Fast & Fresh Meals From Your Garden

Planting a vegetable garden is work – often a lot of work. Depending on the scale of your operation, you'll probably have your hands full during the growing season. What with planning, tilling, planting, weeding, watering, and more weeding, and more watering, there doesn't seem to be much time left over to relax and enjoy the results!

After all that work, when it's time to harvest, you want to get to the eating part fast! Let's look at a few ideas for dishes you can quickly prepare from both your summer garden and your fall garden.

Summer Garden Soups

You don't have to wait for the fall harvest to create soups! The summer garden provides ample opportunity to serve up big pots of satisfying soups. Cold soups are a great time saver, and so delicious and refreshing after a hot day spent in the garden. Pick ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onions and you have the basis for a cold soup such as gazpacho. Blended sweet pea soup is another favorite. Get out your blender, or invest in an immersion blender, and throw your summer vegetables in to make creamy cold soups that are filling and ready in minutes.

Summer Garden Salads

(Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Of course, salad ingredients are there for the picking right under your nose. But, don't forget some of the less obvious choices in your garden. Pea vines are becoming very popular in salads. They have a very delicate flavor and are so economical, and prolific! Also, those zucchini don't have to get gigantic before you can eat them. Pick tiny zucchini, and the blossoms, too, and use them in salads for a delicious and pretty addition to your meals. Walk around your summer garden and you'll find tender greens, blossoms, and all sorts of young sprouts to quickly pluck and add to your salad; ingredients like baby broccoli buds, tiny beets clinging to their tender greens, and itsy-bitsy radishes. Just wash them up and toss them into a salad. Cucumbers can also be the star of a salad, not just a bit player. A big bowl of young cucumbers, sliced and marinated with fresh herbs, vinegar, and olive oil is a wonderful treat on a hot summer day! Or try my favorite - dice a few ripe tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers, toss with fresh, snipped dill, olive oil, and balsamic or red wine vinegar, then sprinkle on some crumbled feta cheese and sliced black olives. I could eat this every day!

Fall Garden Soups

When the season changes and nights start getting colder, you need a nice bowl of hot soup to finish off the day. But, you don't have to stand in front of the stove for hours to make a soup that's satisfying. When the vegetables are right out of the garden, the flavors will do the magic without hours of cooking. Harvest an armful of squash, onions, beans, carrots, rutabaga, potatoes, and any other vegetables you can pick or dig, then scrub and dice them. The trick here is to roast them for a few minutes to sweeten and intensify the flavor, then throw them in a big pot with water or broth and simmer for just a few minutes. When the vegetables are tender, it's time to dig in. It's delicious simplicity at its best!

(Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Fall Garden Salads

It may seem like summer is the time for salads, but not when you have such lovely fresh fall vegetables to choose from! For a delightful cold salad, cut beets in half and roast them just until knife tender, then peel them, dice them and refrigerate. Once they are cold, toss the beets in a bowl with chopped onion, vinegar or salad dressing, then top with some crumbled goat cheese or feta cheese. Any fall vegetable such as squash, sweet potatoes, or even pumpkin can be diced and roasted and then tossed with tangy oil and vinegar dressing for a filling salad. If you have the end of the season tomatoes still hanging on, you can blend those, strain the juice, and create lovely creamy dressings. And check your pepper plants! You may be surprised with a few that have turned a gorgeous red color and are just waiting to be chopped up and tossed in with a big bowl of shredded cabbage.

Walk around your garden any season and think about what you could do with your harvest without spending a lot of time in the kitchen. It's really quite easy to turn your fresh produce into delicious soups and salads without fussing with lots of ingredients or preparation. A well tended garden will always provide satisfying meals in minutes – all it needs is your imagination!

Fall Is The Perfect Time For Great Gourmet Garden Salads

There are good reasons to plant a garden in the fall, even though the plants and seeds may take a little longer to germinate in cooler weather.  A fall garden provides unique opportunities to taste foods that are fresh, flavorful, and perfect as the growing season starts to come to an end.  (See our Sustainable Gardening blog for more on fall gardening.)

If you missed an early spring planting, you can get a second chance to plant cool weather loving plants.  But, what sort of plants will yield a gourmet salad for your table?

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What to Plant, What to Plant

Vegetables that like to grow in cooler weather include peas and lettuce, along with root vegetables like carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets.  Just look at all the gourmet salad inspiration you have with just those few vegetables in your garden this fall!  And don't forget some root vegetables actually produce very delightful salad greens as well as a root crop.

