What's for Dinner

Well, my camera battery (both of them) has officially permanently died on me and won’t hold a charge, so until the replacement arrives (about a week) I’ll be going exclusively verbal. Sorry about that.

This past week I have gotten serious about thinning the beets. Last fall they didn’t do well and it’s because I never thinned them so I never even got one that fully developed, though they all started out as nice robust plants and should have been a nice little crop. As they’ve gotten bigger it’s getting easier to see which smaller ones are growing practically on top of which bigger ones (when they’re little it’s hard to even distinguish between two plants, to me). So I’ve been out there actively thinning, and I think with the red beets at least I’ve got them all about 3 – 4 inches apart now so hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll start harvesting red beets. The gold ones will come in a few weeks after that.

I brought in all the beet greens to eat – a first for me. I have a photo of the bowl full – it was a lot – but I can’t get it out of my camera! I cleaned them all, and cut off the stems, and then over the course of two nights I ate them for dinner. I sautéed some raw garlic in olive oil and then threw in the chopped greens to wilt. When they did, I squeezed a wedge of lemon over them, salted them, and mixed in some white beans and cooked brown rice for a meal. DELICIOUS! On the second night I also threw in some Cajun sausage. It was really good.

I polished off my first Daikon over the course of a couple of salads, and pulled myself up another today. Again, it’s not huge, but I want to make sure I eat them, so I’m going to keep pulling them up as I use them. Anyone have a good recipe for Daikon?

I pulled up four beautiful, perfectly shaped, medium-sized turnips yesterday (again, photo stuck in camera). They are trimmed and washed and in my produce drawer. Tonight’s dinner will be roasted root veggies – turnips, rutabaga, red and gold beets, banana fingerling potatoes and sweet potato. Roast in olive oil, maybe with a dash of cayenne pepper, and when they’re crispy pull them out, squeeze with lemon and dust with freshly chopped cilantro. Tonight only the turnips will be mine, but at some point I’ll be able to make this dish entirely out of the garden (minus the rutabaga, which I didn’t plant…)