21 Comments

What's your favorite salad ingredient to eat right out of the garden?

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Spring onions.

Thanks for your paean to backyard foraging!

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You're welcome! And yes, spring onions are just the thing after a long winter.

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Carrots!

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Carrots are a star in our garden.

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Arugula

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One of my favorite greens. It's great with walnuts for pesto, too.

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Yes! I’m liking it with nuts, goat cheese, and dried cranberries lately. Also, just bought a 5 lb bag of pepitas for salads, so your brine suggestion is timely. 😊

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Awesome. Enjoy!

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Ways up for some new suggestions, and thanks to you there are plenty. I’ll definitely be trying the pumpkin seed in brine. Thank you Lisa

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Sure thing, Sally! It's delicious, even using simply filtered water with sea salt, just a 1/2 to 1 tsp in a quart jar, to your liking.

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A cool thing about this yard farming, salad story is that people can have a second chance to get most of the cool weather leaves and ingredients in the fall.

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Too true! And thanks for the restack.

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A pedigree to make salad? To grow some vegetables? That is part of the problem that Computer Tech had created. That people need to Google everything." That people no longer trust what they learned from parents and older generations.

Trust them.

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Yeah, and for some of us, we can’t draw on knowledge from our parents because the Baby Boomers abandoned all of that legacy, so it’s not passed down.

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I love the way you’ve written this. And the tip on soaking the seeds in brine! Wow, that sounds so good. I recently made kraut with choko so that gives a lot of brine which I didn’t want to throw away, now I know what to do with it!!

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Thank you so much; I really appreciate that positive feedback. I wish you happy brine projects!

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It’s been very rainy here for about two months and my mint has gone insane! I know it spreads like a weed but my patch is small and it started to crowd out the sage and the lemon thyme. The mint is a mutant at this point, a hybrid of three or four different types of. Apparently this has proven genetically advantageous! At other end , I’m trying to get the yearly basil going. I’ve got some of the standard Italian style in. I’ll aim to get some purple and Thai in. Oh I just realized the mint took over where the parsley was. Anyway oregano and marjoram seem to be thriving.

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Yeah, mint'll do that to you, which is why I planted ours in a bed next to a cement pathway, where it's somewhat restrained. Even still, somehow it migrated halfway across the garden to spring up in a middle of asters! God love ya, mint!

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I agree with the no-recepie cooking. If I am not familiar with preparing something , I'll definitely consult a recipe for ideas/guidelines... otherwise I feel the kitchen is a place to be creative, the dish is a canvas, and its based on how the ingredients feel, I really dont know whats going to happen till I step foot in the kitchen. Thank you for your post, you clearly have a passion for vegetables!

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You’re welcome, Sonya! If today is any indication, I guess you’re right about my passion for vegetables: I spent the morning watering my veg patch and preparing beet kraut. I love what you said about the dish as a canvas, too. Thanks for your comments.

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