Bits From the Garden

My husband has always expressed an interest in gardening.  The progression/obsession started shortly after we met with a few tomato plants and some peas.  Now, almost ten years later he's gone completely nuts with it and has somewhere around fourteen 4'x10' raised beds covering our yard.  And that doesn't count the greenhouse full of tomatoes and peppers.  Oh, or the mounds out past the deck full of zucchini plants.

Since our summer has gotten off to a rather slow start, we are still stuck in the salad-and-greens phase of things.  I'm not complaining, mind you!  We've got four different kinds of head lettuce (it hasn't been warm enough to make it bolt and go bitter...), a very pungent variety of wild arugula, two varieties of kale, and "bright lights" swiss chard in colors that ought not appear in nature.  And don't forget the radishes.  We're on our fourth harvest of french breakfast radishes.  Give me a few more days and I'll never want to see a radish again...

A few nights ago I set out to make a salad for dinner but didn't have much to gussy up the plain lettuces, so I decided to take bits and pieces from most of the plants...  We had red and green leaf lettuce, wild arugula, and baby kale and chard leaves as the base.  To bring some excitement, I added marjoram, thyme, fronds from carrot tops, pea tendrils, blossoms from rapini that was far too young to be flowering, and radish roots and leaves.  I topped it off with some Bulgarian sheep's milk feta, sherry vinegar, Spanish olive oil, and brined olives.  Somehow, it's more satisfying when you grow it yourself.