Drowning. . .

A ONE MORNING HARVEST

OMG we are drowning in tomatoes! This is one morning and we are getting that much again in the evening.

Do you feel sorry for me?  I sincerely, hope not!  We have great food and our neighbors and friends love us since we keep giving tomatoes away.

Last year, our first year in this very harsh environment, we had lots of tomato troubles:  diseases, fungi and pests .  Because we got here in May, we rushed to get the garden in. Unfortunately, we did not do a good job of tracking which varieties were the best producers, the most disease resistant or the best tasting.

This year we wanted to experiment with several different varieties and to keep better records. We are tracking planting dates, problems, production and taste. The ones we are watching are: Early Girl, Celebrity, Better Boy, Black Prince, Black Krim, Big Cherry, Husky Cherry, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear, Roma and a VFN variety. Obviously we needed a couple of each types of plants. So we have ended up with quite a collection.   I am beginning to think, however, that we may have gotten a little carried away! When we finally counted all of the tomaotes plants we came up with 52!

We have some that are producing lots of tomatoes right now as you can see in the picture: Early Girl, Black Prince, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear and Roma. Some that have lots of green tomatoes; we haven’t gotten any ripe ones yet: Big Cherry, Husky Cherry, Celebrity and Black Krim.  Some plants that are still to small to be producing fruit, yet: Better Boy and VFN.

Results so far?

• Favorite eating varieties are the black ones – Black Prince and Black Cherry; the flavor is beyond belief.
• Best producer by far -- Early Girl.  The plants all have yellow leaves and kinda look bad, but they are producing great tomatoes and lots of them!
• The most troublesome -- yellow pear.  We have lost one plant and it looks like another one is one it’s way out.

No matter how you cut it we have a lot of plants, a lot of fruit and are learning a whole lot!  Bottom line for me:  Lots of tomatoes now and a whole lot more on the way so I need to get busy over the weekend and

1. Buy some canning jars
2. Read up on canning tomatoes
3. Research Dehydrators
4. Make some Gazpacho
5. Find some new recipes that use tomatoes
6. Upgrade this site: we will be down starting Friday afternoon until sometime on Saturday. Be sure to come back next week and check out our new look.

The Beef of Vegetables???

Over the weekend I spent a couple of hours surfing the net. I was on a mission:  finding some good kale recipes. Almost immediately I saw an an amazing article title: Kale, the Beef of Vegetables. Of all the odd titles I have stumbled across recently, this has to top the list!

My first thought. of course, was, “no wonder I don’t particularly like it!” Then I cracked up (I do tend to amuse myself, easily). Look, I’m really, really, really trying to eat it and like it. Damn it!  It is so good for my body that I should at least eat it and hopefully, learn to like it! 

When I finally quit laughing at myself, I settled down and read the article.  It was yet one more in a long series of articles extolling the virtues and benefits of kale.  Did you know that it is full of :

I got my Mojo Back! Made Veggies au Pistou ( a fancy French name for a basic Veggie Stew with Pasta and Pesto)

I am GREATLY relieved to be able to report that I have my cooking mojo back!  This week everything I cooked turned out well.  In fact better than well. . . it was all downright good!

Monday morning I went out a picked a great assortment of fresh veggies. Spinach, yellow squash and tomatoes shown here.  I also trimmed a big basket full of basil and a bunch of onions. 

In the fridge there were navy beans from last week, a head of lettuce and a big cucumber that we had gotten at Farmer’s Market.  It was obviously a Greek salad day.

We are now officially in summer and menus are guided by what I pick on any given more.  This morning I had LOTS of basil that was either going to get harvested or bolt.  I harvested.

Summertime and the Livin’ is Easy

My favorite part of gardening is watching the seeds sprout and poke up through the ground.  My second favorite part is harvesting the food. Third, is eating it.

It is immensely gratifying to actually see the results of all your hard work. Watering, weeding, keeping after pests and fungi is hard work. Never mind the transplanting and soil prep.  It’s definitely work!  But there are so few things in life where you can actually see, taste and experience such tangible and direct results.
 
