Harvest Monday, 16 February 2014

I'm still eating well from my stores. Above is a soup made from my stored carrots, celery, and corn. I had noticed that I hadn't used up my ham broth from the Christmas ham. I had some left over ham from that too. So I made up the soup. We have been having some really cold temperatures so soup really hit the spot.

I still have lots and lots of squash. It was an amazing squash year last year. And the broccoli was frozen from the garden. And even the salmon has mustard on it.

More garden broccoli. I'm quickly running out. I had plenty of other greens this week (chard, spinach and kale) but for some reason I took photos of the two dinners with broccoli on them. It does make a prettier photo than the other greens. In addition I have some sweet potato fries. This time I used some of my garden made Italian seasonings on it. I think I like that better than the rosemary ones. The corn was also from my garden. And even the hamburger bun (gluten free for me) was made with some onion powder from the garden.

And if that wasn't enough, that pulled chicken - no it doesn't have anything from the garden, but it does have a garden story that goes with it. A friend had just bought a smoker and knew I missed eating another friends smoked food. Friend two throws a huge party every year with over 100 people and he makes the food for months in advance. The spread is really amazing. The centerpieces are his smoked foods. But with my food issues I can't eat anything from a contaminated smoker. Even a little soy sauce from a marinade would make me sick, so last time I was there I had to abstain.

Well friend one found out how much I missed the smoked food. His smoker was totally clean. It had never been used. So he made me some pulled chicken (which you see above, I've been savoring it over time). Luckily for him he did this in August. August is the best time for giving treats from the garden. He got some of my Honey Select corn, which I've had several people (including my husband) tell me it is the best corn they have ever had. It is a very sweet sweet corn. He thought he was getting too good of a deal, so he offered to make me a whole batch of smoked chicken thighs as long as I pay for the chicken. I took that up in a flash. But of course I thought I was the one getting too good of a deal and sent in some melon.

Typically you don't get good melon here in Massachusetts. The shipped in stuff is usually terrible (sometimes from New Jersey we get some good melon). But the melon from my garden was the best melon I'd had yet from my garden. It was oh so good. I grew it surrounded by bricks on three sides. Usually our temps just don't get hot enough long enough to make good melon. But a decent summer and with the hot bricks to hold heat, I ended up with some really good ones. And way too many for me to eat by myself. So instead of my townhouse mates ending up with them (sorry guys), friend one got the extras. So that meat wasn't made in the garden, but the garden sure helped to fill up my freezer with smoked chicken.

I took some photos of the snow we got from the last blizzard, but they turned out pretty sad. Maybe when the sun comes out today I can takes some. Maybe. The piles are getting deeper and deeper. We have another small storm coming in and some bitterly cold temperatures already here and forecasted to stick around for the week. So it just keeps piling up. I can't wait for spring.

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.