That’s a Wrap! Cooking From the Garden Harvest 2020

So I frequently refer to myself as the Organic Eater, but I don’t often talk about the cooking I do. This fall I made plum salsa, tomato salsa, tomato sauce, a delicious squash soup and a fantastic apple pie filling.

Plum Salsa

I can’t believe I don’t have a picture of the plum salsa, but I do have a picture of the tree from July 21, 2020. I got the recipe from the Delish site from a post of 12 best plum recipes.

Soy Ginger Plum Salsa Yum!

I didn’t have any fresh ginger, but I did have a container of crystalized ginger I had been adding bits of to my granola. And when it marinated in the salsa, it became all soft and added the perfect sweetness to the salsa.

The fun part was I actually had jalapeno peppers which I usually don’t have but they were leftover from the tomato salsa I made in September. I had one lime, and the first batch I made I didn’t have cilantro but I got some the next day because that is key.

I also used Bragg’s aminos for soy sauce in the first batch I made and that was a big mistake. I don’t have soy sauce in the house so the second batch I just left it out. I also didn’t have sesame oil, but I think that would make it much more yummy.

My plums were tiny so I used about 20 in each batch at least. But Let me tell you the longer it sat in the fridge the better it got, that being said it was so yummy it was hard to not eat right away!

I baked the squash in a roasting pan on my woodstove first. I love this type of squash and I saved the seeds for next year.

The squash soup I got from In Jennie’s Kitchen, but of course I did a few things different.

Since I had already roasted my squash in a pan, I started by sautéing a clove of garlic a tiny bit before I added the rest of the ingredients, stirring the whole time.

I didn’t have fresh ginger so I just used powdered ginger that I added along with the bay leaf, tumeric, and I used curry instead of coriander and cumin. I didn’t have lime or red pepper flakes either.

I like to top it with a dollop of fresh yogurt. Vanilla gives it a kind of sweet creamy flavor. And if I have some fresh cilantro I like to put that on top too.

When I reheated the last batch I added some milk to make it creamer.

Delish! I have to confess I didn’t grow these squash but they were given to me by a dear friend who did indeed grow them herself.

Homemade French/Steak Fries

I usually love potato fans, but the other day, I tried making oven baked fries and they were so good!

Apple Pie + Filling/Crisp?!

The other day I processed a 5 gallon bucket of apples from our orchard and made 2 pies, a batch of filling and an apple crisp all from the same recipe I got from the Chunky Chef.

I usually make my own crusts, especially for pumpkin pie, using my favorite quiche crust recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant.

Enchanted Broccoli Forest

But I tried using two frozen pie crusts as a top and bottom for apple and for me, it worked fantastic. Best of all it was so much easier, I made more pies and used up more of the apples, which is important to me!

At the end of baking the pies, I take a 1/4 cup of milk and just drip it over the crust and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. I put it back in for the last 5 minutes.

Some tricks I liked that I just made up on my own:

Squeeze the lemon juice in the bowl before you start to peel the apples.

Grate the butter.

It has to be cold, and it can be difficult to mix in so it’s like grate, mix in, grate some more, mix in, and do it as fast as you can before it melts, which it does surprisingly fast. (And right after I came up with this ingenious idea one day just in a problem solving fix because I was supposed to soften butter and I hadn’t for a completely different recipe and I was like I’m just gonna grate it and it worked great, but sure enough I saw it on the web right after that. So IDK where that idea really came from.)

So I baked the crisp in a cast iron pan in the oven with the two pies. It makes such a great topping for ice cream!

And then I also made a pan of filling in a cast iron pan on the wood stove which I did add about 2 cups of water to that I froze for a future date. So I can thaw it this winter maybe at Christmas and throw a pie in the oven without the mess!

My mom and I argue all the time, why don’t people cook anymore because I say it’s they just don’t want to clean up after. I enjoy cooking, it’s the mess at the end I don’t always appreciate and during the regular school year, I often am only interested in cooking on the weekends if then. My mom made teaching and cooking a lot easier when I was a kid. But we did always call her the Energizer Bunny for a reason I suppose.

And that’s a wrap! Many of you are probably wondering why I gave Aileen the award so early in the year, but it’s because I am taking a break from the Podcast hamster wheel. I feel I will be able to better serve you if I take some time to focus on parts of the show separately.

So November and December I am going to be recording a lot of interviews (speaking of which I am always looking for guests if any of you amazing future growers out there wants to share your story.) I always say new gardeners have great lessons to share because the mistakes are so fresh.

I myself have learned so much this summer – most of all I’m hooked on tomatoes and I’m gonna make sure I baby at least 4 tomato plants next year, PLUS a cherry!

I have been working on a separate post about all the things I plan to do differently next year that will be there for the start of Season III coming out January 2021.

So, unless some special surprises come up between now and January 2021 there are over 350 episodes to binge back on. Thank you SOOOOOO much for listening!