Harvest Monday May 16, 2016

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. It’s been mostly the same players in the harvest basket lately, but there’s a couple of new players this week. More on that later. I still have lots of lettuce sizing up now, and we are enjoying it as often as we can. The cutting in the below photo came from the greenhouse salad boxes, and wound up in a taco salad my wife made last week.

I cut both True Siberian and White Russian kale last week. We had it at different meals, but my wife and I both agreed the White Russian is still the tastiest of the ones I have grown recently. It’s a little less tender now since it has been subject to wind and weather, but still flavorful. The White Russian paired up with potatoes (from the grocery) for some Kale And Potato Hash.

I still have lots of green garlic growing from my December planting. Much of it is one variety called Maiskij, which is an early maturing turban type that has a reddish skin. That red coloration is present even in the young garlic, which you can see in the below photo. I used the green garlic to whip up a batch of Michelle’s yummy Crema di Green Garlic. The whole house smelled heavenly the whole time it was cooking! Well, it smelled great if you like garlic. I think it’s safe to say if you are allergic to garlic you probably shouldn’t visit Happy Acres!

So far I have been enjoying the garlic cream on crackers, eaten as a snack. It’s my turn to cook, and this week I plan on using it in a white runner bean salad I’m going to serve with some crispy crostini made from a sourdough baguette. And speaking of bread, I baked up a loaf of Rye & Whole Wheat Bread to use for Reuben sandwiches. We had those for lunch yesterday, but I didn’t get a photo because they looked pretty much like the ones we had last week.

There was a bit of excitement in the garden patch, though I don’t know which harvest was the most exciting. I cut the first garlic scapes on Saturday from the early garlic cultivars. I got all of those from Xian and Red Janice, plus a few from Uzbek and Shilla. It was enough to make a batch of Garlic Scape Pesto that is destined for a pasta dish I plan to make tomorrow night.

The other excitement came in the same bed in the main garden, just a few feet from the garlic. Last fall I prepped a spot for some edible podded peas so it would be ready for an early spring sowing. I had a little trouble getting them to germinate outside, so I filled in the blank spots with some I started indoors. They are now blooming and setting on pods, so I guess my persistence paid off. The first to harvest is the 1984 AAS winner Sugar Ann. It’s only a handful of pods so far, and my wife and I shared those for a snack. The Oregon Sugar Pod 2 peas are blooming now, so it won’t be long before we have both snap peas and snow peas.

The asparagus continues to roll in. We’ve gotten 23 pounds of it so far, with about two more weeks of harvest to go. I stir-fried that in the below photo, seasoned simply with some ginger, turmeric and a fresh green scallion from the garden.

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!