Fall is also the time to consider planting Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli. These vegetables work well during the cooler weather when grown from small plants instead of seeds, which solves the shorter growing season. Harvesting these vegetables when they are very young and tender also provides an unexpected gourmet treat.

Lettuce plants thrive in the fall weather, and there are many types of heirloom and leaf lettuces to get you started on a gourmet salad. Choose lettuces like Boston, Bibb, Endive, and Romaine that will still be delicious late into the season. Other interesting greens are possible as well, like arugula, mustard greens, leeks, tender kohlrabi, swiss chard, chicory, and corn salad.

Some of our favorite salad herbs thrive in a cooler garden. You can easily add a gourmet taste to any salad when you add garden fresh herbs like chives, dill, chervil, cilantro, thyme, and a variety of parsley. Once you get all your cool weather gourmet ingredients together, it's time to put your salad together.

Dress Fall Gourmet Garden Salads Lightly
The best way to enjoy the fresh vegetables from your cool weather harvest is in a big gourmet salad. Simple vinaigrette dressings will allow the natural flavors of your vegetables, greens, and herbs to come through. After all, you worked hard on your fall harvest, so shouldn't you taste your efforts first? The dressing should compliment, not compete.

Start with ingredients like olive oil, white wine, red wine, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice, then combine sweet or tangy ingredients to twist the taste of your dressing to your liking. Then season with a dash of salt and pepper, or a little of those prized herbs you just harvested from your fall garden.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, fall crops of squash and pumpkin work perfectly along with your newly planted fall crops. (And if you've got some late-summer veggies left, even better!) When combining fresh vegetables with the earthy flavors of roasted butternut squash, or pumpkin, for instance, choose a sweet ingredient in your dressing, such as orange juice, maple syrup, or a little honey. Creating a gourmet garden salad in the fall season is all about a mix of flavors that are surprising as well as pleasingly warm and satisfying. You won't get that mix by drowning the salad in heavy dressing. So, keep it light, fresh, and perhaps a bit sweet so all the flavors play nice together!

Finishing Gourmet Touches

To make a fall gourmet garden salad even more interesting, compliment it with fanciful sprouts and crunchy seeds and nuts.  Top with sweet or salty pecans, walnuts, almonds, or even a mixed nut combination. Roast the nuts first and put on the salad hot for even more fun. Sprout your own seeds for a real taste surprise.  For example, put radish seeds on a damp paper towel and you'll get sprouts that taste like radishes. That's a bit more gourmet than alfalfa sprouts, and it's super easy to do!

Add even more gourmet flair to your garden salad with some smoked fish, sweet sausage, or even some fruit.  Pretty slices of red pear or Granny Smith apples adds a lot of impact to a garden salad.  And don't forget the cheese!  Just about every gourmet salad will benefit when you add a topping of crumbled Bleu cheese, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, or Feta.

When you taste your late season gourmet garden salad created by your own hands, you'll be happy you took the time to plant and nurse your garden along through the cooler weather. Harvesting a garden before the growing season ends can be a challenge. But the pride and pleasure you get from serving salads made with the vegetables from your own garden will make the experience unforgettable.


Be sure to check back later this week for some fall gourmet salad ideas that will make your mouth water!

Recipe: Roasted Baby Beets with Greens and Grapefruit Salad

This unique salad idea will tantalize your tastebuds with the sweet earthiness of beets, countered by the tang of grapefruit. The beet greens are a mild, tasty addition full of vitamins. It's actually a pretty simple recipe, but is guaranteed to please the most gourmet palate! Plus it's absolutely packed with heart-healthy antioxidants and vitamins. This is a great way to use up some of those extra beets from your CSA!

Roasted Baby Beets with Greens and Grapefruit Salad

A bundle of organic beets from a local farm food co-op program. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ingredients:

6 small-medium fresh beets with greens attached
1 medium ruby red grapefruit (and reserved juice)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 medium shallot, minced very fine
1/3 cup light olive oil
1/8 tsp kosher salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp fresh thyme

