Harvest beginnings

Summer must be on its way! We are starting to get a lot of things ripening or almost ready. We picked our first red tomatoes a few days ago, and had one with our sandwiches today. We picked some of our first green beans, and our first real sized carrot. Our first bell pepper (after the one that Roxie ate) is almost ready, and we have already picked a few hot peppers and could easily get more.

So far, we have been able to pick and eat 2 yellow pear tomatoes, 1 elfin tomato, and 2 celebrities. There are a few more tomato varieties that we are still waiting on, but I think that they all have green tomatoes now, its just a matter of ripening. There is no way I could keep track with all that we will pick in the upcoming months, but for now, its just a few.

The plants we haven't been able to harvest yet are eggplant, onion, garlic, potato (unless you count the one that Blake accidentally knocked off... I don't :-) ), tomatillo and sweet pepper. The rest we have picked at least one of some variety.

We also ate our first beets tonight in the recipe with orange and cloves, and even though I forgot the zest... ooops.... it was really good. Blake even said that he liked them that way (not just tolerated them) which was exciting. The only downside was how long it took. Otherwise, it was wonderful and I wish we had more.

By the way, the swiss chard with onions AND sprouts was just okay to me. I don't think I cooked it quite the same as last time, and I should have let the chard wilt more, and I think that the chard made it so I tasted the sprouts more, which I didn't really love. The end effect was not bad... just not as delicious as last time. The positive of that though is that I did decide that I can be brave and branch out into other recipes with both sprouts and swiss chard next time.

Ooh, and I used some of the dill (which in my last post I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it) in our tuna mix for the tuna salad today, and that was really good, Blake wasn't even hungry and he thought it was a really nice addition to the sandwich.

My big dilemma for the weekend is deciding on if I trust that I can find and use a few more tomatoes this week for meals, or should I still buy them for another week and wait for them to be a more reliable tomato source. Blake thinks that we should still buy them for now... sigh... I can't wait for there to be tomatoes all the time!!!Soon... soon.