Digging for Gold

March is a month of planning. What shall we grow this year? Which seed catalog has the best deals? Which vegetables and flowers did well last year?   Do we want to add new beds, new plants? These questions keep us busy dreaming and planning for the upcoming season.

Meanwhile, it's time to check on what's left from last year that we should eat up? I just used the last of the spaghetti sauce; it was good too! I have a few jars of pickled beets left, and the freezer still has green beans, spinach, corn and red peppers.  I see red pepper bisque, corn chowder, and minestrone soups in our near future.

The snow pack is receding, so DH went out to the garden with his shovel. Winter blessings - carrots and parsnips!  It's a real treat in March to get produce straight from the garden. He always mulches them in the fall, and then we forget about them. They are too hard to dig in the midst of winter, but come now... it's like digging for gold.

Parsnips and carrots freshly dug from the garden.

 

Carrots and parsnips - looking good now that they're scrubbed!

I decided the carrots were a great reason to get out my new food processor (Christmas present!). Zip, zip, zip and I had 4 cups of shredded carrot for carrot cake. I used a recipe from Allrecipes.com - Carrot Cake XI.  I liked this recipe because it calls for oil instead of shortening similar to my good zucchini cake recipe. I substituted pecans from Texas for the walnuts, and 1/2 cup orange sauce (juice + pulp pureed) for 1/2 cup of the oil. (Normally I would have substituted crushed pineapple instead of the orange sauce, but I had oranges from Texas that needed to be used.) The cake needed longer than the recipe stated to bake, but other than that, it was fantastic. So moist and flavorful - didn't even need frosting, but it sure tasted good with a dollop of ice cream.

DH is the cooker of parsnips. He introduced this vegetable to me, and the way he prepares them, they taste as good as candy. Now remember, I said tasty, not necessarily healthy.  First, he peels and juliennes them to french fry size. Then he parboils them until just barely soft.  Lastly, he finishes them by sauteing them in butter until golden brown. The butter is the secret! Yu-um!

Honeymoon Salad? - "Lettuce Alone"

Happy Halloween!

It's the last day of October and we still have lettuce growing the the garden.  It's amazing!  It was planted at the end of July.  Even though we've had a couple of frosts, I covered it with a tarp on those few nights, and the temps did not get low enough to kill it.  We've been eating it since early September.  My DH planted it, but doesn't remember the variety. It's very much like Romaine lettuce - great for salads and in sandwiches. I've given it to neighbors and family.  It's been tender and delicious.  Now a hard freeze is predicted for tonight. It's fully mature; for the last week or so we've been eating the inner leaves.  I think I'll let it go tonight, but I say goodbye reluctantly; it's been a great crop.

Does this mark the official end of our 2010 vegetable garden season?  I guess, although we still have carrots, beets, and parsnips covered with leaves that I can dig as needed.  We harvest these root crops throughout the winter as long as the snow doesn't get too deep.  Of course, if we wait too long the deer will beat us to them.  I don't feel that bad if they eat the beets; I prefer them small and tender in the summer.  The carrots I've been digging a few at a time for the last month or so.  Parsnips we leave alone until after the first snows.  The cold weather seems to bring out their sweetness.  I've tried them earlier in the season, and they just don't taste the same.



This has been a wonderful crop of lettuce.