Week of eating from the garden – September

Can it always be September please? It’s probably my favourite month for homegrown produce – we’re still harvesting most of the summer vegetables while fall fruit is abundant as well. This year, our tomato harvest in particular has been magnificent and the plants both outside and in the greenhouse are still going strong. Before we dive into the meals we made with all the lovely stuff coming from the garden, let’s have a look at the harvest video we filmed recently:

And now let me tell you what we’ve been eating these past days.
First, there was quite a bit of preserving: I made two batches of apple sauce with all the windfalls and for the first time ever I also had to give some thought to preserving tomatoes. Never before have we grown more tomatoes than we were capable of eating fresh and I really enjoyed exploring the different ways to preserve them for later. On Monday I made a big batch of tomato sauce with the assorted tomatoes that had some kind of blemish or rain damage and kept that in the fridge and then got on with the rest:

Here are some of my breakfasts: always fruit, sometimes with yogurt or quark and apple sauce, or on top of porridge. On Sunday, we made Gingerbread Spice Dutch Baby with caramelised and flambéed apples and it was as delicious as it sounds.

Lunch: I had fun making different kinds of tartines, such as goat cheese with roasted grapes or brie with grilled pear. Also hummus with slow roasted tomatoes!

And here are our dinners:

Sunday

 Artichokes, boiled ‘Ratte d’Ardeche’ potatoes, eggs, lettuce and mayonnnaise

Artichoke is one of the most popular veggies in our family – I hope at least some of our plants will survive the winter…The eggs were gifted by our kind neighbours.

Monday

Orecchiette with cherry tomatoes, summer beans, olives and marinated bocconcini (mini-mozzarella balls)

There was some left and Sebastiaan promptly reserved it to take to school for lunch the next day. The boy likes his pasta…

Tuesday

Hummus with carrots, radishes, cucumber & cherry tomatoes

It was Sebastiaan’s turn to cook and he made hummus with the chickpeas I soaked the previous night.

Wednesday

Sneaky zucchini bread with chocolate

I went to visit my friend Annemarie ‘s new studio (she’s artist and makes beautiful glass sculptures) and brought this cake – it was much appreciated.

dinner: Spaghetti with tomato sauce, mozzarella + lettuce

We don’t usually eat pasta twice a week but I spent the afternoon making apple sauce and was consequently very happy that I had some homemade tomato sauce in the fridge which allowed for a quick and easy dinner.

Thursday

Apple walnut cake

Sebastiaan was somewhat dissapppointed to find out there was no cake for him to take to school, so I baked a new loaf in the afternoon.

dinner: Grilled potato salad with summer beans, cherry tomatoes and halloumi

Lovely summery potato salad I made following a recipe from the great vegetarian cookbook ‘Fields of Greens’. Sebastiaan’s comment: ‘Next time could you put in more tomatoes and less beans?’. Well, he ate it and what more can you ask for from a teenager?

Friday

Cheese board with cherry tomatoes, pears, grapes, cucumber, apple and walnuts

Saturday

Andalusian Soup Salad with Savoury Zucchini Bread

This cold soup is one of the most requested recipes in our household – recipe here. The savoury zucchini bread is a nice change from the sweet stuff and I’m kinda obsessed with it at the moment – this was the third time I made it. Recipe on Food52.

And that’s a wrap on the 10th WEEK OF EATING FROM THE GARDEN! What are you currently harvesting and eating?