Early Garden Bounty

Hello June!  How did you get here so fast?  The grandkids are all out of school for the summer now.  Less structure, swimming, no homework, staying outside until dark, and all sorts of fun things.  Among some of those fun things for me, is garden bounty!   I have been cooking like crazy, and planning our meals around what is ready to harvest in the gardens.  Let's start with the Baked Rigatoni.  I had one or two frozen gallon sized bags of roasted tomato sauce left in my freezer, so I wanted to use them up to make room for this summers stash.

I have had enough sauce in the freezer to get us through an entire year!  I hope to make a bunch again this summer too.
Along with this rigatoni, I wanted to cook up some of the Swiss Chard for the first time.  I washed the Chard, and removed the stems from the leafy greens.  Melting a good T or so of butter, and adding a T or so of olive oil to hot pan, add some fresh minced garlic.  Saute until brown, then add the stems of the chard, torn into about 2 inch pieces, into hot pan.  Saute for a couple of minutes before adding rest of green leafy chard. Season with sea salt and fresh ground pepper.  When wilted, about 2 more minutes, add a handful of fresh shredded parmesan cheese.  Put lid on pan to allow to melt, turning heat to low.  Takes only a minute or so.

It was delicious!  It tastes nothing like spinach.  We thought it had an almost nutty flavor to it.  Loved it.
I have also had several ripe cucumbers.  We like them with just a bit of salt and pepper on them.

One night we had a yummy quiche, loaded with spinach and chives.

In addition to the Swiss Chard, I planted another vegetable that I was not familiar with eating.  Beets.  They are a beautiful leafy root vegetable.  But I had never eaten them before!  As per my friend Elaine's suggestion, I roasted them in my crockpot, so as not to heat the house with the oven.  I cut off the root end, and peeled them, cut them into halves, and drizzled with olive oil, and salt and pepper.  Put the lid on and cooked them on high for about 5 hours.  Until fork tender.

Above you see a bowl of greens and beet peels to go to the chickens, beet ends to go into the compost pile, and some very red water where they were stemmed and peeled.
They maintain their deep rich color, and a bit of a gravy develops as they cook.  I removed them from the pot to cool, then went online to find some ways to use them.  I ran across a recipe for a salad with roasted beets, arugula and orange segments.  I went out and snipped a big bunch of arugula, and peeled a few oranges, and also added a couple of fresh picked cucumbers.  The dressing was my own.  I used a couple Tablespoons of red wine vinegar, a few T of olive oil, a T sugar, salt and pepper, and the juice of one half of an orange.  Oh my, was this ever wonderful!  The cooked beets have a very hearty and almost meaty like flavor to them.  Reminded us of portobello mushrooms.  Delicious.  And such beautiful color.  Not to mention, loaded with vitamins!  We took this salad to dinner at Gennifer's house.  Everyone loved it.

 Genny wanted me to use some of the Swiss Chard I had brought her, and cook it like I had done a few nights prior, so you see more of the chard on this plate as well too.

I found out that chickens hate beets!  They only like the leafy tops.

This is the basket of garden greens I brought over to Gennifer's with me.

Last night, we made two pizzas.  It was hot, so we decided to cook them on the grill.  This was the first time for us.  First I made a batch of pesto with all of this basil.

I topped both pizzas with the pesto sauce first.

The first one we cooked, got burned on the bottom.  But it was still delicious.  It had cremini mushrooms, pepperoni, bell pepper and mozzarella cheese, then topped with fresh basil after it cooked.

For the next one, Greg layed a sheet of tin foil on the grill underneath the perforated pan.  This did the trick, and the next pizza was beyond good!
I used cremini mushrooms, prosciutto, snipped chives, and I sliced up the rest of the roasted beets, along with mozzarella cheese.

When it came off the grill, I heaped fresh arugula on the top, drizzled it with olive oil, and sprinkled it with sea salt and ground pepper.

This was quite possibly the best pizza either of us had ever had!  So delicious!
My garden is mostly producing greens right now.  But the rest is coming right along too.

Let the summer begin!!!!
XO  Kris