Harvest Monday

I didn't get much harvested this week as I was pretty busy. This weekend i competed in the provincial disc golf championship and finished third! I also got my first ace (equivalent to a hole in one in ball golf). So that was pretty exciting!!!
But I manage red to get one good basket and a couple other things. I harvested some ultra sweet beefsteak tomatoes (they are so big a meeting and delicious) some more hot peppers, lettuce, an eggplant which I gave to a colleague, some beets, a couple carrots and a cucumber. I still have fruit ripening on most o my plants and I'm hoping I can get another couple weeks before I have to take everything off.

Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it!

Last week I started a new blog series to highlight one recipe a week with ingredients that are grown locally.  I would like to thank my two fellow bloggers for linking up with me last week.  Please check out their blogs: Mark's Veg Plot and An Oregon's Cottage.   Last week I highlighted fajitas cooked on the fire while Mark highlighted braised beef in tomato sauce and Jami posted two great salsa recipes.  Please be sure to link up this week with a recipe of your own.  I find these links the best way to find new blogs with similar interests are you and a great way to have new people find you!  I participate in 3 other series:  Monday Harvest over at Daphne's Dandelions, Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon's Cottage and Saturday Spotlight at Suburban Tomato.  

I'm posting this weeks Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it! early because I will be away tomorrow competing in the provincial championships of disc golf.  Disc golf is another one of my hobbies, if you have not heard of the sport it is played similar to golf but with small discs instead of a ball and club.  Check out more info about it on the wiki.

Ok so on with my recipe for this week.  This week I made Thai beef salad.  Its a great dish to make at the end of the week when you haven't shopped in a while and have odds and ends.  GMF pulled out some beef tenderloin that had been frozen in Kobi beef marinade (often I make my own asian marinade with soya sauce, peanut butter, sesame oil, honey and salt and pepper).  I sliced it really really thin with my ceramic knife (if you haven't tried ceramic knives yet you should I LOVE them!).  I then sautéed the beef quickly in a little oil and sat off to the side.  I then cut up whatever veg I have on hand (this time I picked a cherry bomb pepper, cayenne pepper, cajun bell pepper, some broccoli and a carrot from the garden and I had a yellow bell pepper and an onion in the fridge.)  I sautéed these veg with a little soya sauce, sesame oil and salt and pepper.  I also sautéed some been sprouts (GMF thinks its crazy that I like bean sprouts so much, but they are so yummy).  I cooked up some chow mein noodles and then sauteed them with soya sauce, sesame oil, honey and salt and pepper.  I then add the beef and all the veg and toss.  Serve with some spinach leaves chopped, lots of cilantro and sesame seeds for garnish.  Depending on your spice level you can add some chili garlic paste (I added my homemade hot sauce) and here is the finished product!

Tasty treats

With a couple very warm days here in Ontario (up to 45 degrees Celsius with the humidex) our tomatoes and peppers are ripening at a good rate. Won't be long before I have to take them all inside though for risk of frost. I've already pruned all the plants so all their energy goes into the fruit already formed instead of new growth (sad).

GMF has been making some new creations. First he made kale pizza. He sautéed the kale in oil and garlic (kitchen smelled so tasty). Then put that on a naan brea with some I onions, peppers and cheese. And roasted them in the oven. I snuck a piece of the kale before pizza stage and it was delicious. He also made an eggplant dish. He topped roasted eggplant with marinara sauce cheese and a big tomato slice and broiled till the cheese melted. He made lots of these and had some for dinner and lunch the next day. I'm sure it would freeze well also.
I also created something a tiny bit different in the dessert department (using nothing from the garden though). Chewy fudge brownies with peanut butter icing and score bits on top. Soo yummy. I made them on Saturday and planned to take half ino work to share. But oops we ate all of them (uh oh). I'll have to make them again sometime soon for work.
Hope everyone else is enjoying their end of summer.

