Green tomatoes and tomatillos
Last weekend, I finally convinced G it was time to pull up the tomato plants and harvest whatever was left there. Like all gardeners, he kept hoping the green tomatoes would yet ripen, but it was getting to coat weather in the mornings. Ain’t gonna happen.
I pulled up all 10 of the tomato and tomatillo plants and piled up what was left for making green salsa. I found this great recipe on a fantastic blog called Farmgirl Fare. She said you could double it, but I quadrupled it and mixed in tomatillos with the green tomatoes. Then realized I didn’t have enough onions or cider vinegar. I grabbed some more cider vinegar from the store and added it in while the mixture began to heat up, and then unfortunately overcompensated with too much cider vinegar! It turned out really tangy, but definitely edible. It is more of a relish than a salsa, as the recipe would suggest.
Last time I made green sauce, I found it was really good mixed with lots and lots of grated cheese and pre-cooked rice and leftover veggies, then baked in a casserole. Easy and tasty.
In other green news, the broccoli, cauliflower, and romanesco have begun rolling in from the CSA. All of a sudden today, I realized, Crap! I haven’t used up any of those brassicas that I put up last year! From my weekly CSA newsletter I learned last year that you can lightly steam broccoli, cauliflower and romanesco florets (brassicas), put them in a freezer bag, and freeze them for later use. Easy-peasy. I was overflowing with brassicas last October, so I mixed all the florets up and froze two gallon bags, never to use them in the winter or spring as I had intended.
They were looking pretty sad, stuffed at the bottom of the freezer drawer, crusted together in freezer-burn ice. The green broccoli heads had turned black, and the cauliflower had turned a yellowish off-white. Ain’t gonna happen again!
The only way to salvage them was to cook them into something unrecognizable, so I made a huge batch of cream of brassica soup: Saute lots of onion, leeks and/or garlic in butter. Add all the brassicas cut into florets and a potato cut into chunks with enough liquid of 4:1 stock:white wine to cover the veggies. Simmer until potato is soft and puree with a stick blender. Add half as much cream as white wine with lots of salt and pepper. It turned out very good and I don’t taste any freezer burn. I mixed in the freezer-burnt brassicas with a fresh cauliflower and leftover from last week’s romanesco that I’d steamed and put into the fridge: all three levels of freshness.
With all the space now left in the garden, I moved into Phase 2 of my first attempt at a winter garden. Supposedly, I can grow veggies year-round here in the temperate Pacific Northwest climate. We’ll see if I have a green-enough thumb! In September, I planted turnips, kale, parsnips, and an overwintering carrot called Merida. All four seeds have come up and are on their second set of leaves now. Slow going.
Last weekend, in place of the tomato/tomatillo plants, I planted garlic cloves and fava beans. Fava beans are supposed to be excellent winter cover crops, plus they can be dried and preserved like any dry bean. Cool! As of this weekend, I’m not seeing any green yet. My attempt at planting plain old dry beans this year didn’t turn out so well, so I attempted an inoculant, using a homemade recipe of 1:9 molassas:water I found somewhere on the internet. I dipped the fava beans in the molassas water and let them soak for about 5-10 minutes before planting, then dumped the molassas water into the dirt.
Here’s hoping that this IS going to happen!
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