A Quick Garden Stroll

Yesterday we looked at the three rows of carrots in the garden and talked about the surprise of finding some tomatoes growing up from seed in 'volunteer' fashion and transplanting them.  Today we'll peek in at the other items in the garden.

First off, I must tell you that the fall garden this year is very disappointing.  The very wet months of August, September, and October meant that things that I planted succumbed, and any of the things that I did manage to plant was planted two months late.  Better late than never, I suppose.  After that gloomy introduction, let's look at something bright and cheery.  Some of our Lemon Girl sunflowers sprouted up from seed that had fallen from some of the flowers from this summer.  Their blooms confirmed the resiliency of nature and at the same time was humbling.  How is it that you work so hard to plant things... and fail due to weather, and yet, some things just come up on their own and thrive?  I stopped to admire the flowers just opening and saw that a honeybee had arrived to enjoy the sunflower along with me.

This row of Russian Red Kale is coated with a thick coating of morning dew.  Kale, the ubiquitous hipster vegetable, gained such notoriety in the last several years.  We like it and grow it each year, but I must admit, for greens, I like Swiss Chard, mustard, and bok choy a little better.

This year has been a bad year for Romaine Lettuce.  Romaine grown in mostly Yuma, Arizona, was linked to an outbreak of E. Coli that sickened many people and caused a recall of romaine from supermarkets across the country.  We'll be enjoying some homegrown Red Romaine lettuce soon, hopefully without e. coli!

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce is always a favorite in the garden because it grows great, big, leafy heads and is beautifully green colored and tasty. 

The young lettuce patch is planted for aesthetics as well as taste.  I like to alternate the reds and greens.  Tricia did warn me that we needed to pick the lettuce earlier this year as we find that lettuce that we allow to get too big is bitter to the taste.

At this point, the cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage all pretty much looks the same.  We've been fortunate so far to not have much damage at all from pests.  We'll keep our eyes open, though, as caterpillars love feasting on their leaves almost as much as we do.

We'll begin harvesting some items from the fall garden soon.  I was reminded by a seed catalog coming in the mail on Saturday that it isn't too early to begin thinking about the spring garden.  Why, I'll be planting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed in about three weeks.

A Satisfying and Hearty Meal from the Garden

The day started out warm and overcast with a little fog.  Soon it cleared up somewhat, but a front was on the way, bringing with it winds, darkened clouds full of rain, and cooler temperatures.  I decided to get out to the garden to get some things done and to harvest a few items.  First, I said hi to the dragonfly by the garden and sent him on his way to eat mosquitoes.

With cooler weather coming, I put my order in with the "kitchen" that some homemade cornbread with fresh mustard greens spooned over it would be hearty and delicious.  Tricia and the boys aren't crazy about mustard greens, so I just have a small patch growing.  The mustard greens are young and tender and should be ideal for cooking.

We picked a nice bundle of mustard greens and Tricia took them inside to clean them up and prepare them for supper.

I almost forgot.  I picked 3 vine ripened tomatoes, too.  They were beautiful and almost blemish-free.  The fall crop of tomatoes is always the prettiest, but I think we're going to run out of time and the first frost is going to claim the crop before many more ripen.  But we'll see what happens. 

Tricia cooked the mustard greens down.  I asked her to leave the stems on these.  The leaves are young so the stems should be tender enough to eat.  At the bottom of the pot is the pot liquor.  Pot liquor is the 'broth' left over from cooking down the greens and it is healthy for you.  I like to pour a spoonful over my cornbread along with some greens on top.

So that's just what I did.  The rain and cool weather blew in and a nice meal of rice & gravy with potatoes, carrots, and fresh roast from our Jersey bull we had processed, with sides of oven "fried" okra and then cornbread soaked in pot liquor with mustard greens on top hit the spot!

Here is the money-shot!

Bon appetit!

You Just Can't BEET it!

I walked out to the garden and walked down the rows looking for a vegetable or two to cook as a side dish for some homemade chicken and dumplings that Tricia was working on preparing in the kitchen. Tricia likes a variety of colors on the plate to liven things up.  I've read somewhere that vegetables with lots of color are loaded with nutrition.

Well, I think I found just the thing to meet the color requirement on a row smack dab in the middle of the garden - Bull's Blood Beets!  We have a few beets on the row that were the perfect 'pulling size,' so I pulled a couple beets from the ground. Bull's Blood beets get their name from the rich, dark red color of the beet leaves.

Bull's Blood Beets

We have had lots of rain, so the beets came up easy from the moist soil. Just a gentle tug brought the beet roots out of the soil and ready to bring inside and prepare.

Beet roots

While walking back to the house, I also broke off some purple cauliflower and some Swiss Chard. How's that for some color?  The wife was pleased!  The colors were so striking that I laid down the produce on a bed of turnips I have growing to show the contrast of the colors.  Just look at the brilliant beauty of tonight's vegetable side dish.

A palette of colors for our palates

I took them inside and cut the greens (in this case, reds) off the beet roots.

Then I got the potato peeler and peeled the skins off the roots.  Handling them turned my hands red. Now normally I feed the leaves and stems and beet pulp to the cows, but not today.  I have something else in store for the beet greens.

I sliced and quartered the beet roots on a cutting board.  This should make them cook a little faster.

Bull's Blood beets sliced and quartered

Then I got on the Internet and found just what I was looking for: This Recipe from www.allrecipes.com.  Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens.  It is a simple dish to prep and the only change that we made to it was that we substituted butter instead of olive oil.  I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, put the cut up beets in a roasting dish, poured 2 Tablespoons melted butter over them and tossed them around so that the butter coated the beets.  I put them in the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes.

Butter is Better

When the beets were almost done, I put 2 Tablespoons butter, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and 2 tablespoons of chopped Purple Onion in a cast iron skillet and let them get all happy.

This smells so good!

Then (sorry cows), I put the beet greens that I had torn in pieces into the skillet.  I will admit that I brought the stems out for the cows to eat, but I'm sure that they were disappointed to not get the whole thing.

I stirred them while they cooked and once they withered, I added some sea salt and criolla sella ground pepper and mixed it all in.

Ready to eat!

By that time, the buzzer went off on the oven and we removed the roasted beets and place them atop the bed of sauteed beet greens in my plate alongside the green cauliflower.  We saved the purple cauliflower for another day and instead cooked some green cauliflower that I had picked a day earlier.

A delicious vegetable side dish

I served a bowl of Chicken and Dumplings and I was going to take a picture of that too, but by the time I thought of it, they were all gone.  The beets and beet greens were delicious.  The flavors of the garlic, onion and butter were great, but didn't overpower the great tasting greens.  This Allrecipes recipe was fantastic and will be added into our rotation.  The recipe says to add some red wine vinegar to the top of the greens.  We didn't do that, but I'm sure it would have been good.  The cows' loss was definitely our gain.