Thursday, July 28, 2011

Fresh from Our Garden (at least some of it!!)


In the past few weeks, our Super Sweet 100 plants have been producing like crazy.  I just put two more baking sheets full of slow-roasted cherry tomatoes in the oven.  In 6-8 hours, they will be even more delicious!  (Yes, that's possible!)  These are SO easy, you just have to be prepared to give up your oven for the rest of the day!  Also, my kids enjoyed helping me get these ready to go into the oven - making sure the tomatoes are cut side up, peeling the garlic, and snipping rosemary from the garden.

I tweaked the recipe by adding the rosemary.  It smelled SO good!  Now that we have quite a healthy bush, I am thinking of thinning it a bit and drying some rosemary for use in the winter.  

I also used some of our larger tomatoes (not sure of the variety) to make gazpacho late last night so that it would be ready to eat today.  I used this recipe from the latest Real Simple magazine.  I've already sampled it - yum!  It's the first time I've ever eaten a cold soup, much less made one.  It was SO easy, and I'm looking forward to serving it alongside some of my fresh-baked parmesan pepper bread (another first-time-I've-made-it recipe) for an early dinner.

So, now that you know a bit about what's growing in our garden, I'd like to know if you have a garden.  If so, what do you grow?

In addition to what I mentioned above, we have zucchini, green bell pepper (just got the first one this week), banana peppers, okra, lima beans and bush beans, watermelon, parsley, basil, and cilantro that has already gone to seed.  We have had varying success with these, tomatoes and rosemary being our most successful.  I would like to try growing garlic, blueberries (for these muffins!), and give cucumbers another shot (ours are always bitter).  I'd also like to try lettuce, and maybe even potatoes!  So, friends, spill the beans on your gardening successes - and failures!  What have you learned along the way?

5 comments:

Joy said...

We have tomatoes and that is it! So disappointed everything else did not turn out. We plan to cut down an old tree that is unhealthy before next season so that we will have more light.

Anonymous said...

Those look yummy, R, and I'm not even a big tomato fan. My kids, however, barely get them in the house and washed before eating them. Jealous at your harvest. After four years in the same spot, I think we're ready for some crop rotation. Unfortunately, our backyard doesn't get too much sun and I'm not sure what the neighbors would think if we suddenly plowed up our front yard to plant a garden. :)

More Kids 4 Me said...

We don't have a garden, but your motivating me to start one! YUM!! Thanks for visiting my blog. :) Wishing you a speedy process to China for your newest addition!!

Anne

Jane Anne said...

No garden, here, of course. (but I think we have found a house!) Love those muffins! I need to make those soon.

RLR said...

Jane Anne - great news about finding a house! I'll keep an eye out for more news :)
I made those muffins yesterday (it was a busy day in the kitchen!). I haven't made "plain" blueberry muffins since you shared that recipe on your blog.