Harvesting means menu planning.  Now, in the winter menus are usually about the finished product – casseroles, soups, stews and meatless meatloaves.  In the summer it is about making sure I have cooked rice and beans in the fridge, nuts in the pantry and a few things in the freezer.

Lasagna

David found a package of rice lasagna noodles the other day and said, “you know, I am really hungry for lasagna.  Think you can make a vegan version that tastes good?”

Nothing like a challenge!  Especially since lasagna is one of those quick meals that is perfect for a crowd. The trick, of course is to bake it on low heat with lots of liquid so you never have to precook the noodles!  I really have not made this dish since we gave up dairy last year so I figured I just wing it and see what happened.

The place to start was with my more or less standard combination of vegetables (carrots, zucchini, green pepper, onions, garlic and spinach). That was all easy!  The part that took a little thinking was what to use in place of ricotta cheese.

There are hundreds of cheese replacement recipes out on the net. Most of them are cashew based. I don’t know, there is something about the idea of cashew cheese/sour cream that just didn’t seem right. But a challenge is a challenge, so what the hell. . .

I have to say I was impressed!  This is something I would be happy to serve to anyone!  I am also willing to bet they would never know that it wasn’t a traditional lasagna with ricotta.

The First harvest

This week we got to pick and eat the first veggies:

Spinach  - I sautéed these up with garlic and onions in a little olive oil and then finished them off with a little water and a splash of lemon juice

Tomato – went directly from the hand into my mouth!  We have lots and lots of them starting to ripen.  Since this is the veggie (which is really a fruit) that I love most, I am like a kid waiting for Christmas.  Every morning I run outside to see if there are any ripe yet. A few more days! I am trying to be patient and grown up but it is really hard.

Radishes were put in a salad using the lettuce we bought at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday. Can hardly wait for next week when we can use our own lettuce!

Made up a very simple dressing with olive oil, lemon juice, fresh basil and salt.

There are pots of herbs right outside the door – basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano, dill and epazote. 

There are two big pools full of onions that we are starting to use. One of these days I may even get a picture. Right now, I have to go eat something!

Our Garden --- another kind of adventure in feeding ourselves!

Let’s just say we do NOT live in a gardener’s paradise.  We are on granite, desert mountaintop.  Our soil is rocky and dry.  We live close to wild life – rabbits, deer, coyotes and javelina use our side yard as a race way and eat everything in sight.  And then there are small rodents and the birds!

Most gardener’s here either have securely fenced yards or have built raised beds (a big planter and filled it with soil).  Some have both.  They work great but are more or less permanent and expensive to build. David and I moved here last year. At the time we were not sure that we would be staying here permanently, so we leased a house for a year.  Turns out we love it here, but now we need some time to find the place we want to buy. The point of all that is that we are renting and do not want to go to the time and expense of building a big fence or even raised beds.

David is nothing if not inventive. One day, he hit upon a great solution.  A $9.00 child’s plastic swimming pool.  Then he build a waist high table  from some scrap lumber he found. The table was the inspired part – no kneeling or bending over to work in the ground.

AND we can bag soil and move it with us where ever we go.

For tomatoes and peppers he bought some 5 gallon buckets from Home Depot and used them as containers.  Amazingly easy and not terribly expensive!

Now, there is nothing in this world like a fresh tomato picked off the vine! Here is the first once from our garden this year!  Store bought tomatoes often look great and don’t have much taste.  Farmer’s market tomatoes taste great but cost an arm and a leg. Tomatoes are the extreme example of the difference between store bought, farmer’s market and veggies picked fresh out of the garden.

Sure, home grown require a little work and a lot of attention, but they are sooooo worth it!  And the good news is that you don’t need a lot of space.  With a small kid size swimming pool and a couple of 5 gallon buckets, a few of bags of soil, some water, sun and seeds you can have an abundance of fresh food.

More about our gardening adventures as the weeks go on.  You can also check out a picture diary on shutterfly.