I guess you could use beet leaves in the spinach pie recipe? I'm starting to drown in beet leaves :) Was eying the Ball jars at the store last week. Someone loaned me a Blue Book and I'm getting ready to try a batch of beet pickling myself. Do you have a recommended recipe? Also its raspberry season - time to go picking! Would like to try making real preserves this year to save some space in the freezer.
My onions are mostly done. Starting cantaloupes in their bed. Will bring in all the garlic and shallots this weekend. The green peppers and basil are still small and sickly. I have hope, but they're agonizingly slow. Tomatoes have just started to flower - waaay behind this year. Do you have fruit yet?
I have been using kale so far in that recipe but I think any green leaf would do! I am planning on throwing chard and beet leaves (from the CSA, mine are clearly never giving me beets :( ) in a curry tonight.
My quick overnight beets are okay, but I actually don't like them as much with cider vinegar it turns out - it has such a distinct taste. So I might try something a bit more bland next time. So no recipe to recommend yet!
Onions are still growing, not looking done yet and still getting bigger - not long now though I guess. Peppers finally started to take off last week but still look a long way from doing stuff. Tomatoes have small green fruit, even on the blight plant which is seriously spindly. My basil has four leaves now, but I cracked and bought one of those plant pots from the supermarket - used half to cook with and threw the rest in an empty square to see if it would take. After lying on the floor for a couple of days it's now upright, so maybe it will survive! They pack the plants way too tightly in those pots.
My raspberries are not ripening yet, but my blueberries are very slowly on the way. Just enough for a small handful on my homemade granola every morning, so it works out pretty well!
Nice! I had two blueberries this morning. They were eaten before I got back in the house though. Also 4 raspberries from the yard, but these are just wild volunteers. There's a great picking spot near one of our training maps which I try to visit every 4th.
My boss' onions (from mail-ordered transplants) are still going strong as well. I guess my sets were an earlier day variety. The fall planted ones are fair sized, a few big ones. I can't wait to see how your from-seed ones turn out.
My basil also only has 4 leaves - all 3-5 plants. Last year I had huge basil bushes by the end of summer. Seems to come and go. The year before I barely had a handfull of leaves all season.
I'm going to get a pot for water bath canning and put up a few jars of beet pickles. The Blue Book recipe calls for cinnamon, allspice, sugar, salt and vinegar. The only stipulation on the vinegar is that it be 4-6% acidity, cider or white. I have some sort of red vinegar at home. Maybe its cider?
Hmmm - you asked about recipes for greens. Perhaps this is something to consider. We had a question from our daughter, Lucy, today. She also is a CSA member overwhelmed with greens and was wondering how to cook kale. We sent the following:
Kale/chard - mom pulls the center stalk out of the kale, if it's thick at the bottom. Chard you can eat the full stalk. Stack the leaves up, roll them, and slice across to shred it up. Use a little bit of water to keep it from sticking to the bottom. Cook till wilts and softens. Same with chard except include the chopped up stalks. Drain it, grate a little bit of nutmeg and salt/pepper, a little bit of olive oil. If you want to get fancy, you can cook it in chicken stock with a bit of onion and garlic. Mom seldom does that. So it's a quick cook - too long and it goes slimy and loses taste.
For collards, she follows Mo's recipe - bit of bacon fat, onions, garlic and simmer for a long time - half hour or longer.
So try something along those lines. You can also include the beet greens, or use them in a salad. Use the beet root in a salad or cook it. Great fresh. Couldn't think of trying to pickle - you can buy that kind of stuff. Eat it fresh.
We just had the first of our cabbage - the greatest! Slice up, cook like the kale above, in a bit of water to steam. Fresh cabbage is so crisp.
And our basil is doing great. Snap peas are almost done as is the lettuce - lettuce soup!?!? Eww! Compost it. We have lots of little green tomatoes and tiny peppers. Should be all good unless the deer get it, or the bunny! Beets are slowly coming along.
