Week of eating from the garden – September

It’s Wednesday evening and I’m finally sitting down to look back at what we’d made with our beautiful harvest. The abundance at this moment is such that, to be honest, I did not even get around to using everything – the spaghetti squash is still sitting on a shelf (next week!) and the chard wilted before I got around to using it and ended up on the compost heap. Which makes this the first ‘Week of eating from the garden‘ post without a single chard dish. Since we’ll be eating chard regularly throughout fall, winter and spring (it’s awfully dependable), I do not mind not eating it while there are sun ripened tomatoes – their season here is very limited so we’d better make most of it. The tomatillo I turned into Hot tomatillo chutney (currently the most googled recipe on this website :-)).

And I also baked the first apple cake of the season:

Variation on this recipe.

In the video I mentioned wanting to pack some produce for my daughter to take with her and this is what she got: a small jar of pesto, a big jar of apple sauce, sweet corn, zucchini, a box of heirloom cherry tomatoes, red pepper, a bunch of sage and rosemary (and some cake, of course).

And this is what we ate:

Sunday

ravioli with red peppers, sweet corn, zucchini, cherry tomatoes and basil butter

One of Esther’s favourite dishes which she requested before she had to go catch the train back to uni.

Monday

Breakfast: James Grieve apple, grapes, fall raspberries and a few blueberries

My morning ritual is going into the garden, picking a few apples, a bunch of grapes and any ripe fall raspberries or blueberries (we grow these in pots). Sometimes I’ll eat fruit with some yogurt, sometimes just the fruit – gotta enjoy it while it lasts!

Dinner: Sweet corn with loaded Greek salad

Tuesday

Aloo beans, ratatouille and cucumber raita

Perhaps a little culturally incongruent mixing Italian and Indian cuisine but it did taste good! The potatoes were some of our last early ‘Annabelle’.

Wednesday

Ricotta al forno with basil, roasted purple potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes

Another potato variety, the spectacularly coloured ‘Violette Noir’. Recipe for ricotta al forno here (but made using just basil and parsley).

Thursday

Hummus with grilled corn salad, marinated grilled zucchini, tomatoes and tortilla chips

Inspired by a bonus recipe I received after ordering the HalfBakedHarvest cookbook – we loved the grilled sweet corn, feta and lime combo and I’m looking forward to receiving my copy of the book!

Friday

monthly neighbourhood potluck

Once a month we organize a neighbourhood potluck in our community centre – this time the cooks were asked to bring a dish from the country where they went on holiday. We went to the Czech Republic, so I made my mom’s potato salad and also a big bowl of mixed garden salad.

Saturday

Quinoa bowl with fried zucchini, roasted beets, shredded carrot, cucumber, tomatoes, haloumi cheese and herb sauce

Again, lots of different veggies in this one – I especially enjoyed the tiny roasted beets. Frying the zucchini was a mistake though since it was more work than grilling them and I prefer them grilled anyway.

Sunday

Breakfast: Buckwheat pancakes with caramelized apples

Sunday was the only morning all four of us sat down together for breakfast, so we made a little effort. The pancakes were mostly made by my son who is getting pretty good at it. We told him that girls will surely appreciate a guy a who can make pancakes (he can also make curry! and daal! and pesto!)

And after breakfast, we headed to the garden…

And here’s a look at what we ate in September 2015: