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The collards were starting to bolt and I decided that I wasn’t in mood for boiling up lots of collards for dinner one night and instead wanted to do something different. In passing on a blog somewhere I’d remembered reading about collard green pesto. Sure enough there were a lot of recipes and I decided on this one to experiment with. I modified it using walnuts instead of pecans and eliminating the olives, but for the most part I followed the directions. Pesto is forgiving and very pliable, I think you could use any kind of green for a different result.

All of the collard leaves were not picked, but I did get a giant handful of them. Once you blanch the greens, they soften up quite a bit and easier to blend. Note, I also took the ribs off of the leaves.

Blends up well!

That bunch of collards and the rest of the ingredients only made six little tubs! I think I could probably get three more with what is left outside on the plants. I’m trying to let the plants go to seed so I can save seeds for fall use.

I definitely recommend trying some pesto made with collards sometime; I think chard or kale would be nice as well!

Two years ago I embarked on this experiment of going full on vegetarian. Initially I thought I’d just try it for a few months but then I chose a weird time to do it, jumping in when Chris and I went and did field work for three months. Not exactly an ideal time I came to find out once I started eating at restaurants. My delusional idea was that it would be easier to try this without cooking….boy was I wrong! Restaurants are the most difficult place to be vegetarian.

Well, here it is two years later and I’m pretty much a committed vegetarian. I’ve dabbled in the not-so-healthy vegetarianism too, loading up on cheesy, greasy items, probably eating too much rice and pasta, but I’m working on cleaning that up. Pairing the clean diet I’m trying to get back into a regular workout routine. Going from being extremely active to sitting for 8+ hours a day has not been good.

During these two years I’ve read and listened to a lot of food and foodie related items. I’ve learned a lot about our food system and have committed to being better about buying locally at two farmers markets that are near my house when I can’t grow something or for eggs (now I’ve been getting coffee too!), and attempting to buy organic or in season as much as I can at the grocery store. Now, not everything is organic or in season but I do my best. Chris and I had a discussion in the middle of the store back in early December about some butter. I wanted the organic store brand butter and he wanted the brand that said “Go Texan” which is a symbol for supposedly locally made products. I definitely agree that sometimes local might be better than organic being shipped across the country but once I got online I found out that the final product butter *was* made in Texas but the brand itself was owned by a conglomerate and likely received shipments of milk from all over the southeast. Chris attempted to get more information from the manufacturer but I don’t believe he ever heard anything back.

Now that’s a little bit off the vegetarian thing but what being vegetarian has done has really just made me think about food and where it comes from even more. I watched Forks Over Knives and it hit home for me because heart disease is prominent in my family and I hope that being vegetarian will help me in preventing any problems that could be lingering down the road for me.

Of course there’s the environmental issue, but even bringing together knowledgeable folks to weigh in their opinions, there’s plenty of discourse in that. I think what resonates most is eat whole foods and eat as locally as possible….organic if you can. Or you know what Michael Pollan said, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Which brings me to ‘fake’ meats and the like. I don’t really buy them all that often. Sometimes we buy ‘beef’ crumbles to put into spaghetti or faux sausage for our Zuppa Toscana recipe, but in general I don’t buy it. Though I do have a weakness for Quorn Chik’n Nuggets and I think in the vein of fake meats Quorn products are far superior to any of the soy based fake meats. But I do treat them as junk food and don’t use them often, maybe once every few months. I don’t eat or like soy dogs or the soy lunch meats, they are pretty much disgusting and I don’t know any vegetarian who likes them (speak up if you do!). I’d rather just eat a veggie filled sandwich instead of fake meat, though I do like black bean burgers. Amy’s trumps Morningstar in this department. I have tried making my own, which means they don’t have soy protein isolates, but I’ve only done it once and I really need to spend more time and make more to freeze. Actually looking at Amy’s ingredients it appears they don’t use soy isolates/concentrates and instead use mostly whole ingredients. Anyway, that’s for the folks who get all woozy about soy…and I’m not even going to touch that subject because while soy is everywhere (oil, proteins, other weird things),and I tend to try to avoid it when it is added in things I don’t think should have it, I’m not against eating it in more whole forms.

As for taking it to the next level and going vegan, I don’t forsee going that route any time soon. I like cheese and I like eggs and I don’t have as much of a qualm about them as I do eating meat. I will probably try to reduce my cheese intake and would like to try to finding more organic and local cheeses, but since I can generally source yard eggs around here I don’t feel bad about eating eggs at all. Sometimes I’ll buy the organic eggs at the store if I can’t get to the farmers market, but that isn’t as common now that I found out I can generally get to a farmers market weekly.

I have eaten meat during these two years. Sometimes I order something and it comes with meat (damn you Mexican restaurants and your sneaky enchilada sauces or beans!) and so I eat it or give it to someone else, and of course I will look the other way for broths in soups if needed at restaurants. I also definitely look forward to my birthday because that’s my sushi day….mmmmm! And if Chris catches fish I will eat and appreciate eating the fish. I don’t miss meat on most days and I could definitely do without chicken for just about ever, but what tempts me most is ribs, pulled pork, and brisket. And sushi. Or turkey at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I have a bit or slice of something and then my taste is sated and I’m good for another year.

Will there come a time when I don’t do this at all? Maybe. I don’t know yet. This is a one day at a time thing for me. But what I do know is that I do appreciate the bountiful selection of vegetables that are out there and the different ways to make it into something delicious to eat for a meal.

Oh, one other thing, I don’t take supplements. I hate vitamins and they make my stomach upset, but I also believe in eating your vitamins through food instead. I know there’s the worries about B12 and while I haven’t had my blood tested, I don’t feel as if I am deficient in anything. I think I will try to get an updated blood test soon though as I haven’t had one done in many years. I guess this turned into a bit of a rambling post instead of the structured one that was going on in my head, but if you have questions or comments please feel free to ask away!

If there is one thing about eggplant, it is that you can easily have too many! We grew all of these varieties last year, actually another one that keeled over before harvest, but I concluded one or two plants will suffice next year. I saved seeds from I think most of them, either that or we had some leftover, but nonetheless eggplants in moderation.

White Star Hybrid
These were pretty neat in that you could really tell that they were ripe/overripe as they turned yellow or dark orange, in addition to becoming rock hard. Not an edible stage!

Rosita
This size eggplant worked great for eggplant parm sandwiches.

Listada di Gandia

Fond May

Aswad
The Baker Creek catalog shows just how big these can get!

And finally Antigua.

I think we got these seeds from Baker Creek last year and they preformed very well for us. The best part is that you can easily make more out of handful of beans by cutting them in half. We will definitely be growing them again next year.

Yesterday I decided to go through our pantry where the home canned foods are. This little built in unit came with the house and for the most part I like it.

The second from top shelf houses all of the pickles, chow-chow, and some relish I made. We have a lot of this still and I doubt we will plant many cucumbers come spring. Maybe one or two plants. I should also mention that we have some Claussen pickles in the fridge in the man-cave that need to be eaten.

Along with the pickles we have a lot of jams: mandarin, fig, grapefruit, and tomato. I guess I need to bake more bread for breakfasts!

We still have a good amount of canned whole tomatoes which I really love, they smell so divine when you open them, but we only have two jars of spaghetti sauce left. *Note to self* Make more this tomato season. We also have some salsa left, I’ll have to think of recipes to use that up before summer too. I made some really mild versions last year and they are good to use in rice or stirred in something else.

I think next year I will try to do what Erica does at NW Edible Life and utilize the skins of the tomato to make sauce a little thicker.

As for preserving our harvest in other ways, we freeze beans, zucchini and squash. We’ve also frozen carrots and onions. I also chopped up some peppers and froze them in Ball jars which I’ve really been impressed with in the freezer. Chris bought a dehydrator that we used to dry some onions and I attempted a few other things, oh yeah, eggplant, but I wasn’t keen on the dried eggplant. We will definitely try them on tomatoes this summer; I dried a lot of the cherry tomatoes in the oven last summer and they lasted awhile in the fridge before molding. I think the key will be to use our sealer to suck the air out and bag them up better.

It is hard for me to go to the store these days without thinking twice about where the produce is coming from and what is on it. It makes me really thankful for my garden when we have items to harvest from it.

It’s been awhile since I did any of these portraits. I took a lot of photos like this of our harvest last spring and summer but then we moved to the house and life got a little bit hectic. Now I am taking this week to process a lot of older photos and get both this website and Wildscape Photo updated a bit. With the Wildscape update I’m going to include a garden section where you can see some of these fruit and vegetable portraits.

Several months ago Chris pre-ordered some canvas—-can’t remember the company at the moment—with the intent of having some of these fruit and veggies on the canvas and put in our kitchen. We need to paint the kitchen too but I thought I might as well get onto the processing part of the photos so we can get the ball rolling.

I’m not sure which variety of tomato this is. By the looks of it I’m guessing Amazon Chocolate or Cherokee Purple as they are both heavy, full bodied fruits, and we grew those last year.

I can’t wait until May—tomato season!

So, last year I made my first batch of sauerkraut with some Chinese cabbage we grew in our plots at the community garden. This year we didn’t have an of our own cabbage as our vegetable garden at home hasn’t been built yet.

Last year I tried to make a second batch of sauerkraut sometime in late spring but the humidity in our house caused a lot of mold to grow on the top of the liquid that I felt it uncontrollable and threw the batch out. I actually felt a little bad about that because once I had scraped the mold off the top the rest of the cabbage beneath it seemed to be just fine, but I felt like I would be scraping mold off daily or every other day instead of one or twice a week as I had done with the first batch in January of last year. I decided to leave sauerkraut making to colder months in order to not deal with the mold problem.

So, enter January this year. I decided to go for it again, this time with headed cabbage bought from the store.

And just like last year a month is about good for developing a nice flavor in the sauerkraut. I actually really like the flavor of this one better than the one I made last year.

Since I’m the only one who eats the sauerkraut in my house this batch will be plenty for me. Maybe we’ll be able to grow our own cabbage again for when I make next year’s batch.

A couple of months ago I was looking through my parent’s second fridge in their garage. I noticed several large ziplocs full of pecans from their yard circa 2010. Yep, time to be used. I think that was also the last time they harvested a good crop. The last few years the squirrels have hoarded the pecans for themselves.

Several years ago when I started reading about the do-it-yourself food movement I found out how to make your own nut butters. It is super simple and this time around I went with the same nut I tried last time…the pecan. It isn’t a nut butter you would normally see and unless you really love pecans I doubt many people will love eating it on a consistent basis. The flavor is more earthy than the usual suspects in nut butters, even more so than almond butter I think.

I threw in a good dose into my food processor and set it in low for awhile and then switched it to high until the grinds thickened up and started taking the consistency of what you would associate with a nut butter.

Good stuff!

Last week I wrote about cucumbers and the insane amount we harvested throughout May. Oh, they still sent May off with a bang, giving us a reusable grocery bag full in the last two days of May.

But, let’s talk tomatoes….

I’m beginning to run out of counter space. This isn’t a new thing, I’ve dealt with this before in Florida and our harvest there, but we had more counter space then. I’ve been picking them when they just turn pink on the bottom (unless I miss one and get one that is ripe), to keep the bugs and birds at bay. I’ve seen many birds flying into the tomatoes when I’m in the garden but haven’t seen them pecking at them yet.

A view of the back two beds. There’s also a third bed you can’t see from here. Very much a jungle!

An Arkansas Traveler tomato—my favorite. I sliced this one up and enjoyed it before dinner the other night…mmm!

Some of the Early Girls. I haven’t been too impressed with their flavor but I have been impressed with their abundance and their ability to not really have any pests. I would probably grow them again if I didn’t know they were owned by Monsanto.

The Yellow Pears have been producing well and staying consistent but they have been out-competed by the Sungolds in prolific-ness.

I’ve also been impressed with the size of the Cherokee Purples, mostly because the first few I had were on the smaller side but they continue to get larger as time goes on. I would grow them again, they seem to handle the pests and heat well so far.

The Sungolds in their insane, branching glory. They’ve managed to find a way to vine through the other tomatoes and I can’t keep up with them. I will be looking underneath a tomato two spots over and find Sungolds hanging out there.

Amazon Chocolate is a favorite of Chris’ and they are starting to come in heavily. They are also noted for their size.

An unripe Amazon Chocolate. They have green shoulders with deep green stripes and turn a chocolate-purple when ripe. (That isn’t a cut on my arm, just some dried tomato juice mixed with dirt!)

So, with all of these tomatoes I’ve been trying to keep with preserving them in some fashion.

One night I made tomato jam which turned out much better than I was expecting. I probably could have boiled it down another half hour but it was already 10:30 pm and I still had 20 minutes of hot water bath to go (that didn’t include the time it took to get the canner up to boiling speed—add about 20-30 minutes for that!); needless to say preserving and canning food is time consuming.

I made 12 pints of salsa and then blanched enough tomatoes to make two separate batches of whole, peeled tomatoes for use in stews and other things later on. That resulted in 12 quarts. I will probably make another 6 quarts if not another 12 at the rate we’re going on tomato abundance.

I took to drying the smaller tomatoes in the oven; you can see some of the results in the jar on the left side of the photo. This is time consuming but mostly hands off because you let the oven do the work.

I love having the tomatoes and I know that all of this work now will be well worth it in the fall and winter when I am dreaming of tomato season again!

Also, if you haven’t been by Sprout Dispatch, a collaborative blog featuring me, Curtis (my brother), and Chel, drop by and say hi. Today I am writing about saving tomato seeds!

If you follow over at Sprout Dispatch you may have seen my post about our onion harvest. For a week the onions sat in some deer feeder platforms in our computer room, fan on, door shut to keep the cats out. The room started reeking about a day into it but finally mellowed (or I got nasal fatigue) by the end of the week.

Finally last Sunday I took them outside and cut the tops off, leaving a few inches, trimmed up the roots a bit and then stacked them in some storage crates I found at Walmart. Initially I was going to opt for laundry baskets but a few text messages with Chris (this is how we communicate most days as he has very little cell service but texts work where is at) and he told me to look in the office supply section for milk crates. I found these, sent a photo to make sure they were up to par, and walked out with five crates (after paying of course!). I was unsure how many I would need and decided an extra crate would be good for future use anyway.

I labeled the crates, moved them inside to our living room and they are stacked there waiting to be used!

Pretty handy, I think!

How do you store your onions (or garlic…we have that coming to harvest soon)?