Cheers. Hope some of that makes sense.
ooh, I love pickled beets. not sure about pickled beet greens, though.
Fresh beetroot? I've never eaten uncooked beetroot; all the recipes I've ever used require you to boil it and/or roast it before eating it. I didn't realise you could eat it raw.
Fresh? Oops - after consulting with the cook, error noted.
Oh, I eat fresh beets, grated in salads. Or I roast a bunch of them in aluminum foil and keep them in the fridge. Then I have them ready to instantly add to salads or just as an extra vegetable side dish.
But more to Carol's point, by fresh I mean from the garden to eating, whether cooked or raw in a salad, as opposed to longer term storage such as pickling, canning though freezing works, just not fun in the heat of the summer to add more heat to then freeze.
I've been eating the beets as one-offs. Just pulling them up and chowing down on slices of the roots, peel and all, although the peel is definitely bitter. I've been eating the thinnings on sandwiches. A little mayo, cayenne, and a huge pile of leaves, like a bean sprout sandwich!
I chop the leaves and stems and cook in olive oil with garlic and shallots, black pepper and red wine vinegar. But very soon I'll have more beets and tops than I can shake a stick at. Gave a bunch to the neighbor last night. I'm going to pickle so I can have them in Jan. Mmmmmm. The Owens fam. brought some to Ken's house at the Vermont ski-O weekend and I was sold! So yummy. Would like to try beet pickled eggs too. And Borscht.
Good stuff. Can't grow beets dependably. In the garden the vole/moles eat everything below the surface, though we did get a few last year. Trying them in boxes this year. Will have to see. They're coming along but slowly.
Look forward to hearing if you have luck with the boxed beets George. We call them beetroot in the uk and they were my favorite vegitable growimg up. Havnt had them since leaving though.
We started potting our vegis but we did it because our soil is terrible. Tried to supliment with growing soil from home depot to no avail.
I miss the pickled beetroot in jars from back home! Any ideas which vinegar they use?
Not sure the boxes will work as now something has eaten the tops off all the beets in the latest planting box. Not gotten the others - yet. We may just be doomed.
But on the other hand, discovered a couple nice Anaheim peppers and lots of cayennes. The cilantro was over grown and became too strong so we cut that down tonight. Why can't the cilantro and peppers cooperate?
Yeah, and tomatoes. We need a hybrid salsa plant that has everything on one stem :) Just throw it in the food processor and serve.
Deer ate the tops of a set of beets I had unfenced and unsprayed. They've leafed back out, but it was a several week setback.
My cilantro is looking very weedy, I'm not impressed at all! Luckily the CSA has a pretty good bunch most weeks. My only mammal problem was a rabbit or similar that nipped the top from my early sage seedling. There is a very smelly skunk about in the neighbourhood at the moment but luckily he leaves the garden alone. There are some advantages to living somewhere slightly more urban I guess!
Urban? Yes - we seem to have a resident rabbit the last few days. So far was preferring to nibble on the clover in the grass. This morning another rabbit appeared, perhaps to do the rabbit thing. Not sure that's a good sign. We had heard that foxes had set up a den close by, probably the one that cruises through here periodically. Hope they develop a taste for bunny.
Great website - excited to try it out, beyond just looking at all the pretty pictures.
I just signed up for a fish CSA today which is part of the farmers market that's outside of my office on Wednesdays! Very excited.
For kale, I had fun making kale chips earlier this week. Cut kale into smallish pieces, remove stem. Heat oven to something (350-400 depending on the recipe). toss kale with olive oil & salt, spread on a baking pan. Bake til ends are crispy. Maybe not the healthiest way to eat kale, but yummy :)
Basil & lettuce coming in well to Barb & Dave's garden (as are weeds). Tomatoes growing, but still green. Same with peppers. First blueberries this morning! Blackberries growing, but they seem to disappear fast into my stomach :).
I made the pie last week - super yummy :)
Yey! I have made it twice now and it has been excellent both times. A surprise for me with anything involving pastry!
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