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| I'm writing this at night but I know what's happening in the dark garden. The beans have caught Olympic fever and having noted the outrageous zucchini performances, are vying for garden Gold. We have never had such beans. They're going to the podium for a medal! |
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| That's home for the beans. Two rows planted on either side of a six-foot support system. |
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| Eight pounds of beans in one picking. Should I rejoice or hide in the closet? |
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| The beans were just part of that day's harvest. The bowls on the left are filled with basil leaves awaiting pesto production. There there's garlic for the pesto and strawberries for the hell of it. They just keep on making more berries. |
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| The makings for dilly green beans with garlic and hot peppers. The dried cayennes are from last year's garden. The dill grows weed-like all around the garden. |
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| The finished product—great for gifts and parties. |
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| This is the BEST fresh green bean recipe and includes pesto and cherry tomatoes. Recipe below |
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| I realize that most of our dinner's look the same. Dark and green. But this one is especially good because it includes BACON and PESTO. The menu: marinated cukes and sweet onions; pickled beets; pesto green beans; and a great big stir fry of new potatoes, zucchini, chard, and onions, sauteed in bacon fat then topped with crumbled bacon and a bit of shaved Parmesan. I love summer. |
God! It all sounds so good!
ReplyDeleteI want to eat supper at your house. That all looks and sounds so good. I made dilled beans the first year we lived here when I had a huge bumper crop of French, scarlet runner, Blue lake and bush beans all producing like mad. (This year, by contrast, they are just starting to bloom and very puny looking). My dilled beans had a good flavor but they were not as crispy as I'd like. Do you have a secret? I got the recipe from an elderly friend and she didn't include processing instructions. I thought I might have processed them too long. My basil is finally starting to grow so looks like I'll get to have some pesto. Yea! Can't wait to try the bean with cherry tomato recipe. I should be getting lots of those soon. I pulled my first garlic yesterday and it looks fantastic. I'm also going to get another crop of strawberries. I make a 10% MF yogurt. Throw that in the blender with some frozen strawberries and a slosh of cream...makes a great frozen dessert.
ReplyDeleteYum on the strawberry dessert. but what is 10 percent MF yogurt? I know it has to be a no-brainer, but I hardly have a brain.
DeleteOur half and half is 10% milk or butter fat content here. So I use it to make yogurt that is almost identical to the Greek God Mediterranean style yogurt you can find sometimes at grocery stores. There's another brand here in Canada that's better than the Greek God one but I don't think it's marketed in the states. It's much lower in carb content than most yogurt because of the high fat content. You can use any good yogurt as a starter. I make it in a big stainless bowl propped over an inch of water in the bottom of my crock pot set to 'low' with the lid a little ajar. I let it ferment for 12 or more hours 'cause I like it tangy. As with any yogurt recipe, you take the milk/cream up to 176 degrees, then cool to around 110 degrees, add the starter, stir and keep warm for however long it takes to ferment. Temps higher than around 112 will kill the bacteria culture. 1 quart of the premade yogurt costs about $6-7 here. 1 quart of 1/2 and 1/2 costs $2.07 so I usually consider it worth the trouble. I also make creme fraiche from time to time. I bet you already know how to make yogurt.
ReplyDeleteI used to make yogurt in a yogurt maker. (Sold it at a yard sale, unfortunately.)
ReplyDeleteThen I learned —on an 18-day river trip down the Grand Canyon—to make it in a stainless steel thermos. That was also the trip where we had fresh sprouts the whole time. Anyway, it is probably worth it to start making yogurt again as we eat it most days with fresh fruit and homemade granola.