Our Bounty

The tomatoes and peppers are still coming!  We've done very well with our yellow tomatoes this year.  The Cherokee Purples were a little harder to grow.  Many times, we weren't able to harvest them before they started rotting on the vines.  But the Brandywines gave us plenty of red tomatoes.   The banana peppers are also growing strong.  I see a lot of salsa and fajitas in our future!

Salsa

The tomatoes are finally ready!  We planted A LOT of heirloom tomato plants, over 50.  That means we have a lot of tomatoes.  We've been experimenting with salsas and the results are generally pretty good.  This is a basic salsa we put together with some heirlooms, green pepper, red onion, cayenne pepper, lime juice and a little salt.

Tiger Eye Beans, A Lesson Learned

We decided to grow an heirloom variety of bean this year, the tiger eye bean.  The plants have been very productive and easy to grow.  Our problem was we didn't know when the pods were ready to be picked and the internet didn't give us much information.  So, we picked our first crop when the bean pods were a light green and the skin of the pod felt rather thick.  The result yielded beans that looked like this:

We thought this was great!  We boiled the beans and they tasted fine.  The colorful red part of the bean disappeared when cooked though and the beans turned a greyish color, not very appealing to the eye. But, they seemed to taste fine.

Then, for the next crop, we were not able to pick them as early as we had hoped.  The result was bean pods that had turned almost white with a skin that seemed sort of dry and brittle.  But, when you opened up the pods, the beans looked like this!

Ohhhh, we thought, that's more like it!  The beans were yellow with a swirly red pattern that holds up when cooked.  We learned our lesson, don't pick your tiger eye beans until the pods are white and look like this:

Black Bean and Corn Salad

I first had a version of this as a salsa with tortilla chips.  I couldn’t stop eating it!  I made my own version and decided to do without the chips and eat it straight as a salad or side dish.  Either way, it’s addictive. 

We didn’t plant any corn this year because the farm we rent our land from is known for their sweet corn.  We knew we wouldn’t be able to compete with the experts!  The corn I used wasn’t grown by us but it’s from the same land and very tasty.  I suggest boiling the corn on the cob for 4 minutes but at the height of corn season, some sweet corn is tender enough that there’s no need to even cook it. 

Black Bean and Corn Salad (or Salsa!)

1 can (15.5 oz) of black beans, drained

1 ½ cups of corn (about 2 ears of cooked corn)

½ red bell pepper, diced

½ small red onion, diced (about 1/3 cup)

juice from 1 lime

3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon chopped parsley (optional)

canola oil (to taste)

This recipe is really easy….just combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix!  I find it’s even better the next day once all the veggies have soaked up the dressing. 

I don’t use any oil when I make the salad but some people might find the vinegar and lime mixture too strong.  If so, just add a neutral oil to mellow the taste a bit. 

If you want to use this as a salsa for chips, I think a little diced jalapeno would go very well with it.  

Summer Salads!

We had great success with our cucumbers this year!  We should probably be pickling some but just haven't found the time yet.  Instead, I put together this quick summer salad with the cucumbers and green beans we recently harvested.  We grew two varieties of cucumbers this year, the heirloom ones are the lighter green ones on the left.

Green Bean and Cucumber Salad

For the Salad:
2 cucumbers
1 1/2 cups of green beans in bite sized pieces
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese

For the Dressing:
2 whole garlic cloves
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
dash of salt and pepper

1.  Peel the cucumbers.  You can leave some of the skin on for color and a little texture.  The heirloom variety we grew had a tougher skin than what you buy in the store so I found it helpful to remove some of the skin.  Slice the cucumbers lengthwise and scoop out the seeds.  Then, slice down the length of the cucumber halves making half moon shapes (sorry I don't have a picture of this!).  Add to bowl.

2.  Cook the green beans in boiling water for 2 minutes.  They only need to be blanched to make them a little more tender.  Add to bowl with cucumbers.

3.  Add the salad dressing to your taste and toss.  Then add the feta and give the salad another toss to distribute the feta.  This is great served right away or it will sit well in the refrigerator for a few hours.

For the Dressing:
1.  In a jar, add the vinegar, olive oil, dijon mustard, salt and pepper.  Most salad dressing recipes call for a 1 to 2 ratio of vinegar to oil.  I find that to be too much oil for my taste but you can adjust according to what you like.

2.  Smash the 2 garlic cloves with the back of a knife, no need to dice them, and add to jar.  Put the lid on the jar and shake!  Let the dressing sit for a bit so the garlic flavors it.  You can make this dressing a day or two before to really get the garlic flavor in there.  You don't add the garlic cloves to the salad, they're there just to infuse flavor to the oil and vinegar.

Radishes!

We are up to our eyeballs in radishes!  And that's some baby swiss chard you see in the corner.....but what to do with all of those radishes?!  Cole slaw?  Fish taco toppings?  They're great thinly sliced on some good crusty bread with butter.  Tonight, we're going to saute some in a little butter and olive oil and see how that is.  But, until we get a coop full of chickens I can feed radishes, I need to come up with some recipes!

We're Getting There....

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago.  At that time, we harvested some radishes (despite having their leaves eaten by flea beetles).  The flea beetles also seem to like our kale so we're not sure how that crop will come in.

Along with the little beet seedlings that are sprouting below, we're getting lots of weeds (which means lots of weeding!).

But we might have some broccoli soon!  Isn't that floret cute?  We're so proud!

Bee Boxes

Our bee boxes have arrived! We just need to paint them and wait for the actual bees to be delivered. Then, we'll sit back and collect our honey. (Not really, they actually require a lot of work but it looks so easy on TV!)

Let the Planting Begin!

Spring is here and we've started putting some seeds in the ground.  It doesn't look like much now but soon this row will have kale, swiss chard, radishes, carrots, and beets.