Arugula

If it's November, it's time to harvest the Brussels Sprouts. They're one of the slowest crops in the garden -- but worth the wait. They're exceptionally cold hardy. In fact, they were growing so vigorously in late October that the snow didn't even stick to them! 

The last of the Scallions, Leeks, Collard Greens and Tatsoi were harvested this week. (Sadly, the Leeks never fully matured.) We're still picking small Broccoli florets (amazingly, from the seedlings we planted in April) and some of the sweetest Kale I've ever tasted. The Arugula and Broccoli Rabe also continue to produce. A few tiny Lettuce and Spinach seedlings remain, along with our marginal late-season Cabbages.  

Right now, the arugula is beautiful in the garden.  There is plenty of it, and it’s still tender, as well as spicy.  Last week, I used my arugula in a salad.  But, tonight, John used our share of  Saturday’s harvest in one of our favorite pasta recipes, “Pesto of Sundried Tomatoes with Arugula”.  The book Pasta Fresca by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman features very simple, delicious pasta recipes and this is one great example, from their section on “Pasta with Raw Sauces”.  Note that, in the printed recipe, John changed the “3/4 cup” sundried tomatoes to “entire jar (8 oz)”.  We use sundried tomatoes from Trader Joe’s, though the cookbook authors urge readers to make their own.  I’ve not done that yet, though I understand that tomatoes can be readily oven-dried. 

As you can see, this dish is very colorful and, with the spicy arugula, sweet sundried tomatoes, dried hot pepper, and garlic, it has a lot of flavor!  It’s also vegetarian, as are many, though not all, of the Pasta Fresca recipes. 

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Last night's midweek gathering was sparse, damp, and sprinkled upon, but it was fun nevertheless — and because only Lisa, Alan, and I were able to make it, we got relatively large parcels of produce to bring home.

I got a big cache of snow peas and took the two small zucchinis, leaving a larger one each for Alan and Lisa. I also took some arugula (a new delight for me, which I owe to Elisabeth's passion for it) and a head of lettuce.

I also got a nice handful of beans, which I originally wanted to call "green beans," but we planted yellow (aka wax) and purple beans, too. The beans were long and shiny, and the bushes were well stocked, in contrast to the bushes I'm growing at home. I was quite jealous.

A smaller crew this morning at the garden, but plenty of visitors (particularly very young ones, we hope they lay down some fundamental memories of their visit).

The harvest was still mostly thinnings (kale, onions, arugula that was bolting) plus the last of our seedling-origin lettuce, and with a foray into radish research. Pulling out a monstrously huge one both to give its neighbors half a chance and to see what was happening: it showed signs of insect invasion as well having odd and giant growth. Divvying the insides up for tasting revealed some radishy heat but not bad flavor.

We decided to let the radishes be for now rather than harvest. A few rain drops fell as we were leaving, but we watered the new grass leading from the street to our water spigot as well as in the garden.