What's Growing

Still harvesting but I did not get together the hoop house I had planned ... it's pushed to early spring. AND there is a great plan for a cold frame in Fine Gardening magazine that I will be sure to keep and build - if you don't subscribe, the plan alone is worth the newsstand price.

I am afraid my days of fresh basil are over now that we have frosty nights BUT I did make a LOT of pesto. I love to saute a few fresh cherry tomatoes in olive oil to top off some pesto pasta but the cherries are starting to fall like the leaves. This is just a sampling of the pesto I made for the freezer. It should taste oh so good when it's snowing outside.

But on the bright side, it's soup making season! We usually make soup every Sunday. Along with a dutch oven beer bread recipe. (Add some pumpkin, flax and/or sunflower seeds to crank it up.) So, I have been harvesting carrots to use in soups ... butt crack carrots. Thankfully they don't taste like butt crack! They taste oh so sweet.

Butt Crack Carrot

And I pulled all the beets so I can plant the garlic. Mmmm beets. I always forget about beets until I eat them, and then I think why don't I eat beets more often? Hmmm? Here is the harvest and don't think I let those beet greens go to waste! I have been adding those to salads all summer long and I saved them to mix in with other greens.

All cleaned up and in the pot. These are a variety named jewel-toned so some are yellow-orange. Yum yum.

Not sure if I mentioned this before but a favorite way we like to prepare beets - large bulbs - is to make a little core in the top of a cleaned beet, insert a garlic clove, drizzle with olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt, then wrap in tinfoil - grill (oh yeah), or bake. The smell alone is delicious.