Summer and Winter Garden Harvest Recipe Plan

This year I am going to start a folder with recipes I would like to try using produce from the garden or bought locally.

Nothing is more frustrating than having a table full of produce that you want to eat raw, cook or preserve and not have recipes and ingredients ready, so you can get cooking straight away.

I usually head for the computer do a Goggle search and end up with all sorts of ideas and no time or energy left to do anything.

So this year the Google searches will be done in advance and the recipes will be clearly arranged with the spices, vinegars or honey and empty jars already in the cupboard. There will be a plan!

Last year Cath had given me her peach chutney recipe which I adapted as different fruits appeared in the kitchen.

There are some great gardening, cooking, preserving bloggers around the globe who have great recipe blogs.

One of my favourite cooks is Laura from Mas Du Diable Cevenol Kitchen who has loads of great recipes including an Indian section with all sorts of pickles, chutney’s and preserves.

Tamra from Eat Seasonally has some great seasonal recipes as part of her gardening blog. As soon as the purslane appears in the garden I am going to make her “weed Tacos”. Read the story that goes with the recipe about her teenagers’ text messaging their friends when told they are having weed tacos for dinner.

Olives and artichokes have a wonderful Mediterranean recipe section as part of their blog. It show wonderful ideas for what they do with daily produce from their garden.

There are many different groups that form part of Kitchen Gardens International. My favourite groups are the Pickling and Preserving, the Harvest group and the Kimchi group. I have enjoyed reading the members pickling and harvest adventures through out our winter. Gillian a KGI friend from Queensland posted a great tomato & chilli sauce recipe, I have bottles already for that recipe.

Please join KGI and share your ideas and gardening experiences with people from all over the world.

Because we have a small garden we tend to harvest everything and then prepare the soil for our next batch of seedlings.

This week we pulled up all the celeriac and fennel.

When trimmed back the celeriac was roasted and some sliced and eaten raw. The tops went in the compost. We may not grow celeriac again, it was in the ground for a long time, I think the leaves may have been trimmed back more. We had huge leaves and smallish bulbs. Have you grown celeriac, is there a secret?

I remembered a recipe on our Recipes Gardeners Gastronomy section, which Kate recommended and which I cooked last year. It is absolutely delicious. Fennel bulbs and beetroot chunks are roasted, covered with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It is quick and delicious, lovely eaten hot and even better kept in the fridge and eaten as a salad.

Organic gardening is fun, watching seeds germinate and grow is exciting, planting and then harvesting veggies is a great experience, cooking and eating those delicious veggies is a heavenly experience. I hope your new seasons veggie patch is exciting and delicious.