Monday Menu

We’ve been eating lots of garden-based meals lately and tonight is no exception. Sorry about the bad photos – I was so hungry I almost didn’t think to take photos, and I certainly didn’t take the time to make them nice! Just trust me – it all tasted much better than it looks here!

Menu

radish top soup

ratatouille, sort of

biscuits

The soup is more or less the same as the one I made here, though, and don’t tell the girls, I didn’t have quite enough radish tops*, so I added beet greens*. They detected no difference, and neither did I.

The ratatouille, sort of, was a stew of onion°, peppers*°, zucchini* and tomatoes* seasoned with thyme*, oregano*, salt and pepper.

The biscuits were awesome. Just a basic baking powder biscuit, but there’s nothing like homemade biscuits warm from the oven. And it really doesn’t take so long to make them. I really should do it more often.

And tomorrow’s breakfast? Warmed biscuits with jam!

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Monday Menu

Summer vacation and the liven’ is easy! We’re having wonderful weather and enjoying our days in the garden. Tonight’s dinner comes mainly from the garden, a necessary reminder of why I do it!

Today’s harvest

Menu 25 June 2012

radish* top soup

spring vegetable paella-otto with broccoli*, snap peas*, carrots°, mushrooms° and onions*

raspberries* and strawberries* with sweetened yogurt

Radish Top Soup

Radish leaves

This recipe comes from Marian Morash’s The Victory Garden Cookbook, which I love because the chapters are arranged by vegetable. When I have a glut of almost anything, Marian usually comes to my rescue!

I’m sure that following her recipe exactly yields wonderful results, but here’s what I do:

1. Sautee some onions or leeks in butter and oil. I use about one medium onion.
2. Add cubed potatoes, water and bouillon. One large potato, vegetarian bouillon.
3. When potatoes are almost cooked, add radish tops. I use about 2 bunches worth of greens.
4. Puree, adding milk or cream if you like. Season with salt and/or pepper.

It would be good peasant style, too I think, but I puree it.

Spring Vegetable Paella-otto

Once again, I must say that a real recipe would probably help tremendously, but I believe I’ve noted that if you want perfection you’re going to have to find it elsewhere.

So, here’s what I did:

1. Cook rice in bouillon in more or less normal way. I couldn’t find any brown rice in the cupboard (I swear we bought some) so I used risotto rice, thus paella-otto.
2. Sautee chopped onions, broccoli, and carrots in a big pan. I used my wok.
3. Remove vegetables and then add mushrooms. I got daring and when mushrooms were almost done, decided to finish it all off at once instead of bit by bit. I added minced garlic, thyme and a little saffron (I recommend adding it to the rice cooking water, but I didn’t think of it until this point.)
4. I added in the cooked rice and the rest of the vegetables and mixed it all together.
5. It needs salt! And maybe more garlic. And regular rice, not sticky arborio rice. But it tastes good. You can really taste the flavor of each of the vegetables.

Paella-otto

Berries with Sweetened Yogurt

The lots on either side of ours are empty, apart from the legion of weeds just waiting to invade. They send in advance troops in by seed, runners under the fence, with birds and the cat. Though I win some battles, they are winning the war, for now. Occasionally, though, they send me something I can use. Dandelions and nettles have come in and I’m happy about that (yes, happy – here’s why). But the other day we discovered a major encroachment onto our plot by raspberry bushes! Lots of them! Happy day!

It isn’t easy to get the girls to refrain from devouring every ripe berry they see whenever they see them, but they managed to pick a small bowlful today. I mixed them with the last few strawberries and served them with yogurt.

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