What's for Dinner

I'm always curious to read about what other bloggers do with their harvests, especially what sort of dishes they prepare. In the spirit of this, I thought I'd share a few goodies I've made using my recent harvests.

Chicken Soup with White Wine and Homegrown Turnip Greens

This past weekend, I made chicken soup featuring some turnip greens that I harvested from the garden. I've never had turnip greens before, and was a bit apprehensive to add them to this soup. However, they added a wonderful flavor, which I would describe as a cross between spinach and pak choi. I will have to try them stir-fried one of these days as there seems to be no shortage of turnip greens in the garden.

Fall Mesclun, Grilled Local Apples and Green Beans, Candied Pecans, Feta, Citronette

Last night, I made a salad featuring the mesclun and green beans from my garden and apples I purchased from a local farmer's market. Since the temperatures have steadily dropped during the past few weeks, the mesclun has been tasting absolutely delicious! The arugula is especially good, losing much of the sharpness that was a bit overwhelming in previous cuttings. Hopefully, we will get a few more cuttings from the patch we have growing before we move on to the all lettuce mix. This salad took me about 15 minutes to put together and was the highlight of our dinner.

Beer-Battered and Panko Encrusted Shrimp, Green Beans and Zucchini Flowers

Finally, what do you do when mother nature offers you her bounty one handful at a time? Which is what happened when I harvested a handful of green beans and zucchini flowers recently. You make tempura of course. The great thing about this dish is that you don't need a large quantity of one vegetable, but instead can gather together the random pickings from your garden to make a good sized appetizer for everyone. Broccoli side shoots would work perfectly for this!

Hopefully, I will get around to posting the recipes for these dishes (if anyone is interested). What have YOU been cooking up recently? I'm always looking for new homegrown dinner suggestions!