Summer Harvest

After a slow start in the garden all I can say is wow. We’ve been eating green beans nearly every night for the past week or so and keeping up with the lettuce and kale is becoming a challenge. 

I planted cucumbers this year and last count we had 2 in the house and 5 will be ready in the next few days. Our Japanese eggplant is doing very well and the squash (3 kinds) are exploding. It’s shaping up to be another wonderful year. The only disappointment - the broccoli; all of the crowns are very small - tasty but small. 

Dan made a delicious dip out of the eggplant. He chopped it fine and added onion, a bit of zucchini, garlic and sautéed it with olive oil - it was delicious on a piece of crusty french bread. 

Those 5 cucumbers followed us to the lake where I made a simple salad of tomatoes, cucumber and avocado dressed with oil, rice wine vinegar, a bit of agave and garlic. I let it marinade for about an hour - and added some salt and pepper it tasted fresh and delicious. 

We also made calico beans - vegetarian and regular two giant crockpots of tasty. Lucky for us some followed us home because for some reason they never made it to the leftover meals. Guess that’s what happens when you leave the husband and step-daughters in charge. Not a problem tho I’ll heat them up for dinner tonight and toss a quick salad to round it out. 

And speaking of tonight, I am going to try to replicate the buffalo cauliflower  we’ve had at J Selby’s - a new favorite vegan restaurant in St Paul. I’ve looked at more than 50 buffalo cauliflower recipes and I think the one I’m going to use will be spot on - I can’t wait. And here is the end result - good first effort but I'l make a few tweaks going forward both in cooking times and saucing the cauliflower.

Next weekend is movie night - I hope our guests are hungry for some veggies - cuz they’ll be a lot of that going on.

Thanks for stopping by!