black bean, leek and potato, and minestrone soup
I ate quite a bit of preserved food this last week. My husband was out on more business trips. While he was gone I decided I needed to eat some of my soups that I'd frozen. They had piled up. I didn't even know that I still had leek and potato soup made from my own potatoes and leeks. I thought I had eaten the last one long ago.
In addition I opened up another of my pickle jars. It wasn't as good as the first one. I season each jar separately and this one had a touch too much clove. It was good mind you, but not great like the last one.
Hopefully soon I'll get a real harvest. This is my overwintered spinach patch. Most of the plants made it through the winter, but not all. This weekend was glorious. We had sun and temperatures in the 50Fs (10C). I had to get out in the garden to work. Since the ground was still frozen solid I elected to clean up the spinach. I think this bed will defrost in not too long, maybe a week or so if the weather stays like this. Then the spinach can really start to grow.
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Those soups look great Daphne. This is my first harvest Monday post ever! :)
ReplyDeleteI still have a lot of preserved food from last year: some frozen tomatoes, peppers, green beans... and tomato sauce.
ReplyDeleteAs we still don’t have big harvests form the garden, this preserved food is excellent second choice.
We're still eating more preserved than fresh food too, but it won't be long. Soups are a mainstay here in the winter, and yours look yummy!
ReplyDeleteOMG Daphne! They look delicious! I can't wait to get outside to play in the dirt today!
ReplyDeleteWe are also still heavily leaning on our preserved items but the spring greens are almost ready to starting pulling their weight and giving us fresh fare.
ReplyDeleteYour soups are inspiring me to make soup for dinner tonight! And your spinach looks poised to really take off.
The soups look good and it's so great to have frozen soup! I freeze mine in margerine tubs, which just hold four ladlefuls, but they take up a lot of room in the freezer even so.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely looks like you will be getting a spinach harvest soon! I'm surprised to hear that your soil is still frozen. I did a bit of digging this weekend and was pleasantly surprised that even the soil in my unprotected beds had thawed. I think that the major rains that we had other other week contributed to this.
ReplyDeleteI love soup, potato leek soup is one of my favorite, I can live on soup alone.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the spinach is so hardy, looks like they'll be picking up speed pretty quickly.
Hi Daphne! Your spinach is amazingly hardy - it's so cool that it survives under all the winter snow. Now I know why it's so hard to grow in my climate!
ReplyDeleteKelly, well welcome to harvest Monday.
ReplyDeletevrtlarica, well your onions looked great. I could use some fresh onions right about now.
villager, nope not too long.
kiwi gomes, I'm hoping things are defrosted soon so I can play in the dirt some more.
kitsapFG, you seem to be about a month ahead of me right now. I haven't even started my Asian greens yet, but I will this week.
Jan, those are all containers from the local Chinese food place. When I'm sick I ask for wonton soup from there. It is so good and my husband doesn't cook.
Thomas, well it was on Sunday. I was putting up plastic to help it dethaw and getting the supports in was really hard.
mac, I could too in the winter and sometimes I do. I did cover the spinach with a row cover over the winter, but not plastic, just remay and we had a lot of snow which probably helped.
I almost always have soup in the freezer, it's so handy when I don't have time to cook, my husband doesn't cook either. Your weekend weather was probably nicer than mine, it was cloudy and cool all weekend. Rain again today. The spinach is looking really good!
ReplyDeleteI agree, it was a fantastic couple of days and continues to be. Your spinach looks like it is in good shape.
ReplyDeleteYour spinach looks great...and the soups. All I got in the freezer is pesto. This warm weather is nice but confusing to me. Don't know whether or not I should just stick with the traditional planting times.
ReplyDeleteGood looking soups. I've got to start freezing some. And the spinach looks really promising!
ReplyDeleteOh, my, your overwintered New England spinach looks better than the spinach in my raised beds here in southern California. They got no sun to speak of all winter, so they languished. But spring is coming for all of us. Bring it on!
ReplyDeleteA Kitchen Garden in Kihei Maui, the spinach you grew looked pretty good to me. I was amazed you could grow it at all.
ReplyDeletemichelle, I often do, but with the weird warm weather starting I'm thinking it is time to eat it all up. I don't eat a lot of soup once the weather gets warm. I'm sure we will get cold weather again, but with the temps about 50F for the rest of the week, it is hard to imagine more snow.
Ottawa Gardener, the weather really is being weird isn't it. This is usually end of March weather not beginning of March weather - about 5-8 degrees above normal for a long stretch. I'm not complaining though. I love it right now. My peas and spinach might get in early if it keeps up.
Sally, I have a little of that too. Well it is normal weather for end of March early April so we should just go with it. I'm going to plant early if I can get my beds defrosted.
Stefaneener, I love to make a lot and freeze it in the fall. It is about as good of a way to preserve things as it is. The one problem I had was the minestrone had noodles in it. I have to remember not to do that as the noodles get way too soggy. I need to freeze them separately.
Lou Murray, right now it feels like spring here. Very strange. I think of early March as a snowy time. I'm pretty happy about it though.