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Trim greens off beets, trim any thick stalks, wash, dry, and coarsely chop fresh greens. Put in bowl and cover with plastic, refrigerate while preparing the rest of the salad.
• Scrub the beats, trim off any extra green tops or roots, then place them on a sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle oil over beets to coat well, then fold the foil up to form a sealed packet around the beets. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until fork tender. Remove and let cool until you can pull off the skins, then slice into wedges.
• While the beets are roasting, peel the grapefruit, making sure you remove all the white pithy coating.  With a sharp paring knife, remove each segment, making sure you do not include any of the skin.  Do this over a bowl so you can capture the juice. Set the segments and juice aside.
• Prepare the dressing by whisking together the reserved grapefruit juice, the red wine vinegar, and the shallots. When combined, start pouring in olive oil, whisking steadily until creamy, then continue whisking and add the salt, pepper, and thyme, whisking until just combined.
• To assemble the salad, place the cold beet greens on salad plates, top with beets, then with grapefruit segments. Drizzle the vinaigrette dressing over the top of each salad, then adjust seasoning by adding salt and pepper if desired.
• Serve immediately.

A Few Other Tasty Beet Recipes:

• Strawberry Beet Smoothie

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• Wheatless Wednesday: Roasted Beets & Sauteed Greens

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• Roasted Beets with Gorgonzola and Walnuts

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Garden Salads - The Ultimate Antioxidant Food

One could say that a fresh garden salad is the best source of antioxidants you can find. A variety of colorful vegetables, picked straight from the garden, and eaten raw, is packed with vitamins and antioxidants at their finest. However, don't just think of salads as a bowl full of lettuce - the best and healthiest salads take a more creative approach, and can incorporate a wider variety of fruits and vegetables than you might first imagine.

A simple garden salad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Growing a salad garden is all about looking forward to the harvest.  In our imagination, all our hard work seems to come together in one big salad bowl.  No matter what we plant, we can see it all freshly picked and served right out of the garden in all its glory with a nice, light dressing. 

But, sometimes our imagination doesn't quite take shape when we start planting. We suddenly get limited in our thinking when it comes to salads.  We know we should plant some lettuce.  We know we should plant something to go on top of the lettuce, like tomatoes, and cucumbers.

From the first glimmer of the perfect garden, to the reality of the harvest, something gets lost.  It could be all the hard work, or it could be there are too many choices.  Perhaps we fall into the same pattern each growing season.  No matter what the reason, our beautiful harvest salad bowl becomes mundane - and less healthy than it could potentially be.

Is there something we could do between planting leaf lettuce for the bottom of our salad and planting tomatoes for the top?  There sure is!  We can get our bountiful gourmet salad back in our imagination, in our garden, and on our table by following a few simple tips to create the basis for our beautiful and healthy salad - you'll add a lot more antioxidant vitamins - not to mention flavor!

Choose Creative Greens For Your Salad Base

Sometimes all a gourmet garden salad needs is different types of greens to make it something unique, interesting, and more flavorful. Step away from the standard lettuce varieties you've planted year after year and consider the countless varieties of lettuce available, and so much more.

You'll recognize some of these greens from a fancy dinner menu.  Why not include them in your own garden and on your own table?  Plant gourmet greens like arugula, endive, Bibb, Boston, radicchio, watercress, and spinach (packed with vitamins & antioxidants) along with the better known varieties of romaine lettuce and  red and green leaf lettuce. A mixture of young salad greens, sometimes called mesclun, can also be found in the garden supply shops to plant for your gourmet salad.

A garden salad with lettuce, sundried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beets, cucumber and feta cheese (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Think beyond lettuce and plant vegetables like kale, kohlrabi, mustard, Swiss chard, escarole, and collard greens.  And don't forget red and green cabbage. There are many vegetables that can be turned into the 'bed' to create a new and interesting salad.  For instance, grow broccoli and use the stems to create a salad by shredding the tender insides.  Shave curls from firm fresh cucumbers to create another surprising basis for a salad bowl.

Sweet onions tossed with balsamic vinaigrette can also form the 'bed' of your salad.  Add more crunch with sweet carrot shreds, or even a bit of spicy 'bite' with chopped radishes.  Who says a salad has to be 'green?'  But, if you want to include some green to keep the comfort level of your salad, flash-blanch some string beans and toss in with the onions.  Or, try tossing your sweet onions and balsamic vinaigrette salad with snow peas or cucumber slices.  Your 'greens' – the bed or basis of your salad – can really be any color, just as long as it can support the other ingredients.

As you can see, the bed or greens of a good gourmet salad can be as varied as the toppings - and more variety means more antioxidants.  Look beyond a leaf of lettuce to find the surprising ingredients needed to bring your dreams of a glorious - and super healthy - garden salad to light.

Be sure to check back Friday for a really tasty gourmet garden salad recipe packed with vitamins, antioxidants, and flavor!