Monday, January 28, 2013

Harvest Monday, January 28th, 2013

Most of my dinners aren't going to win any cooking contests. My husband likes his meals plain and I'm usually fine with that. But I do get a lot of my preserved produce into them. The hamburger has bread and butter pickles and mustard, both from the garden. The bun is homemade, but all store bought ingredients. The Boston baked beans have the garden's Jacob's Cattle beans in them. The garden squash is simply pureed and the garden kale had a touch of balsamic vinaigrette. I don't win any art contests with this one either do I? Mark has such pretty dinner photos. I've got my sides plopped individually on the plate.

Last night was pretty similar. I made baked chicken. The sides were baked sweet potatoes and broccoli, both garden grown, both plain. I made some rosemary and olive oil bread with dried herbs from the garden. And shockingly enough I incorporated a harvest. YES! A harvest in January! OK so it was just rosemary. The rosemary is an evergreen plant so I can harvest anytime. It didn't go in the bread as I like to used dried for that. I put some sprigs on the chicken when it was baking. Yummy. You would think I would have a photo of it or maybe even weigh it. But nope. I got nothing.

So you can seem my typical dinners in the winter. Well you can see one of them. I'm using my stored produce up slowly. I try to have an orange (carrots, squash, sweet potatoes) and a green (kale, spinach, broccoli, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, celery, zucchini) vegetable at each dinner. It doesn't always happen. I tend not to use any orange ones on my pizzas. Some stirfries just get bok choy and onions. Lunches have mostly been garden based bean soups or leftovers.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

Note: I hope I didn't lose anyone as I was playing with my linkies and lost the first version.

18 comments:

  1. Yeah, that is how my dinners typically look too. Rather plain but as long as I don't waste anything from the garden. I am happy :)

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  2. My plates usually look a lot like yours. The only time I don't just plop food on my plate is if I'm taking photos for a blog post. Then I work on the look until often the food is cold! I plan meals by color too. Tonight will be lamb chops with an orange (sweet potatoes) and a green (yet to be determined. But I'll bet your meals are much tastier with the homegrown goodies than anything you could eat in a restaurant. They sound good for sure, especially the baked chicken menu.

    My only harvest this week was a bit of arugula. It was not camera worthy to me!

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  3. Hi Daphne; I admire your food for reasons other than the aesthetic! It is wholesome, unfussy, made with "real" ingredients - and many of them home-grown, which is something to be proud of. I happen to like my food presented wherever possible in an eye-catching way, but that's defnitely not essential. It's only the good-looking meals that end up on my blog too - you never see the "functional" ones, or the ones that just looked a mess (and there are some of those). I'll be joining-in with Harvest Monday later on, because I have January harvest too: parsnips.

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  4. Great how you put so much thoughts into planniing your meals - colors, texture, etc. and best of all, homegrown produces, healthy and tasty.

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  5. Are you saying you make your own mustard from the garden? How? I'm not fond of mustard so am not sure I'd go to the trouble but it's interesting that I never considered mustard a DIY project!

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    1. http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/2013/01/cutting-mustard.html

      Yup I grew the seeds and made mustard. Growing seeds is not a particularly good value for the space, but I have the space so decided to try it.

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  6. That is exactly how our meals look too - at least for the most part. On occassion I do something more elaborate and "pretty" but that is a rare day really. I love how much of your meals are from your garden. Such a great way to eat - from a health perspective, from a local produce/eco footprint perspective, and from "good taste" perspective. It's all good!

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  7. Rosemary is still a harvest!!! Congrats. Actually, I forgot I harvested and dried a very large amount of rosemary. LOL.

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  8. It's all about the taste in the end, right? Do you make your balsamic vinaigrette or buy one? I have never used that on kale.

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  9. Good for you--aiming for an orange and green with dinner. Did lose my linky info, but maybe it will come back with today's link?

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    1. I'm glad you put it back in. I'll have to remember not to play with them after I put it up for the first time. Everything got wiped and I couldn't get the info back.

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  10. I didn't Linky, 'cause "I got nuthin'" again, LOL! I am using last years produce though, with meals that look just like yours. The butternuts are holding up well, and we still haven't tired of them, I have one last head of cabbage and a few carrots left to use up, although I have also been buying carrots. The few I have left are the weird shaped ones that I give the dogs for treats. Of course there are still a lot of pickles and canned goods, I think all my kids will be getting care packages soon!

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  11. Everything sounds great to me! Really, it doesn't matter what it looks like on the plate as long as it tastes good and sustains us ;-)

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  12. I like the idea of an orange and a green with each meal - very nutritious. What other people eat always fascinates me - not sure that you can read too much into it but it I do find it interesting.

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  13. Your meals look great. We eat simple too but I don't have as many preserved things to pull from as you do! Nice. Nancy

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  14. I totally think that rosemary counts as a harvest :D Had some the other night. We have some cellared stuff but until I get a hoop house again, I'm all out of fresh from the ground harvest.

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  15. OK, I Linkied! I did a Harvest Monday post, first of the new year. I didn't want you to feel alone with your green and orange ;-)

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