Saturday, July 23, 2011

Food from our garden

Apparently, our growing season here is off to a late start, but since this is the first garden Matt and I have had, we don't really know the difference. All we know is that we're excited to reap the benefits of our hard work in prepping and maintaining our garden!
Our teeny plum tree has lots of delicious, marble-sized fruits.

Last night I made collard wraps along with some pineapple ginger couscous.

From the garden: collards, a beet (pictured above,) parsley.

The wraps contained black-eyed peas, quinoa, carrot, tomato, yellow bell pepper, parsley, and a sunflower seed spread that I whipped up. It was so good that I want to share it with you!

Lemony Sunflower Seed Spread

Ingredients:
1/8 cup sunflower seeds, soaked for a couple of hours, then drained
juice from 1/2 lemon
2-3 tbsp miso paste
1 large clove garlic
cayenne powder to taste
sprig of parsley
handful of black-eyed peas

Directions:
1. Mix everything in a food processor. I added the black-eyed peas because I had a batch already cooked up and the consistency helped bring everything together.
2. Resist eating the spread right from the food processor, instead plopping it inside your favorite wrap.


Our collard leaves were tiny and we had lots of 'innards' left over, so I just made them into a side salad with a fresh beet from the garden!

With our 70ish tomato and pepper plants, I expect to soon be over-run by tomatoes and peppers. In the mean time, it's fun watching the progress, like the tomatoes growing on this volunteer plant that popped up among our strawberries. Roma tomatoes, perhaps?
Lastly, a photo of the carrot we pulled up today in order to gauge their progress.