of my overwintered leeks (which I roasted for dinner last night together with carrots, Brussels sprouts and potatoes and served with a bright Chimichurri) and some rhubarb (which I turned into a strawberry rhubarb compote and enjoyed over vanilla ice cream). I need to harvest the remaining leeks soon to prevent them from flowering.
This morning I thinned my rainbow chard to two plants per cell. I kept the two healthiest looking seedlings making sure to maintain a color variety. I then used the thinnings to top my sandwich.
Today, I used up the last butternut squash from the fall. I made a rose harissa-roasted squash salad with greens, toasted pumpkin seeds and blue cheese (because I did not have feta on hand) in a white balsamic vinegar dressing. It turned out pretty spectacular.
As for home-grown vegetables from last year, I still have garlic hanging in the pantry and a few beets in the fridge. In the freezer, there is still basil pesto, lemongrass, Thai basil, and Thai peppers. I used some of the lemon grass last week to make this lemongrass chicken dinner. Very good. It is nice to still enjoy some produce from the garden while this year’s harvest is starting its journey in the seedling trays.
I picked the last of my tomatoes today – a handful of green Ailsa Craig. All my tomato plants are done for the season now. I picked one last larger tomato (a Dr. Wyche’s Yellow), that will ripen on the counter. I turned the green ones into a small batch of pickled green tomatoes. Those are so good on sandwiches (with sharp cheddar, apple slices and coarse mustard, inspired by City Feed’s Farmers Lunch sandwich).
I had harvested a ton of basil from my garden two days ago but only this morning found the time to turn it into pesto. Some of the leaves had wilted a bit, but overall, storing the basil wrapped in dry paper towels in a produce bag in the fridge worked very well. I just washed the leaves and dried them well and then processed them with olive oil and salt using my stick blender. As usual, I did not add garlic, cheese or nuts to my “pesto”. I find it more versatile this way. And it also keeps better in the freezer.
