What's Growing In The Garden-More Than You Would Think

Even though if you were to look at my garden, you would think hardly anything is growing to eat at this point, we've been incorporating food from it into a lot of meals lately. Having a large herb garden makes this easy.

Today I was thinking about herbs and how easy they are to grow and that how, having them handy, makes you that much better of a cook. Who can reember to pick up fresh thyme when you need it and who wants to pay those crazy prices for it. Besides, most herbs come back each year, they are pretty much no-fuss plants.

This evening we went to our neighbors for the first of their summer cocktail hours and I made this EASY EAST appetizer that everyone LOVES. I've been making it for years and you can mix it up any way you want to.

This is not mine but mine looks just like this with some olive oil on it

Goat Cheese & Herbs

1 log goat cheese-I used a big one because there were 8 people. Microwave this for about 30 seconds-just to make it soft-not to melt it into a glob.

Sprinkle fresh chopped herbs over-Today I used Chives, Dill & Parsley

Drizzle with Olive Oil

Serve with toasted baguette slices-I brushed these with olive oil before I put them into the oven.

People really really tend to like this. You can add minced garlic as well but make sure you've minced it really well, no one likes a mouth full of fresh garlic. I find that the chives usually provide enough of that kind of flavor. It's such a fresh tasting appetizer.

We'v also been eating:

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes (The last of my crop from last year-The rest are being planted for this year) with Chive pesto
Pork tenderloin with Rhubarb Chutney-This one is for you Toni Lynn with all of that rhubarb!! It was a really nice way to make a non-sweet food out of rhubarb.

The best one was the night that I served spicy greens sauteed with bacon. I told my husband they were from the gardnen to which he replied "I didn't think we had any greens ready yet."  to which I answered "Well, we had a lot of dandelions in with the iris....." They were delicious.

In related notes,

I'm planting drying beans this year. I don't really know how this is going to work out becuase I think you need a lot of beans to be able to produce an large enough amount of dried beans to make something out of. I keep wondering if someone I know will grown a large row of beans for me somewhere in their yard that doesn't get a lof of deer..... Probably not... I don't know how many I'm likely to get behind the fence...



French Horticurtural Beans



Also trying to grow sunflowers for their seeds. The seed packet (The very one pictured) says "This humongous variety was developed specifically for large delicious seeds." We'll see.



And finally, in an act of suburban homesteading, I planted the urns in the front of my house with these super cute currant tomatoes, dill, parsley and thyme.