Harvest Monday - Sept 2nd-9th

This week we harvested our first red bell peppers.  I don't think I'll grow full size bells again next year, they don't produce enough and take too long to ripen.  I think I'll try mini bells.  The grape tomatoes continue to produce enough for me to pick a good handful everyday for snacks and salads.  Below are two of our weird shaped cayennes.  They are normally long and skinny like the ones in the last photo.  I thought it was cross pollination but apparently that doesn't produce two different types on the same plant.  They taste like cayennes still though so thats all that matters.

I also harvest lots of herbs for meals this week.  Here is a shot of what I picked one day: Rosemary and Thyme for marinating chicken that I used in this recipe.

The cherry bomb peppers are still doing great.  Ripening a couple a day or so.  And the cajun bells (but I don't have a pic of my harvests of them).  The cajun bells are great for snacking so I tend to pick one at a time for lunch veggies.

Our fall lettuces are really starting to take off.  I have been harvesting some baby greens for salads.

This day was a good haul.  I thought these would be some of the last cucumbers we'd get as there was no more fruit or flowers starting, but the day after I picked these there were tons of flowers on the plants!  Also excited to still be getting little bits of broccoli on the one remaining plant.  There is also the tiniest of habaneros on the left (the orange pepper - it went into a marinade).  There is one lone carrot there that was delicious as a snack.  Oh and a cajun bell, I guess I did get one in a shot.

A health kick tomato (took this one to work and just eat it sliced up as a snack!) and some more peppers.

More peppers a pathetic white carrot and, the last of our snow peas.  The snow didn't work out this year because the plant got hidden by the broccoli and brussel sprouts, but I will try them again next year.

 Lots of peppers for my homemade hot sauce!!!  Turns out I only used about 12 of these cayennes.  Oh my I'm gonna have to make a lot of hot sauce!

I also wanted to thank Daphne for hosting Monday Harvest, head over to her site to see what others are harvesting around the world.  Also check out my new Linky for posting a weekly recipe highlighting local food.  Please link up each week so others can see what you're cooking!  Click the image to see this weeks series and link-up.

Hot Sauce!!!

The moment has come.  I have been so excited about making my own hot sauce since I planted my peppers in the spring.  And now that I've made some I realized I could have done it a while ago because it doesn't take anywhere near as many hot peppers as I thought.  So I went out and picked a bunch of red Cayennes, a cherry bomb, a couple habaneros and a banana pepper (Not all for the hot sauce, I also made some more quick pickled peppers).

I decided I wanted a depth of flavour to my hot sauce so I would use some bell pepper, onion and garlic as well.  I chopped up 1 yellow bell pepper, 1 cajun bell, 1/3 of a large spanish onion, 1 habanero (seeds removed), about 12 cayenne peppers and crushed 6 garlic cloves.  I sautéed all of this in the wok until soft. (Important hint - make sure the vent fan is running at full whack or you start to breath in too much hot pepper fumes).

For the liquid I used 1/4 cup of water, 1/4 cup of white vinegar and 1/8 cup of sugar (this liquid was left over after making my quick pickled peppers).  I blended the sautéed mixture and the liquid using the liquifying mode on my blender.  After a quick taste I was blown away at the heat, a little too much for us.  So I added 1 jar of roasted red peppers (I know a cheat but I had it on hand).  Then blended some more.  This made it taste delicious, still very spicy and also flavourful.  I then strained this liquid into a small pan (to remove the cayenne seeds and any skins that didn't get broken up).  The sauce then simmered and reduce to about 1/3-1/4 of its original volume to thicken it.  I poured the sauce into a decorative olive oil jar that I had on hand and put the rest in a mason jar to cool.  I will freeze the amount in the mason jar for later.  I couldn't believe that I only used a dozen cayenne peppers.  I have hundreds on the plants as seen in the picture below of the finished product!

I'm going to make sooo much hot sauce.  I've got to get some woozy jars to put it in though.  Does anyone know a good source to get these in Canada?

Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it!

