Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The harvests here have settled into a familiar pattern, but I’m certainly not bored with them. I harvested some more of the Coalition Mix kale this past week. It has been a dependable performer for me the last two years. Some of the plants are starting to get aphids on the leaves, which is not unusual here in fall and winter. We’ve had several freezing nights in a row and I am thinking that will help reduce the bug population. The leaves in the below photo were bug free.
Coalition Mix kale
My wife was cooking last week and she combined the kale with some of our Yukon Gold potatoes from storage to make Kale and Potato Hash. I really enjoy eating this dish, especially when she is cooking it and not me!
Kale and Potato Hash
She also requested I get some turnips and greens for dinner one night. We still have plenty of them in the garden. I pulled mostly Purple Top White Globe, which I planted for the greens more than the turnips themselves. I have come to prefer ‘salad’ turnips like Hakurei, which I also pulled for her.
Purple Top and Hakurei turnips
She cooked the tops and bottoms together. Sometimes I like to put a seasoned vinegar on my turnip greens, but these were so sweet I skipped the vinegar. As you can see in the below photo some of the Hakurei turnips are getting quite big, but they are still tender and not a bit woody even at that stage.
Hakurei turnip
I’ve taken over the cooking duties for a couple of weeks. I started off with pizza last night. We love arugula on our pizza and I have quite a bit of it at the moment, so I harvested some of the Apollo from the cold frame bed. I also cut some parsley from the greenhouse to make pesto to use as a pizza sauce.
arugula and parsley for pizza
I made the crust from homeground whole grain White Sonora wheat. White Sonora is an heirloom soft white wheat that was quite popular in the U.S. Southwest until the 1900s. It is a wonderful wheat for tortillas and other flatbreads like pizza since it is easy to roll out. The dough turned out so light in color it is hard to believe it is 100% whole wheat. I used a Peter Reinhart recipe from Artisan Breads Every Day for the crust, which involved an overnight fermentation in the refrigerator.
pizza crust made from White Sonora wheat
I put some of our frozen Slow Roasted Tomatoes on the pizza, along with mushrooms and a few of the pickled Malawi Piccante peppers. I used parsley pesto on one side and homemade tomato sauce on the other. But if you look at the below photo, can you see what I forgot to put on the pizza? There’s no arugula! Oh well, it was tasty anyway, even without the arugula. And my wife assures me I will not be fired from my job as cook, since she was more than ready for me to take over for a couple of weeks. We do like to tease each other about whose turn it is to cook. In reality taking turns is a great way for both of us to keep our cooking skills intact, and we do enjoy sharing duties in the kitchen.
the finished pizza
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!