Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The garden is giving us a good variety of greens now as the days get shorter and colder. I made a cutting of Topper turnips last week, which I’ve got growing in one of the cold frame beds. It’s my first time growing this one, and like Nozawana it’s another turnip that is grown for the greens, though it might make edible roots if you let it grow long enough. The tender leaves cooked up in a few minutes. The harvests this week brought us up to 1195 pounds for the year, quite a bit more than last year’s 804 pounds. We’ve had lots of homegrown goodies to share this year, and our freezer and pantry are well stocked too.
Topper turnip greens
Another green coming in from the cold last week was mizuna. I used this bunch in a frittata I made for lunch one day that also featured our dehydrated tomatoes, shallots and the last of the fresh Cornito Giallo peppers. The mizuna is also growing in one of the cold frame beds and has been keeping us supplied for a couple of months now.
mizuna
And I cut two main heads of Gypsy broccoli. They were decent sized, and I suspect that main heads will be all we get from the fall broccoli as I doubt it will make side shoots this late in the season.
Gypsy broccoli
I’m still getting lettuce from one of the cold frame beds. Tango is widely grown by commercial growers but sure does well in our garden too. There’s a bit of the red Spritzer in there with it. I’ve got more lettuce growing in the greenhouse but it will be a couple of weeks before it is ready, since everything is growing in slow motion this time of year.
Tango and Spritzer lettuce
For Thanksgiving we enjoyed several veggies from the garden. I made a cutting of White Russian kale for the occasion, which I braised for a side dish. It was especially sweet after several recent frosts. I added a bit of chopped shallots to it for seasoning.
White Russian kale
I cooked up a batch of Rosemary Roasted Sweet Potatoes along with the kale. I used a couple of the Beauregard sweet potatoes for this, a Candy onion from storage, and some fresh rosemary from the garden. The rosemary goes quite well with the sweet potatoes, and the lack of added sugar allows the natural sweetness of the potatoes to come through. Marshmallows and sweet potatoes never mix at Happy Acres!
Rosemary Roasted Sweet Potatoes
For a sweet treat though, my wife baked a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. The day before, I baked up one each of the Dickinson and Turkeyneck pumpkins and pureed them for a taste testing. Both had a great flavor and deep orange color, and we found the Dickinson had a smoother texture while the Turkeyneck was a bit sweeter. So she used the Turkeyneck for the pie, and we were both pleased with the results. We wound up with ten one pound containers of pumpkin puree in the freezer.
pumkpin pie
For another meal earlier in the week I made baked sweet potato chips, loosely following this recipe from Rodale Wellness. I thinly sliced one each of the Purple and Korean Purple sweet potatoes using a mandoline, then tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper before baking until crisp and browned. I skipped the maple syrup and cumin in the recipe mainly because I wanted to get a good taste of the sweet potatoes, plus they were sweet enough already without any added sweetener. They made a tasty side dish for some grilled salmon, which I seasoned with a cocoa powder rub before grilling.
Purple and Korean Purple sweet potato chips
Speaking of shallots, I was sort of disappointed when all the shallots I planted last fall bolted this spring. But as it turned out, they went ahead and made a decent amount of edible shallots anyway. I got about 1.5 pounds of Conservor, and 2 pounds of the Dutch Yellow. I used some of the smaller bulbs to replant both varieties to see how they do next year. It’s Conservor in the below photo, which made the biggest bulbs of the two I grew.
Conservor shallots
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!
What gorgeous greens you have coming from your garden!
We aren’t growing a fall/winter garden as we’re focusing on our move early in the new year but we harvested turkeys for Thanksgiving (we grew Midget Whites this year) and made the most delicious turkey stock with what was left. The new property we’re moving to has so.much.potential and the garlic is already in the ground there so I look forward to abundance pulled straight from the land again very soon 🙂
Hope you have a lovely week ahead, Dave!
Homegrown turkey sounds wonderful! We made stock with our leftovers too. I hope your move goes smoothly. I know that’s always challenging to say the least.
Have you tried fermenting any of your turnip or mustard greens? I tried it last spring when I had a surplus that I didn’t want to go to waste. I used a method for making Chinese dried fermented mustard greens although mine went into the dehydrator rather than out in the sun.
Great looking broccoli, beautiful pie, and I want some of those sweet potato chips! I agree, marshmallows should not come anywhere near sweet potatoes.
Belated Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours Dave!
Wow – almost 1,200 lbs! Congrats – that is a huge achievement! And such a yummy Thanksgiving feast – so many homegrown goodies! I’m with you on the marshmallows – I never could understand that.
All the greens are lovely. I’ve got some mizuna to harvest too, but I’m not sure I’d be any good at a frittata…so maybe a stir fry instead.
Funny, I have a butternut dish this week that looks like your sweet potato one…including the onion and rosemary….great minds eh.
Lots still being harvested – we had frittata in the week but now all the ingredients were home grown. We only harvested parsley last week.