I am starting a new linked in blog series.  The series will be a weekly showcase of locally grown food, cooked simply, and enjoyed with love.  Each week I will post a recipe of something that I have cooked throughout the week and I invite fellow bloggers to do the same.  The idea is to connect garden bloggers with recipe bloggers, as these two things are so connected.  I was inspired to create this blog from my sister in law, who after reading my last post commented on how she really enjoyed how my blog combined these two things.  The blogs that I follow are almost entirely vegetable gardener bloggers or recipe bloggers.  Some of them are both, like me!.

This series will open on saturdays each week and be open till thursday.  I would love it if you could share a recipe that you have made this week.  Be sure to link back to the series on your post so others can connect.  I  find series blogging very inspiring and a great way to stumble upon amazing blogs I had not read before.  

So post your link here to be part of the first ever Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it! series, and keep coming back each week to see what everyone is cooking!

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Dinner on the fire!

Last night was a beautiful night for a fire here.  The temperature was a round 15 degrees Celsius at first it was clear skies so you could see the stars (well the ones you can see in the city, which in London is actually quite a few).  We decided we would have a fire and make grill-a-snacks.  We went to the store and bought all the stuff we needed to make pizza ones like we normally do.  As GMF was preparing the fire outside I was rummaging through the fridge getting out some veg that we could add to them.  Then I saw a lovely looking chicken breast that I had cooked earlier and I suddenly had a craving for Fajitas.  So I decided to try something different - Fajita filling in the pie iron.  I have never tried to make anything in the pie iron without a crust before.  I've used different things for the crust including puff pastry but never without any crust.  

I cut up the chicken breast, bell peppers, cherry bomb peppers, a cayenne pepper and some onion.  Added in some seasoning - cracked salt and pepper, paprika, garlic and tossed this in some oil.  Then I prepared my toppings.  I made a simple pico de gallo salsa with grape tomatoes (which I picked in the dark so there are a couple in there that weren't as red as I'd like but oh well), onion, cilantro and lime juice.  The other toppings were sour cream, and a smokey chipotle salsa.  Arranged everything on a large cutting for carrying outside and we were off to the fire!

 I pilled the topping into the pie iron and started cooking.  The sizzle of the frying was great sound as the peppers and onions let out their juices.  Below is the cooked filling still in the pie iron.  (side question - which picture do you like better, without flash-left or with flash-right?)

 I also warmed my tortilla shell simply by using half the pie iron as a holding place and held it over the fire.  It warmed up pretty fast!

Here is my fajita all put together.  The final touch was a couple baby lettuce leaves that I picked right out the garden bed beside the fire place.

This is it half eaten, I couldn't seem to get a good focus on this pic, tried several times, then gave up and kept eating!!!

 This was such a success and I think we will bring this recipe camping with us next time!  The one thing we wish we did was put our cast iron fajita pan on the stones around the fire and then put the cooked filling on it to keep warm.  We put it in a bowl that was sitting on a table beside the fire and so it lost some of its heat.

On to dessert!  I once again created by dessert grill-a-snack but with a couple minor changes.  First the bread, instead of buying a loaf of the bagged bread we bought a fresh bakery loaf that had been sliced from the grocery store (it was actually cheaper as well).  I didn't think it would make a difference, but it did.  It was easier to spread the butter on the outside without tearing, it fit better in the pie iron and when we burned a little bit while cooking we could scrape it off very easily (the bagged bread would always fall apart).  I know you're thinking, how could you burn them!,  but it happens sometimes, and I deal with it!  The second change was that I didn't put peanut butter on this one but instead I put score bits.  OH MY GOODNESS, soooooo good.  I had bought them to make score bit brownies today (I'll post about that later), so I decided why not add some to this.  I also lightly salted the outside of the bread.  Salt and caramel go together so well!  This was delicious!!

Here is the assembled filling.  Marshmallow slices, Caramilk squares and Score bits.

Here it is  right out of the fire!

And the finished product, oozing with tasty goodness.  I am amazed at the difference the little bit of salt made.  I was D-E-Licious!

Thanks for reading.