Not the Every Day Occurrence

 

Thomas Fuller reminds us that “Harvest comes not every day, though it comes every year.” Are you keeping up with this year’s bounty from your summer garden? These baskets of produce are just a small snippet of our Saturday harvest. What a busy weekend, enjoying and prepping and storing for the winter season. Here’s an ‘Annie’ short list of cooking and storing ideas for your summer harvest:

Potatoes galore; none go to waste. Any with a few bad spots are chopped off and then roasted with olive oil, a cup of chicken broth, a sprig of rosemary. Ready to eat! The remaining stash (along with some earlier picked potatoes) gets stored in a cool location for a mid-winter treat.

Butternut squash tastes best roasted and stored in bags to keep throughout the week. Same with eggplant and peppers! Roast, roast, roast; get most if not all of your  menu prepped for the week.

Butternut squash bisque -Yummy for this chilly weather and freezable, too. With so many recipes and simple to cook, there’s no excuse not to whip up this delectable treat.

Sundried tomatoes are easy to make with your San Marzano splits. Slice and toss in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, cook overnight in a slow oven and store in the fridge for a week or two. Don’t want short-lived? If you can them, this adds a zesty lift to one of those winter evenings, ‘What do I cook?’

Try freezing your herbs. Lots of folks do this with spearmint and basil. If you like to cook with fresh leaves rather than dried, this is the next best thing to garden-fresh during the mid-winter crunch.

We can’t forget the grapes in its first stage of wine. Here’s a small batch de-stemmed before crushing. With this year’s hot, dry weather, the grapes are exceptionally sweet. Hoping it melds together into something wonderful to taste. If we look on the bright side, there’s always next year’s harvest.

How do you keep your summer bounty lasting throughout the year? Share your ideas. Below are the best ways to post. Enjoy this magnificent Monday; it’s the last of the beautiful summer days. Time to go!

If you like this blog, hope you check in daily. You can like our fan page at http://www.facebook.com/abilowz or follow on twitter http://twitter.com/annbilowz (where there are even more shared tidbits) or subscribe on the blog to receive posts daily via email or a feed. Either way, we hope you follow the postings somewhere in cyberspace and share it with your gardening friends. Contact me direct at annbilowz@gmail.com Happy Gardening. Annie P.S. You can now follow with visuals on Pinterest, too! http://pinterest.com/bilowzassoc/