Harvest Monday - April 25, 2011

The local news mentioned snow in our mountain passes and that we shouldn't be expecting it to warm up much here any time soon either. The weather guy went on to say that unless we get some sort of warming trend, which, by the way, turns out to be extremely doubtful, this month will most likely go down in our record books as the coldest April in recorded history. No wonder another Harvest Monday has rolled around and all that's available for harvest from my garden is over-wintered leeks, salad burnet and a few small snips of herbs.

My friend Dena was visiting and loves to cook, so made one of her favorite dishes with some of this week's harvest. It was fun having an opportunity to share my kitchen with an enthusiastic cook who loves being creative with recipes and ingredients. When I told her about Daphne's Harvest Monday project, she thought it sounded fun and welcomed the challenge.

She started with the leeks. First slicing, then frying them in bacon grease, this would not necessarily be a dish for someone with the goal of weight loss.

Then she sliced a red onion and cooked that up with the leek. Next, she sliced up a big pack of cheese and fruit sausages. Adding them to the pan, she cooked them through. Unfortunately, after reading the package label for the sausage, we discovered that they contained both pepper and paprika. With a severe allergy to capsicum, unfortunately, I would not able to even try this dish. She said she makes it all the time and absolutely loves it. I thought it smelled so good.

Having planned a picnic and hike at Tennant Lake and Hovander Homestead Park for lunch that day, she made up Salad Burnet Egg Salad for us to take. The cucumber flavor of the salad burnet was a wonderful addition to the egg salad. You can read all about our picnic and hike here - Really Rose Blog - Tennant Lake and Hovander Homestead.

With the intention of making Fresh Herbed Whole Crackers, we visited my garden and snipped a few assorted herbs - sage, oregano, mint and rosemary - and pulled up a few green garlics from a small bed in my Garden Nbr. 01 where I had deliberately planted garlics too close so that I could use the green ones fresh as I thinned them out. The green garlics looked almost like green onions and are absolutely packed full of garlic juice with a very good garlic flavor.

Starting with my basic recipe for Stone Ground Whole Wheat Crackers (go - HERE - for that recipe), we substituted assorted fresh garden herbs (I also added some purchased sesame seeds that I had on hand) and minced the green garlic for the 1/4 cup of cheese required in that recipe. We also added a few raisins, making the crackers somewhat savory. I would recommend dicing the raisins rather than leaving them whole as I did this time. The dough is rolled out thin, so when forming the crackers, the raisins tended to stick up a bit more than I had anticipated.

We also heated 2 tablespoons of olive oil mixed with a couple more minced garlic cloves, and brushed that over some of the dough after it was rolled out. With my rolling pin, the garlic bits were gently pressed into the top of the cracker dough before we cut the crackers out. That tray of crackers definitely had garlic in every bite.

As it turned out, these Fresh Garden Herbed Whole Crackers went exceptionally well with the Salad Burnet Egg Salad.

Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions set up Harvest Monday as a way for garden bloggers to show off their harvests. It sounded fun, and a great way to challenge myself to be more creative with my harvests - especially this early in the spring. She's got a great garden going herself this year. Check out her blog to see what's growing there, and read about what's being harvested.