What are You Eating from the Garden?

[Branching Out]

Our daughter and a couple of friends joined us for dinner tonight, so we cleared the trays of seeds and tomatoes off the kitchen table and sat down to a nice meal together. We had homegrown chickpeas, red Thai curry with our peppers, and coconut curried lentils. On the side were Shintokiwa cucumbers in a really tasty dressing made with rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt, finely grated lime peel, fresh basil, and minced ginger-- kind of like a pickle and salad all in one dish. We cooked lots of veggie dishes as one guest was vegan, and there was grilled chicken and shrimp too. No dessert, but we each got to finish the meal with a Lucie's Giant Goldenberry.

 

[digitS']

Honeydew melon –– I can hardly believe it.

A whim. Grew from seeds outdoors rather than starting 3-4 weeks and transplanting as with the other melons. Of course, with this Summer of 2025, the Galia and Lilly Crenshaw were ripe and enjoyed days ago. The Honeydew was planted at the end of the potato bed. All early potatoes and out of the way early, the melon vines took over that end. That is, one of the plants grew well and the other grew about 18" and did nothing. However! The one vine produced 5 ripe melons.

I think that we have had rather ideal melon growing conditions weather-wise and might have staggered the plantings. Nah, I can't believe that i even suggested that possibility ...

 

[ducks4you]

Tomatoes that I grew/canned in 2022, pulverized jalepanoes that I harvested in 2019 and dehydrated, and sweet peppers that I harvested this morning, in tonight's chili.

 

[Phaedra]

This year, the young fruit trees start offering decent harvest

The very first pear and almond tart with homegrown pears

I added some port-poached craneberries.

Very proud of my Hosui Sand Pear — not the biggest one, but absolutely delicious. Juicy, with a beautiful balance between natural sweetness and a hint of tang, just about 90% ripe and perfect to taste. The Kyoho grapes are also wonderful.

Tomorrow I will try the Mutsu Apples

 

[digitS']

I thought to share some recipes that popped up in my news feed from Eating Well magazine. Ignore the idea of "canned." If you are like us, there's a ton of tomatoes coming out of the garden. The idea of tomatoes and cabbage may get a try. Beef and barley is a common Winter soup, I don't know why we have never thought of adding the pasta sauce from the freezer. Some of it will already be prepared for simply heating and adding to spaghetti, for instance, but there are times when we will save any additions to the tomatoes except the basil until it is thawed later.

And the lentils ... hmmm? I like lentils. In fact, I tried a new snack from Calbee yesterday. It was made with red lentils and called "Harvest Snaps, Tomato Basil." Tasty little crisps. Maybe something similar for a Winter soup.

10 Comforting Soups That Start with Canned Tomatoes

If you have a can of tomatoes in your pantry, you’re already on your way towards one of these comforting and delicious soup recipes.

www.eatingwell.com

 

[flowerbug]

stuffed cabbage rolls with tomato sauce work well, so why not tomato and cabbage? i would eat it as we make vegetable soup and i miss having cabbage in it but Mom won't do cooked cabbage.

lentil crisps sounds good to me. i like about any junkfood (except recently Cheezits which must be hidden in something else to become edible) and that is why i do not buy it because then i'll eat it...

 

[digitS']

Do you mind sharing your stuffed bell pepper recipe? That sounds good!

... Along with chopped sweet peppers in the stuffing, a few jalapeños went in as well ... and cherry tomatoes. Under the cheese on top and the little pepper stem cap, of course there was rice, onions and ground beef.

Steve

That's basically "it," dahlia. I looked in a half dozen cookbooks but really think that I originally used Mom's Good Housekeeping. Checked my GH cookbook but it is about 40 years newer than hers was . I can say that I forgot to mention the diced carrots in that post! The veggies, beef and the rice are already cooked before going into the peppers and that for 8 bell peppers, only about 1# of ground beef was used. We eat beef often but not much each time.

To compensate for the lack of that ↑ detailed recipe –– here is something else you can do with sweet peppers .

Chicken with Peppers and Bamboo

sauce
1 onion
1 T soy sauce
2 T oyster sauce
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 t brown sugar
1 t ground ginger
1 T cornstarch in 2 T water

Simmer together 8 to 10 minutes, stirring and set aside.

chicken/vegetables
1 T oil
1 large sweet pepper
1/4 cup bamboo shoots, sliced
1/4 lb mushrooms
2 chicken breasts, cut up
1/2 cucumber diced

Heat oil, stir-fry pepper, remove. Stir-fry bamboo & mushrooms, remove. Stir-fry chicken. Return vegetables, add sauce and cucumber. Heat & serve.

I don't know where it came from, it was copied and been around a long time. It's been necessary to find a number of uses for sweet peppers because the Italian Sweets have always done well but the bells have mostly done rather poorly. We don't use oyster sauce so some extra soysauce or the sweet teriyaki sauce can be used and replace the sugar, as well. And, we grow ginger so it can be diced & mashed and go in with the vegetables. The cucumber can go on top to add some freshness, instead of being fried.

 

[digitS']

And, here’s a picture of the snack bag for everyone, esp @flowerbug .



This was purchased at the Dollar Tree. Normally, I wouldn't recommend buying a snack at a dollar store but this a Calbee product and we buy the Green Pea Snack Crisps quite often. This was new and DW went for it .