[gardeners] Sunday in the garden
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 20 Jun 1999 11:17:48 -0500
First let me wish a happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there, got
calls from both my children this morning so I'm happy.
Went out early while it was cool and picked eggplant, cukes, chiles,
tomatoes, and figs. Have to get out early to beat the mockingbirds to
the figs, they've learned to go under the nettings so will have to stake
it to the ground now.
Took a break for coffee and reading the Sunday paper and then went back
and took out the hyacinth beans. Turns out they weren't the purple
variety but the white ones. Four months in the ground, climbed the fence
and tried to take over the neighbors yard but never bloomed. While
taking them out and chopping for the compost I found that the Chinese
yams, planted last year, came back and were quietly growing under the
beans. The yams are now trained up the fence and have a place in the
sun. In a couple of years I'll try to dig one up, if they last that
long, and see what kind of root it has.
Need to get out and harvest herbs and bunching onions but will wait
until it cools off again this afternoon. Yesterday I made about 5 quarts
of eggplant caponata and put it in the freezer. This is one of the ways
we found to preserve eggplant in a way that we will eat. Anyone have a
good eggplant dressing recipe? Have a friend who talks about eggplant
dressing all the time and would like to surprise her with a bowl full of
the stuff. I've searched all my recipe books and haven't found one that
looks good yet.
Also made a large pot of low-fat spaghetti sauce yesterday. As long as
you're going to heat up the kitchen you might as well cook all you can.
We ate a small helping each for dinner and froze the rest in two-serving
containers. Handy for those days we both have work to do and no one is
home to start dinner.
Today I chopped a jelly roll pan full of green sweet chiles and stuck it
in the freezer. Will take it out tomorrow and transfer them to vacuum
sealed bags and back into the freezer. All of this is our version of
convenience foods. <VBG>
Hope all are having a good weekend and Father's Day.
George