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If it’s in the garden, it’s allowed

Direct from the canes.

We have this unwritten rule in our house – if it’s in the garden, you can eat it.

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you tear out half of the pea plants getting a pod of peas, you’re going to have to answer to someone. And if you dig up an entire head of lettuce to munch on, one of the adults in the house might have something to say about it.

But that’s really about it. We don’t really have too much in our garden that you can eat this year. We didn’t do sugar snap peas; instead we have sweet peas because the flowers are just so pretty. We have some lettuce in the ground but it’s taking its own sweet time getting going.

There are tomatoes, as well. And, of course, my cucumbers.

These raspberries are from my mother-in-law’s garden, where she grows them, literally, by the bucketful. The kids have always been allowed to go and eat as many as they want. Help yourself.

It isn’t really junk food in the traditional sense. Yes, they probably don’t have much in the way of nutritional value, and yes, they have a bunch of sugar in them… But there is also some fibre in there, somewhere.

But that’s not the point. As far as I’m concerned eating out of a garden is one of life’s most underrated pleasures. The produce always (and I mean ALWAYS) tastes miles better than what you can buy. Aside from water and seeds, it’s free.

And the berries are always so succulent. Sinful, even.

Now, there are a couple of caveats:

  • Better wear some shoes because it really hurts if you step on a hornet that is grazing on a cherry from the tree. Personal experience in this case.
  • Better wear some shoes because sometimes bears come through the property and, well, they don’t really spend too much time considering where they might relieve themselves.
  • Further to this point above, take a good, hard look around when you go to the garden at dawn or dusk, because the only thing worse than getting too close to a bear is getting too close to a surprised bear.

If anyone ruins their dinner because they stuffed themselves with cherries, raspberries and various other garden produce we will let it pass with no small amount of parental pride.

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Garlic Scape Pesto

Fresh from the garden

A neighbour of ours, before he started a micro-brewery, farmed a piece of land near Vancouver. His sister, as I recall, was in charge of the garlic, and one day he dropped a bag of scapes off for me. It was rather kind – he also dropped off a piece of horseradish root a while later – that was tasty, too, but the subject of another post. The scape is the flower of the garlic plant and it comes up all of a sudden in late June. Apparently the idea is that you cut the scapes off so as to give more energy to the garlic bulb. cut off the scapes and you get bigger garlic.

Some people just compost theirs, but Steve even gave me a recipe: Ready for it? Chop up the scapes, put them in a food processor with a handful of walnuts, big pinch of salt… run the processor and drizzle in oil until it turns into a paste. Toss with freshly-cooked pasta.

Brilliant. I remember being totally blown away. Three (well, four and five if you count the Parmesan cheese on top) ingredients, plus some pasta.

So supremely easy and so tasty. Every time I see scapes I get hungry – even photos of them from a year ago.

….and mix
Just add pasta.
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Cucumbers. Well, they aren’t cucumbers, yet…

Brand-new cucumber plants. To be planted and then lovingly nurtured... And then who knows what will come next?
All 6 seeds germinated. I’m not sure what I’ll do with 6 cucumber plants, aside from have a lot of cucumbers…

My mother-in-law gave us some cucumber seeds. I planted 6 of them, and lo and behold, all 6 have germinated. I was asked to make (and I did) a sort of wooden obelisk (photo to come later, when it isn’t pouring with rain outside) upon which the cucumber plants can grow. The idea is that the cucumbers themselves will be kept out of the dirt and won’t be as likely to be ravaged by slugs and the like.

So, I’ll have lots of cucumbers. Apparently these plants are rather prolific.

And then what? It’s kinda like the proverbial zucchini plant. How do you know your neighbour has a zucchini plant? Well, they’ll arrive on a daily basis with gourds a-plenty. I fear cucumber is the same way, but you can’t grill them on the barbecue, you can’t make muffins or loaf out of them…

Pickles? Gherkins? Lots of salads? Not really sure what I’ll do if I have an embarrassment of cucumber riches, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Currently, they’re about an inch high, so I best not get ahead of myself.

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