‘A week of eating from the garden’ may well be my favourite kind of post to put together. It is both a garden and a kitchen diary. It chronicles what we harvest at a certain time of the year and since this is already a second year of me doing these posts, I can also see whether the dishes we’re currently loving are the same as last year or whether things have changed since the earth has circled the sun.
Actually, I was pretty surprised to see that not one dish I cooked last week is the same as in the September post last year. Since sometimes I feel like I’ve been cooking the same recipes over and over, this was a pleasant surprise. Nevertheless, I would make any of the recipes from last year again in a heartbeat, especially the roasted vegetable galette and the Andalusian soup salad. In fact, I think I’ll make the soup today.
It also reminded me that I would like to turn the ‘apple harvest dinner’ into a yearly tradition. Our apples are ready to harvest and I’m thinking of apple dishes I could make this year. Any tips are welcome!
There is one thing that makes this week stand out: it has been the only week so far since I started growing vegetables 11 years ago that we could eat home-grown tomatoes every single day. We only have 4 plants of ‘Losetto’ (cherry tomato) and 2 plants of ‘Ferline’ but they have done exceptionally well this year. Plus there are more tomatoes (‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’ and ‘Orange Currant’) growing in the community garden.
Here is what I harvested during the week (there was more from the community garden, but I did not take a picture):
And here’s what we ate:
Monday
Dinner: Chard and herb pie with warm tomato salad
I love this pie not in the least because it uses both the chard leaves and the stems. Plus the leftovers are so nice to have for lunch the next day.
Tuesday
Dinner: Baked tomatoes with custard and sweet corn
The sweet corn I grew this year is a supersweet variety and it is a little too sweet for my taste, but the big advantage is that it keeps its taste longer after harvest. The baked tomato is a variation on this recipe.
Dessert: Yogurt with berries
If I serve a dessert at all, it will look something like this: just yoghurt and berries. We also usually eat berries with breakfast.
Wednesday
Dinner: Italian courgette and basil soup
The perfect super-fast dish to make on a night when Esther has a horse-riding lesson, Sebastiaan has choir practice and I teach Norwegian later in the evening. Recipe here.
Thursday
Dinner: Chickpea and cauliflower curry with cucumber raita and tomatillo chutney
I usually cook a big batch of any pulses I need for a recipe and save the rest for another day (see Saturday) – it’s the kind of thing that makes cooking a dinner every day way easier. Recipe for the tomatillo chutney here.
Dessert: Plum kuchen with streusel
Esther picked the plums (damsons, actually, which are perfect for this cake) in her friend’s garden and brought them home specifically so that we could make this. Recipe here, but I made the spiced up streusel as here.
Friday
Dinner: Spaghetti with marinated tofu and cherry tomatoes
A recipe from the archives, requested by Sebastiaan. He’s a 12 year old boy, he likes his pasta. Luckily, he likes tofu and tomatoes too.
Saturday
Dinner: Spiced chickpeas with chopped salad
Lovely with a drizzle of yogurt. Notice the pretty yellow currant tomatoes from the community garden – it’s all about color, isn’t it?
Sunday
Dinner: Corn ricotta cakes and beans with cherry tomatoes and pesto
These cakes are made with both corn flour and fresh corn kernels and obviously this is a dish kids love.
So, this was our week in 7 meal – we ate well. It will get a little harder to cook from the garden when it gets colder, but there are still plenty of good things to come. The tomato harvest is slowly coming to an end, but I am looking forward to using winter squash and kale again. Every season has its highlights!
Here are previous post from the series:
