Monday, May 31, 2010

A Memorial Day Harvest Monday

I'm so grateful that I can now actively participate in Harvest Monday, however, not as grateful as I am that we have a day like Memorial Day. Memorial Day, to me is not like Valentine's day in that the emotions of Valentine's Day(minus the candy hearts and teddy bears) should be ours every day. Memorial day is different, in that whereas we do appreciate, we don't always understand the magnitude of our gratitude. That being said, several of my graduating students leave this week for their military careers and I thank them and wish them well.
Things on the garden front are looking really good. The disease that was on my Brandywines seems to be moving to the larger tomato bed and it has me worried. I'll watch it carefully.
This weekend I harvested some zucchini, two hot banana peppers, two pots of potatoes, three colors of carrots, ALL of the garlic and some rosemary. So, for the first time in my life, I made roasted veggies with everything from the garden. I was so excited.

First I buttered a dish. Check out this dish I got from my Mom's friend, Sherilyn, in St. Louis. It's by far my new favorite dish. If you can see through the poor picture, it's like a Chinese take-out tin.
I put the frozen onions from a while ago, tons of the newly pulled garlic, the carrots potatoes and rosemary in for a while.
Then when it was almost done cooking I put in the hot peppers and zucchini. Here's the finished product:
I was crazy happy and proud. Yes, I've sauteed veggies, made salsa and always eaten what's come from the garden, but whatever the dish was, it always had something extra in there. This was totally from the garden (I don't count the butter and salt). I was crazy proud and it was crazy good.
The only problem is that some of that butter got good and burned into the plate and now it's a bit discolored. I need to find out how to fix that without taking off the finish. :(

I hope you all have a peaceful memorial day. We'll be having some family over and I'm hoping that some of those zucchini will fatten up so we can grill them. I have some ichiban eggplants I'm hoping will fatten up tomorrow as as well.

14 comments:

  1. Good for you! Dang, your stuff is farther along than mine, and it will be a couple of weeks before any squash is harvested.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on your 100% garden dish! It always feels so good to create something like that. I hope your tomatoes do okay, that's nervewracking. The harvest looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congrats on you garden dish. I love when I can make things totally from the garden, but it doesn't happen often. There are usually outside additions.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's always so rewarding to make a dish that is completely grown in the garden! We just love roasted veggies! I'm envious of your potatoes. I hope that the balance of mine survive the attack of the voles.

    Nice harvest!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow! Those roasted veggies look absolutely delicious!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well done Ribbit! That looks absolutely delicious - but the dish is always made even sweeter when it comes from our own efforts.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your roasted veggies look AWESOME! Things do taste much better when they come from the garden.

    Hope you have an enjoyable Memorial Day!

    ReplyDelete
  8. The veggies sound delicious! Congrats on the garden's working so well.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Congrats, isn't it satisfying to be able to cook a dish with only your own veggies?

    Your harvest looks lovely and I like the ceramic dish also.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wow, you are already harvesting summer vegetables, I haven't even put all of mine in the ground yet. It is a wonderful feeling to cook up a dish that comes entirely from your own garden. I can often get about 8o% there, not growing my own onions often keeps me from getting to 100%.

    Try rubbing the stains with baking soda, it's really good for removing baked on oil, butter, grease, etc. without scratching.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Those roasted veggies look so good! You're making me excited for potatoes.

    I'm so sorry to hear about your tomatoes. I have you been able to properly diagnose the problem?

    ReplyDelete
  12. That is exciting! I love meals that come completely from the garden. Makes you feel accomplished.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I never tried to completely diagnose the problem with the brandywines. They were diseased, and that was good enough for me at the time. I suppose a diagnosis would have been better to prevent it's spread to the other plants.

    I'll try the baking soda. That sounds like a great idea.

    ReplyDelete