favourite food things...

What are your favourite food things right now?!
Not your 'alltime best', but what is the bestest thing in season where you are right now...
it's mid spring here, and while I don't grow asparagus, it's about my favourite thing
except for: Spring eggs. Yay!
Lemons. Lemons are currency. I grow none, I want some...not exactly gold trading, but tastier...

my three favorites, that we are also harvesting at the moment are persimmons...shiitakes....sweet potatoes....in that order of preference, but we love all three!

Autumn here.. so squash. All kinds of squash, I've made a lot of thai pumpkin curry and a lot of boston squash and chilli soup.. good for eating in front of the fire on a cold evening!

I can't say asparagus again?
Ok, my amazing Florence fennel bush. It's in it's third season, and I'll 'retire' it this year.
Beans from the awesome white butterfly runner bean. Eat them green, dry them, perennial plants...
I nearly forgot broad beans aka fava beans.
As long as you catch them young, they are delicious.

And pickled lemons. Mine are from 2011, and the salt should keep them texturally ok for years.
And chervil
and pepper...

Autumn here. My Ever bearing strawberries are still producing. There are still many green ones, so I might get another month before shade or frost stops them. The little patch has been going since May. Summer temperature tops out at 80 F on a really hot day, so they don't go dormant.

It's autumn. We just brought in the potatoes from the community garden (it's too cold here through the winter to leave them in the ground). So many good foods right now but I'll stick with potatoes. A fresh, raw piece with a little salt, or roasted with garlic and butter in a tinfoil pack near the fire, or smothered in thick, delicious turkey gravy, fried up in a pan with some onions and carrots. You just can't beat garden potatoes.

Leila Rich wrote:I can't say asparagus again?

i say you can =)
i love asparagus too, theres some growing but it will take a long time to be ready. i havent ever grown it before so i am just learning about it, right now it is making seeds (it's not hybrid) and i am wondering what to do with them. i guess you are supposed to remove them, but i'd rather have more seeds! hopefully this wont mess it up.

and definitely agreed with lemons too, one of my favorites as well and fortunately i can get a lot of them local ish, in california. i live just outside of optimal lemon growing conditions, but regardless i keep planting lemon seeds, and its close to being where lemons grow comfortably. just a tad too cold in the winter. by now i have probably thirty of more baby lemon trees, only a couple that made it through last winter. i have been working out what to do with them this winter, but crosses fingers and hopes for the best some of them will make it through this winter. i am going to make some kind of ...some thing =) out of straw (?maybe?) for them, i think it will be good.

right now the garden is pumping out tomatoes, and i love the little cuties we are growing, especially the jelly bean and the black cherry tomato. lots of peppers and squash - delicata, spaghetti and some others, big pumpkins, swiss chard, cabbage, beets, onions and just harvested and separated a huge patch of elephant garlic ! yum. thats probably my favorite of whats coming out of the garden, the elephant garlic =)

theres a lot more but either small seedlings for the fall/winter garden or stuff that isnt ready yet or right now. been doing a lot of -out with old and in with the new- and planting up the fall and winter gardens, after clearing out a lot of finished plants. got that done so now most of the beds are tiny seedlings that i think i got in early enough to have pretty good early winter food.
i have been eyeing the celery lately, wondering if its sort of ready to go...i think it needs a lot longer to get bigger. another that i havent ever grown before and i dont really know what i am doing with it! but i will figure it out....
the tomatillos i have been anxiously awaiting, they are so far behind so i havent even tried one yet, but hopefully they will get ripe enough soon.

leila hamaya wrote:the tomatillos i have been anxiously awaiting

When I grew tomatillos I ended up with way more than I could cope with and I haven't grown them again.
I ate them mixed with tomatoes in salads, made salsa verde, chutney, sauce, tried to give them away but most people looked at them in total bewilderment...
What do you do with them? I'm keen to give them another go as they were totally care-free

well basically all that you mentioned, they are good in mexican style dishes, salsa. i cut them up and fry them in stir fry, with other veggies, onions and eggs, almost anything you would use a tomato for a tomatillo would work. some of this plant family are better for eating straight like cape gooseberry, and pineapple tomatillos. yes they are super easy and some of them are perennial ish too.

theres a crazy huge bush here, and tons of ripening ones but they are late getting totally ripe. we have a pretty long growing season and it stays fairly warm now, so hopefully they will be going for a while now.

now that the weather is cooling off the kale is so good and sweet that the children nibble it all day. Mustard greens are really good chopped raw with peanut sauce. Butternut squash, mmmm. And cider! We pressed cider this week, pressing more tomorrow

Matu Collins wrote: We pressed cider this week, pressing more tomorrow

Matu, is your press homemade or commercial?
I only made cider once because juicing not-all-that-many apples in the diy press took all day (or was it two?)
I'd love to hear about how you make your cider if you'd like to post about it
Maybe you could add to this old thread, or start a new one.

Hang on, 'cider' in America is my 'apple juice', right?
Different tack: how do you preserve/store the juice? Pasteurise it?
I'd still love a thread on it!

I need to make apple juice. I wild harvest apples. When they're too hard to get to, I climb up and shake the trees. Some get bruised.

I saw Matu's picture and immediately went out to the balcony and got two apples. One down, one to go. Good thing she didn't post roast beef. It's 11:30 at night and I can't spend all night cooking.

Here it is definitely the wild persimmons. SO sweet and good and plentiful.

Cabbage carmelized in a slow cooker or oven.

Brussel sprouts the same ways gosh I love these things like better than cake.

I found a cabbage in the fridge..I'll be popping that in the slow cooker directly.

Cool! Needs a little oil, that's all.
Bacon grease, butter, cannola.
It's just like browning onions in the slow cooker. Haven't tried them together -yet!

William Bronson wrote:Cabbage carmelized in a slow cooker or oven.

Brussel sprouts the same ways gosh I love these things like better than cake.

I've never done that-I will try as they are awesome vegetables!
Cabbage or sprouts sauteed in butter with cumin seeds, garlic and a squeeze of lemon at the end is really yummy.

Full winter in Minnesota means that I don't have much to harvest. But growing indoors, I have: garlic greens grown from bulbils, Thai basil, and habanero peppers. And they're all among my favorite food things!

We've had a few frosts, and the blood oranges are just starting to develop a bit of colour on the skin.



And apparently inside too!



They are still quite sharp but they have an awesome flavour. And they are nice and big and juicy. And free of pips.

Full on winter in Minnesota here too. I have some containers of sunroots outside I will bring in to thaw and harvest as I want them. Currently using up potatoes and beans from this year. Growing Indoors, white and pink Chinese celery does well in a window and is great to have along with shallot and garlic greens. Will be planting more carrots inside in containers soon. Usually have a hot pepper of some sort but forgot to bring a plant inside so will start more seeds soon.

It's "winter" in Andalucia.
So my favorite food thing is avocado and oranges straight from the tree. And the occasional left over, super ripe kaki.