Monday, July 2, 2012

Harvest Monday - 2 July 2012

This week’s harvest is a little more varied. The snow peas are producing large amounts of pods. This pile weighed in at a pound and a half. And I am starting to get some side shoots from the broccoli.

Snow peas

Most of the salad bed is bolting and turning bitter. I cut a large bag of leaf lettuce to use in wilted lettuce salad, made with a hot bacon dressing.

Black seeded Simpson leaf lettuce

I also cut a large amount of the lettuce for salads during the week, but this is probably the last of it until fall.

Assorted lettuces

These are Tokyo Cross turnips, along with a few radishes. The roots were beautiful and free of cabbage root maggots. I don’t need the extra protein in my diet..The turnips are wonderful, sliced up and braised with a little butter. They were mild and sweet, but the greens need to be stripped off the stems which were too fibrous.

French breakfast radishes and Tokyo Cross turnips

Another picking of snow peas yielded another pound of peas. We will have plenty of snow peas for the Fourth of July. Instead of the traditional New England dinner of poached salmon with egg sauce and peas, I do a variation which is a concession to my Midwestern instinct to barbeque on the Fourth. I slow smoke the salmon (a whole one if I can find it) using apple or alder wood. We serve it with a creamy lemon risotto and this year, with a large serving of steamed snow peas. The best part is the leftovers. Cold smoked salmon for breakfast for a week, with the left over crumbs going into scrambled eggs.

Snow peas

Finally, the mustard and the chard continue to grow prolifically and fortunately, the mustard does not look like it wants to bolt yet. And flea beetle damage is still minimal although the pests are back with the warmer weather.

Chard and mustard

That’s what came from my garden last week. To see what others have harvested, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for Harvest Monday around the world.

13 comments:

  1. Your turnips and radishes look wonderful! Great harvests this week :-)

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  2. Those are beautiful turnips! I have some turnip envy this year as mine all bolted on me and I did not get nary a one. Last year I had some gorgeous turnips but not so much this year I am sorry to say.

    The snow peas are beautiful too. Your salmon, risotto, and snow peas dinner for the Fourth will be heaven.

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    1. I can't claim any skill, just luck. All the radishes planted next to the turnips bolted, but turnips did fine. The smoked salmon is my Pacific Northwest twist on New England poached salmon. My daughter is driving to Portland with her aunt in July and I have put planked salmon on her must try list.

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  3. All those peas look delicious! And those are some big, fat radishes!

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  4. Great snowpeas harvest for the week. Those turnips are so beautiful, I did not do a spring turnip planting but plan to do a fall planting when space becomes available.

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  5. wow love all those peas. I tried a late spring planting of turnips and they just bolted in the heat. May try to get some in a couple of weeks ago.

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  6. Your 4th of July menu sounds divine. Great harvest.

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  7. A whole smoked salmon - how wonderful! And with lemon risotto - too delicious. I also like the idea of the wilted lettuce salad with bacon dressing - how do you make the dressing?

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    1. Liz, the recipe is in this post from last year: http://davessfggarden.blogspot.com/2011/07/wilted-lettuce-salad.html. Mark Willis and I discussed using the same dressing for an endive salad and Mark suggested adding crumbled bleu cheese, something I am going to try this week.

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  8. What a treat to have on the 4th of July, and left over smoked salmon sounds very indulgent for the week's breakfasts.

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  9. Beautiful, all of it! Have you ever tried "stir frying" snow peas in a grill basket on the BBQ, they are fantastic. Smoked whole salmon, yum, (wild caught I hope), I'm not sure which I like better, fresh off the grill or left over. I'm going to have to try your wilted lettuce salad, sounds great.

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    1. I will have to try your trick with snow peas on the grill. The other vegetable I like grilled is asparagus. It makes it so sweet and juicy.

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  10. Gorgeous peas!!!! My peas gave up the ghost a few weeks ago--it's just been too darn hot for them!

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