Showing posts with label lettuce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lettuce. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2010
SALAD DAYS (AND A TINY, MYSTERIOUS PURPLE FROG)!
Friday evening I came home from work (my "day job"-- managing a small branch of our island library system) and checked our little garden for anything that needed picking. Tomato bonanza! (And some basil, as you can see.) We love the "Black Cherry" tomatoes
that you can see nestled among the red ones!
I found an interesting-looking tiny purple frog sitting under a basil plant! (Or is it some kind of little toad? I don't know much about amphibians, I'm afraid!) We have other tiny frogs that we see often on the deck, but they are bright green. These pics don't do it justice (it was evening when I took these):
I also picked a little lettuce and mesclun for my solo dinner salad. (DH was off in Vancouver to see his youngest son's new Celtic band play.)
For lunch yesterday, DH back home, we had vegan BLT sandwiches on Brian's white bread (an occasional treat!), toasted . The "bacon" part was provided by a generous sprinkling of my Homemade Smoky Veggie Bacon Salt-- recipe on my blog here. The low-fat (and very tasty!) vegan mayo recipe is here . (There's also a Hemp Milk Vegan Mayonnaise.) Yum!
Last night we simply had salad and Denman Island corn (picked that day) for dinner:
I'm keeping things pretty simple these days, due to The Book! BTW, if you're looking for tasty low-fat vegan salad dressing recipes, here are some posted on my blog:
Spicy Vinaigrette
Dijon Maple Balsamic Dressing
Pomegranate Molasses Dressing #2
Creamy Orange Vinaigrette
Creamy Pear-Based Vinaigrette (Tarragon Version)
Oil-Free Creamy Bean-Based "Caesar" Dressing
Low-Fat (or No-Fat) Creamy Pear-Based Vinaigrette
Happy Salad Days!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A GARDEN FOR NON-GARDENERS, IN THE GROUND AND ON THE DECK; AND THE REWARDS
The pattypan squash are blooming-- can't wait for the little beauties!
DH does most of the gardening-- 99% of it-- around here, but neither of us is really into gardening. But you can't live in the country and not grow something in the summer! So here is a picture essay of our conventional garden and our deck garden. It's really producing now! So nice to have fresh greens and herbs, and there is is absolutely nothing like your own home-grown tomatoes! (And our island market and market gardens can provide the rest for us!)
The Conventional Garden:
Lettuce, chard and kale
The tomatoes in the garden, surrounded by chicken wire to keep the cats from digging!
Chard up close
A pattypan blossom peeking out
A volunteer nasturtium cuddling up to a lettuce
BTW, in the front of the house, I have sage and a big rosemary bush, but I forgot to take pics!
The Deck Garden: (We always grow basil and cherry tomatoes on the back because it gets nice and hot, but this year we also have Italian parsley and we used some old dresser drawers to grow mesclun, baby spinach and more lettuce. I can go out and snip off some salad without getting my feet dirty! Evidently, if you cut lettuce about an inch above the soil, it will grow back! And I'm told you can do the same with spinach.)
I never had any luck with ordinary parsley, but the Italian parsley is doing wonderfully!
Dresser-drawer lettuce planter!
Dresser-drawer spinach-- so tender, and so clean when you snip it off!
Spinach and lettuce growing in drawers
Basil on the deck
Black cherry tomatoes-- so good!
The Harvest:
Fresh basil
Lettuce in the colander and spinach in the bag-- picked this morning!
Lettuce DH picked on Tuesday-- we save organic greens boxes and layer the cleaned, spun greens in them between pieces of paper toweling-- they keep quite well that way.
Fresh arugula in the spinner
My favorite lettuce spinner-- the Oxo Good Grips.
It spins so well, it has a "brake" on it!The Eating:
Lunch yesterday-- a "chef's salad" of fresh butter lettuce topped with Soy Curls sautéed in a little olive oil with some homemade bacon salt
(no bacon in it!- here's my recipe), toasted pecans, and some strawberries and blueberries, with my Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette (low-fat). Yum!
Lunch today was a piece of leftover homemade pizza with this salad of fresh butter lettuce and arugula with marinated artichokes and some homemade bean salad.
Boy, don't we vegans suffer (not!)?
Enjoy!
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