Garden Progress and Kitchen Fixin's~May

A Few Photos of the Veggie Garden

1.  Corn:  Oh, how modestly the corn starts out!  I snapped this on day one of germination.  Could  these sproutlings be ANY cuter?!

 

 

2.  Lettuce, beets and onions.  I have been using the last of my spinach, which has mostly bolted, and I'm now working on this row of lettuce with baby beet leaves for interest.  The salad spinner is in full swing on a daily basis.

 

 

3.  The potatoes are coming along nicely.  In addition to these are some random ones growing from potatoes that were left behind last year.  I'm keeping them all.

 

 

4.  The snow peas are doing great on their fence in the hugelkultur bed.  Although I still don't like this method, I'm giving it another try.  Next to the peas are some potatoes I had left over after planting the main row.

 

5. One of several rows of radishes.  Beside them is a row of Swiss chard I will probably thin once more.  I regularly plant radishes and lettuce, so I always have some coming on.  This variety of radish turned out very hot for me, too much for me to enjoy them on a salad.  They are all harvested now, replaced with another row of seeds.   I made soup from the tops and roasted the roots.  Pictures to follow! 

 

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Making the Radish Top Soup

Here are those same radishes, cleaned, ready to be cut up for soup and for roasting.

 

And here are the pretty radish tops after I sorted and washed again in the spinner.  Onion was softened in butter, then I added the sliced potatoes and radish tops without too much chopping because I knew I was going to run the soup through the food processor afterward.  It just happened that I cooked a chicken we bought at the Farmer's Market last Saturday and had been making stock from it, so that's the brown liquid in the pyrex measuring cup.

 

 

 Starting to look like soup now that I've added the stock and simmered it down.  The potatoes are soft, so I call that done.

A quick run through the processor gives me this lovely green.  The recipe calls for cream at this point, but that was too heavy for a soup that already had two potatoes to thicken it.   Result?  Delicious!  Really, really good.

 I'm not as enthusiastic about the roasted radishes.  The recipe said I wouldn't be able to tell these from potatoes.  Wrong.  Admittedly, I botched a couple things, too much salt and I cooked them a little too long, but that would not have effected the fact that I could still detect some bitterness.  It's just possible with some condiments, it could be covered up, but I will scout elsewhere for ideas for my too-hot radishes.  In the meantime, I'm looking for my old variety of radish in an heirloom.  Better luck this fall!

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Pretties