A week of eating from the garden/ early summer

Summer time and eating from the garden is easy. While the last time I wrote a ‘Week of eating from the garden post’ in May, I was still scrambling to make a week’s worth of meals out of what I could harvest, now we are spoiled for choice and it’s more a matter of scrambling to keep up with the abundance. Lots of berries, vegetables and herbs and no need to go to the store. Because we now go to the allotment every other day,I can harvest more often and the produce we eat is completely fresh.

Once again, a lot of the meals I cooked come from the blog archives. Especially when I’m pressed for time, it’s so nice to be able to consult my own archives for a recipe I know we’ll all love: “Broad beans – what was it again I make with broad beans? ‘Broad beans in spiced tomato sauce’ it is”. Like I said before, often it’s not the cooking I find tiring but thinking about what to cook.

I have only taken a harvest photo on Monday so this is but a small part of what we’ve picked (and eaten) the past week.

And here’s what we ate:

Monday

Breakfast

This is what I’ve been eating for breakfast most of the week: an assortment of freshly picked berries from the garden with yogurt. The berries in the photo are red, yellow & black raspberries, jostaberries and wild strawberries.

Dinner: Broad beans in tomato sauce with many spices & rice

I had asked Sebastiaan to pod the beans but had to remove him from the task after I found out he’d ate all the beans he managed to pod. While I encourage the eating of raw vegetables, I did need need some beans to make dinner! Recipe here.

Dessert: Dark chocolate pudding with wild strawberries in red wine syrup

I’ve made this before with garden strawberries and it was certainly delicious, but using the highly aromatic wild strawberries takes the dessert to another level. Plus they look so pretty! Recipe here.

Tuesday: Pasta with sugar snaps and soft goat cheese + salad

 

Most of the sugar snaps we picked were eaten raw as a snack, but I also made this super easy and flavorful dish. Recipe here.

Wednesday: Italian courgette and basil soup

Courgettes are starting to fruit and need to be picked regularly, before they get too big and loose all flavor. The basil is appreciating the hot weather and thriving too. Recipe here.

Thursday: Fruit dumplings with wild strawberries

Per Esther’s request since this is one of her favorite dishes of all time. I’ve made this recipe with many different kinds of fruit but never before with wild strawberries. Remember what I said about taking things to another level? We’ve made a couple of dumplings with raspberries and gooseberries too. All good, but the wild strawberries win. Recipe here.

Friday:

Lunch: Kohlrabi and land cress salad

We’ve had a salad with almost every meal this week, but mostly they are just washed lettuce leaves I put in a big bowl on the table. This time I made a bit more effort – the peppery land cress is nice with the young, almost sweet kohlrabi.

Dinner: Chard and herb pie with ricotta and feta

Of course there had to be a recipe with chard in my ‘week of eating from the garden’ post! This delicious pie also contains a huge amount of herbs (parsley, mint and basil). The leftovers tasted great  for lunch on the next day.

 Saturday: BBQ

Sebastiaan requested a barbecue and while the meat-eaters among us enjoyed some organic sausages, I baked a camembert with rosemary for myself. We all ate lots of raw veg too.

Dessert: Almond and black currant cake

Esther had a friend visiting for a sleep-over and this is what they baked together. Black currants and almonds are a great pairing.

Sunday

Breakfast: Souffled buckwheat pancake with caramel sauce and berries

I did not think a time would come when I would want to eat something else than the souffled pancake with caramelized apples for breakfast on Sunday, but since the first apples are still about a month away and berries are plentiful, I had to adapt. No hardship!

Dinner: Pasta with fried courgette, broad beans and basil

The frying had to be done in small batches and took quite some time, but the dish was delicious!

What’s not pictured are the mountains of raw vegetables and berries we ate as sides or as a snack between meals. My kids are capable of eating huge amounts of veg if I put it conveniently within reach. Of which, of course, I take full advantage.

Previous posts in this series:

Spring

Winter

End of fall

End of summer