Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Homegrown asparagus has been on the menu a couple of times this past week. The harvests are still small and somewhat sporadic, though we have already gotten over a pound of it. The warm weather makes it pop up out of the ground, and our biggest harvest so far came on Thursday when my wife cut right at 7 ounces of it.
asparagus harvest
I grilled it for lunch the next day, and it made a nice side dish paired with some meatless Reuben sandwiches. I can see some Asparagus Mimosa in my future too.
grilled asparagus
I’m still cutting lettuce from the greenhouse beds. This time it was Simpson Elite, and wound up in a wilted lettuce salad. Some of the edges are a little brown, but we eat our wonky veggies here at Happy Acres! I cut more kale from the greenhouse too, for a main dish meal with cannellini beans.
Simpson Elite lettuce
This is actually a 2014 harvest of dried Rattlesnake beans in the below photo. I found them hiding in the cool basement pantry. They look a lot like pinto beans before cooking, though smaller. I didn’t grow them last year, but I missed them and they are back in the plans for the 2016 garden. They are a dual-purpose bean that is good as a snap bean as well as a shell bean. I did a variety spotlight on them back in 2013 if you want to know a bit more about them.
dried Rattlesnake beans
They lose much of their color after cooking, though you can still see some of the markings in the below photo. They hold together well, and I cooked these in the pressure cooker to save some time. I used some for bean tacos, and I froze the rest for later use. I try and keep an assortment of cooked beans in the freezer, where we can pop them out for a quick meal.
cooked Rattlesnake beans
It’s not a harvest, but it’s news worth sharing, and exciting for me. There’s been a pair of bluebirds eating at the suet feeders for over a month now. Friday I saw them checking out one of the PVC nest boxes. In the below photo, the female has just gone inside and the male is perched on the top trying to look inside too. The pic is a little grainy looking because I was in a hurry to catch the action while I could and used the electronic zoom of my Canon G16.
bluebirds checking out nest box
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!