Unusual Eats

One advantage about growing your own food is that you get to eat things that you would rarely or never find in a grocery store.

Once in a while, I harvest a head of garlic that turns out to be all one clove. I love these! I wish I could grow them on purpose, but I celebrate each one that happens to show up in my garden soil.

Did you know that garlic roots are just as delicious as the cloves, only more tender?

And of course there are garlic scapes... this photo was taken earlier in the summer when the scapes were going crazy. I love the tangled spirals they create in my kitchen. I fermented them this year and that was essentially a food of the gods...

Armenian cucumber from the cucumber tipi

Nosy tomato

Gargantuan kohlrabi, so good in soups

  

And speaking of soups... the carrots that were planted in cold frames in the first week of March got rather large! (yes, that is my hand, not my child's)

And kind of crazy!

So I am cooking the monster carrots up, putting them through the food processor, and freezing them in bags, since they do not appear to have storage potential. This way they are ready for soup anytime. Three carrots made almost a gallon of puree. (Shown here are 1/2 gallon jars used for chilling the carrot and kale puree before bagging for the freezer.)

Yum!

I also dehydrated a lot of kale for mixing in with mashed potatoes this winter: a traditional side dish from the Netherlands --Boerenkool -- or as we would say when we were growing up, "Green potatoes! Yay!"