Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. What a difference a year makes! After a relatively mild 2016-2017 winter I was harvesting overwintered lettuce in March of 2017. This year after a harsh winter I have a few plants that survived, but it will be awhile before they make anything edible, if I decide to let them grow on. I did manage to get a couple of fresh harvests last week. I made the first cutting of arugula from plants I have growing in the greenhouse. It’s a mix of Speedy, Astro, and Apollo. It all went on a pizza I cooked up Saturday night for dinner.
arugula for pizza
And I got a small cutting of kale when I cleared out one of the cold frame beds that was home to overwintered kale. I pulled several straggly plants of Meadowlark, which survived the winter but weren’t making much new growth. I left five Starbor plants which not only survived but have put on quite a bit of new growth in the last few weeks. Then I replanted a dozen plants total of Darkibor, Starbor and Prizm. I have more kale growing in the greenhouse which is now ready for cutting too.
Meadowlark kale
We are still using up veggies from stores. I cut up one of the Thelma Sanders acorn squashes last week, and roasted the slices in a cast iron skillet. This has been a surprise favorite for me and my wife. I say a surprise, because I hadn’t grown any acorn type squashes for several years and we were surprised how much we like this one!
Thelma Sanders squash
After six months in storage it was still in great shape and quite flavorful. I plan to grow it again this year for sure. I think it has a nutty flavor which is enhanced by the roasting. I’m not the only one who likes it either, since it is listed on the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste which also describes a bit of its history. Since we’ve enjoyed this acorn variety so much, I plan on growing two more this year. One is an heirloom called Gill’s Golden Pippin, and the other is the 2009 AAS Winner Honey Bear. We grew Honey Bear at our MG All-America Selections Display Garden when I was a volunteer there, and it was a prolific producer of single-serving fruits.
roasted slices of Thelma Sanders squash
And I continue to experiment with mashed sweet potatoes. Last week I managed to recreate a dish I had in Hawaii earlier this year. Sweet potato mash is often on the menu at restaurants there, and the ones I had at Mama’s Fish House had a subtle taste of coconut to them. I found a recipe at Blue Zones called Coconut-Mashed Sweet Potatoes that sounded worth a try. That recipe called for orange fleshed sweet potatoes that are boiled, then mashed with coconut milk and seasoned with cinnamon. I made mine with a mix of white-fleshed Korean Purple and the purple-fleshed Purple that I steamed, then mashed using low-fat coconut milk. I omitted the cinnamon. If you haven’t read the book Blue Zones: Lessons For Living Longer From The People Who’ve Lived The Longest by Dan Buettner, one of the blue zones is located in Okinawa, where the sweet potato is a staple in the resident’s diets. They grow the purple-fleshed Okinawa sweet potatoes there, which are also popular in Hawaii. My half and half white and purple ones made for a good substitute. Next time I want to try a brown sage butter treatment.
Coconut-Mashed Sweet Potatoes
We also are still enjoying the fermented foods from storage. One kraut I have particularly enjoyed lately is a Pineapple Turmeric Kraut I made last summer. In addition to cabbage, it has chopped pineapple added and is seasoned with fresh grated ginger and dried turmeric. The sugars from the pineapple get fermented away, while the pineapple taste remains along with the turmeric and ginger flavors. After nine months in the frig it is quite tangy and tasty, and I have really enjoyed eating it as a side dish. I’m also glad I made several jars of it!
Pineapple Turmeric Sauerkraut
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!
We don’t seem to have purple sweet potatoes for sale here. I do wish I had a harvest to share but we are just using stored vegetables t the moment. We have some veg waiting on the plot to be harvested but it’s a case of getting to them.
Your acorn squash is very pretty, and it’s actually amazing the kale made it through the winter. But Red Russian came back for me after being killed off above-ground, and I had a couple varieties of spinach that have over-wintered very well without any protection.
The ground has been so wet lately, it’s hard to say when we’ll get to till and start spring planting.
As usual, your & Michelle’s fermenting adventures always impress me! Those fresh greens look wonderful! I’m so tired of stopping by the salad/lettuce section of the grocery store but it will be a while before I can bypass it – the ground is still frozen solid.
BTW that sounds like a fascinating book – I’ve just ordered it.
Your arugula and kale make it look like spring. Starbor sure sounds like a winner for your climate. I cut into a big squash from my stores this week also and I will be doing the cast iron treatment for at least part of it. That is such and easy and delicious way to prepare squash. And the coconut mashed sweet potatoes sounds great too, I’ve got the recipe bookmarked.
Funnily enough I used an acorn squash this week too (tonight in fact). I still have two left and your roasted squash looks so good I think that’ll be on the cards for at least one of them.
We’ve had snow and frozen ground again the last few days…Spring is taking its time to arrive properly.
I always take Slow Food Ark of Taste so seriously, but I’ve really only grown a few of their listed varieties.
Thelma Sanders are an excellent squash… we still have a couple up in the store. They make a decent soup too. Thank you for the link about their history, which is something I’ll share too as the more we know about the provenance of what we eat the more we can appreciate it I think