Monday, May 24, 2010

Early Garden 2.0

It is time to begin eating lettuce from the garden. We like it with a homemade dressing that we remember from Michael's Grandma Chupp. It's made with sour cream, sugar, salt and vinegar. Very simple and delicious. If we're feeling crazy, we add green onion.

Speaking of green onions, they're ready. I like a sweet onion best. That's all I grew last year, and I've got the end of last year's crop in my onion drawer today, just as this year's crop begins to ready. There WAS some waste last year. Apparently, sweet onions are hard to keep through the winter. Still, I feel proud that I haven't purchased an onion in a year. I'll pull small onions as I need them to use green, the rest I'll allow to become gorgeous, sweet globes.

Lookie! Tiny little heads beginning to grow on our broccoli!

The radishes are ready. I lost some to pests, but I have enough. Good flavor.

I've been SO looking forward to the spinach. I have a hot bacon dressing that I love. I got the recipe from the grandma of a friend in York, PA, and now I use it all the time.

This stage of the garden is tremendously fulfilling to me. We've had some warm, even hot days to enjoy. The long sleeves have been packed away. But, for me, winter is not over until I'm planning meals around whatever the garden is producing and I bypass the produce aisle at the supermarket completely. Happy Spring.

6 comments:

  1. We had cream of spinach soup tonight with egg salad sandwiches on homemade buns. The soup was the most gorgeous green you ever saw. Nothing you want to eat before smiling broadly and frequently, however.

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  2. Reb, must try cream of spinach soup.

    Laura, thank you so much!

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  3. I'm impressed that you didn't buy onions for a year!!

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  4. Oh, yes! Me too with the onions. Where did you keep them? How many did you start with in the fall? When did you harvest.

    Cr. of spinach is nothing on this earth but a thin-ish white sauce (I flavored with green onions, incidentally) whapped up in the food processor with steamed spinach.

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  5. Reb, I keep them in the (wait for it) bomb shelter, of all places. Oh, gosh, how many? I don't know, maybe 100 feet. I don't have that many this year. And I harvested late in the season, at the same time I dug the potatoes. Perhaps early Sept. I should keep a gardening notebook, a la Margo.

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