Golden Days

Like every year, it seems to have gotten hot way too soon. (Unlike every year, we’ve broken heat records already, but that’s for another post!) A lovely consequence of the early heat, though, is early salads!

Burpees Golden Beets thriving in our 24” hand-dug beds - root veggies thrive in this tilth!

We have gorgeous gorgeous golden beets this year. I love beets: a sweet vegetable? Sign me up! We’ve been growing various varieties of golden beets for the last few years, and are really pleased with their combination of sweetness, tenderness, and no staining! Yay for my hands! And clothes!

The beets we’re growing this year are the Burpee’s Golden Beet, from the amazing Seed Savers Exchange: they are so sweet and low in tannins that we eat them raw! Yes, raw beets: something my grandmother would not have ever dreamed of serving!

Burpee’s Golden Beets: aren’t they gorgeous? Along with Rainbow Chard, the garden is full of delights!

I had a few of these in my fridge the other day, along with a few carrots, ginger nubs, and some Serrano chiles… and a new salad was born!

Know that I’m a very loose cook: some substitutions here, a pinch of this there, and I have a masterpiece… but one I might not be able to recreate at any point in the future! I wrote this down, though, because it was so good and I wanted to share it.

I hope you are able to come by and pick up some Burbee’s Golden Beets, and enjoy this piquant salad, full of the promise of summer!

Oliview Farm’s Golden Summer Days Salad

Ingredients (serves 3-4):

• 2 medium-sized carrots

• 4 medium-sized beets

• 4 T. lime juice (from about 1 lime)

• 1 T. dried onion (I like the deep savoriness that dried onion gives, but feel free to use fresh!)

• 1/2 t. salt

• 1/2 of a Serrano chile, chopped fine

• 1.5 inches of ginger root, chopped fine (you could probably use dried/powdered ginger, here - I’d say maybe 1-2 t.)

• 4 T. mayonnaise (extra points for making your own with Oliview olive oil!)

Instructions:

1. Into a measuring cup, pour the lime juice and add the dried onion. Let this sit to slightly rehydrate the onion.

2. Coarsely grate the carrots and beets and mix into a bowl that will hold them both.

3. Chop the Serrano chile and ginger root finely (I use a mini cuisinart). Mix these into the lime juice mixture, and also add the salt and mayonnaise. Whisk this together until it is completely mixed and nicely emulsified, and then pour it over the carrot-beet mixture. Mix well and enjoy with some of the beet greens - delicious!

Oliview Farm’s Golden Days Salad: I’ve been enjoying this with some slices of apple and havarti to provide the boost I need midday - both from an energy standpoint and psychologically!

Herbal Teas

It's the season of beautiful herbs! While many of the herbs we grow at Oliview are rated as "drought tolerant", that really just means that we won't kill those plants if we forget to water them for a few 110-degree days... not that they thrive in hot, dry conditions. In fact, the conditions they love are happening right now: cool nights, evenly moist soil from the rain, and warm - not hot - days. The thyme is big, bushy, and with beautifully green, moist leaves. The culinary sage even bloomed this spring (it generally blooms once every couple of years)! Lemon balm looks shiny and just so luscious. Roses are prolific this time of year, and the calendulas have been popping up as if we have the perfect conditions... because, for now, we do!

An herbal vignette: feverfew, roses, sage, comfrey, scented geranium, and lemon balm... all 30 feet from my front door!

A bunch of herbal tea ingredients - so pretty!

Some of these herbs I do end up drying for use throughout the year, but some of them are only good fresh. Soooo...

With nights that are still cool, I love herbal teas as I wind down and get ready for a good night's rest. And I'm not the only one: Sunset featured this article in the latest issue, and I found a great BHG article on planting a garden to supply herbal tea. It's a popular sport! My favourite is a mix of lemon balm with calendula flowers and some rose petals: it's beautiful, light, and sets the perfect tone for sweet dreams. A sage leaf or sprig of rosemary two adds some throat-clearing power, without overpowering the brew.

I know some people chop or crush the leaves and petals, but I don't do that. I do use just-off-boiling water, though, and let it steep for about 10 minutes. It's so beautiful in the pot!

A little cup of tea is the perfect accompaniment to a biscotti and a good book before bed. Sweet dreams!

- Elizabeth

Our First Cabbages!

It has taken all of my childhood and some of my adult years, but I have been enjoying the complex fresh/bitter flavors of some of the more... challenging vegetables for the last several years. One of those happens to be cabbage. It's a beautiful vegetable in the ground, and if you're about my age, you probably will think of Cabbage Patch Dolls with the following photo, as well:

Mature cabbages, ready for eating!

It's my pleasure to be doing some fun things with cabbage this year, now that we've finally figured out how to grow it (starting it WAY earlier than we thought, and being very, very patient). I made some great kraut last month, but I also made a cabbage soup. French onion is one of my favorite foods, and I couldn't get a similar version with cabbage out of my head. It turns out that I was right - cabbage soup has a lovely flavor, and is quite similar, though quicker and not as pretty, to French onion. 

Our first Oliview cabbage! It's not as dense as store cabbages, but is infinately fresher and more satisfying!

I had a medium-small head of cabbage that I chopped up similar to how you might for kraut. I chopped up some onions, too, and LOTS of garlic, sautéed those, and added in the cabbage.

After seeing it soften (though not brown), I added in about 3 cups of chicken broth (from our own chickens, of course!), some thyme, oregano, and tarragon, to play up the French flavors. After boiling for about 15 minutes, I went at it with the immersion blender... which promptly failed me. I did a few rounds in the conventional blender, but it ended up chunkier than I'd planned. This was still pretty good, and a great way to eat a lot of cabbage! I topped it with Gruyere cheese and some of our amazing garlic scape pesto and had myself a fabulous veggie-heavy dinner.

Yay for a mature palate!

- Elizabeth