Our Garden

We love the garden this time of year. It looks healthy and we are getting a lot of my favorite vegetable--Kale! The cabbage harvest has been very nice also. Daniel is the gardener of the family. I simply do a little harvesting here and there whenever I need something for the kitchen. He actually does most of the harvesting as well.

I'm proud to say that everything you see in the these pictures was started from seed (except some onions were started from sets). The indoor grow light station (go here for a post that we wrote last year on our indoor seed starting) that Daniel created was a big success for all the tomatoes, cabbage, kale, collards, chard, eggplant, peppers, and flowers.

lacinato kale (garlic in the bed to left of kale)

We are using the pvc pipe drip irrigation system again this year. Go to this post to read more about how we made and installed it. This is hopefully allowing for deep watering and saves us lots of time and water. There are shut off valves at the top of all the rows. Daniel has even recruited the girls help in turning them on and off during the week while he is at work. (We water 2 rows at a time.)

potatoes

tomatoes

mix of onion, flowers, chard, kale, collards

Daniel getting the stakes ready for the tomatoes

From Yard to Table

Picking peas this morning. Eating them fresh all day...

May 6, 2011

If you know me you know that I LOVE kale. I use it all year around in about everything I can think of. It is super healthy, easy to eat raw or cooked, relatively easy to grow, and pretty too! The dark greenish, blue color is beautiful in the garden.

May 6, 2011

We have one whole row of kale this year--about 60 plants. People ask me, "What do you do with all that kale?" Although we give some away to neighbors and friends, the answer is we could eat all of it! (and the row of collards also but I'll save my I love collards post for later.) You can use kale in any dish that calls for spinach. I steam it to replace it for cooked spinach in lasagna, and add it raw to soups, Indian dishes, dips, etc.

My lunch today

One of my favorite ways to eat it is in a raw salad with oil and vinegar dressing. To get the best flavor you have to message (or rub) the leaves with the dressing for a few seconds. I like to chop it up, put it in a bowl and then drizzle a little balsamic vinegar, ume boshi plum vinegar, and canola oil on top. Rub the leaves with your hands--there's no way around it being messy. Recently I've been adding a few slivered almonds for fun. Let it sit for a little while (30 mins to a couple of hours) to absorb even more flavor. You can see the leaves turn dark green and look like they've been steamed. They taste tender and oh so good!