leeks

Winter vegetable harvest — grow delicious kale

Vegetable gardening feeds my desire to buy and grow unusual plants. I love watching interesting varieties of common plants put on a show in my garden. 

This year I grew kale for the first time — Red Russian, which boasts beautiful red leaf stalks and tender twisting intricate green leaves, and Red Ursa — which is red all over and has tight, tiny curls like a perm left in too long!

If you’ve been wanting to add edibles to your perennial landscape beds – these varieties are the perfect addition.  If you don’t have to worry about deer or other critters getting them, that is.

They look so pretty in the garden.

And even better picked an in a bowl ready for washing!

I sauteed a leek from the garden with a little bit of bacon drippings, then added the washed and wet kale.  I put a little salt, pepper and chicken base in the pot with a little extra water and covered them and let them steam for a while — maybe 30 minutes. 
They were delicious.  I think we can get another meal or two out of the plants before I pull them to make room for the four tomatillos biding their time in the greenhouse until our danger of frost has passed.
What are you eating out of your garden now?

A bowl full of love…

We are so enjoying our variety of lettuce and greens from the garden. We had salad this weekend with Sweet Mixed Greens, Oak Leaf Lettuce, Watercress, Parsley and radishes from the garden.

Also growing in the veggie garden right now:

Sweet 1015 Onions
Strawberries (blooming, no less!)
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
Flat leaf & Curly Parsley
Cilantro
Green Cabbage
Daikon Radishes
Beets
Carrot and Leek seeds have been planted — (I hope they are growing. We’ve had warm enough days and some rain coming today — maybe we will see some growth next week – cross your fingers for me.)

This weekend I also planted seeds to start inside the greenhouse – tomatoes, lima beans, peppers, lemon grass – are all sitting on a heat mat keeping them toasty warm. I’ve really missed the ‘get-them-started-early’ boat, but they will still be fun to have grown from seed myself.

It’s gray and very foggy here with storms forecast for later in the day. No gardening today, but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and…are you sitting down? 78F. So I’ll work at school today and do some paperwork at home, paying my dues for what I hope to be a glorious day tomorrow.

Have a great Monday.

Garden dinner…

This was the scene from my kitchen this afternoon. I sliced up leeks to fry and crisp up to top some boiled and fried potatoes, cut up green beans for a side dish and sliced a Lemon Yellow tomato to eat with just a little kosher salt.

Yum, yum. The beans were picked about a week or more too late, but with travel and other family things going on, I finally got to them today and my husband and I are both at home together tonight to eat them.
The leeks were originally going to be potato leek soup, but I thought I’d try something different and it worked great. They were browned little crisps that went great with the browned potatoes.
And the tomato was sweet and delicate, with a lot less acidity than your average red tomatoes. They have a very subtle but very nice flavor — I’d plant that one again. The cherry tomatoes on the counter were “Hank” and were sent to me for free with my TomatoBob heirloom tomato seed order in December. My DH said that they were not as sweet as the normal cherry tomatoes we grow, so I don’t think I will order them.
Paired with some pork tenderloin medallions under the broiler, as Martha Stewart would say, it was “a good thing.”
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