From Seed to Table - A Homesteader's Supper

Hey there, it's @idyllwild here! Last night @sagescrub and I had an incredible summer garden meal and it inspired me to start my posts here with some sumptous food porn and a small tour of our garden!

First, let's start with where our ingredients came from...

From a few handful of seeds we grew in the spring came an astounding abundance this summer.

It's hard to believe that just months ago this whole area used to be just grass and mud. If you're curious to know how it all began and how to cultivate such abundance, here are some highlights from @sagescrub's documentation earlier in the season:
Early Spring Garden Update
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@sagescrub/early-spring-homestead-and-garden-update

How To Make Biochar to Increase Soil Fertility
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@sagescrub/how-i-made-biochar-from-a-slash-pile-to-increase-soil-fertility

How to Start Seeds in Flats
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@sagescrub/how-to-how-we-sow-seeds-in-our-flats

How to Make Your Own Seed Starting Medium
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@sagescrub/how-to-a-homemade-seed-starting-medium-aka-potting-soil

How to Make Wood Seed Trays
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@sagescrub/how-to-wooden-flats-for-seed-propagation

Planting Garlic
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@sagescrub/planting-garlic-late-is-better-than-never

As you can see, this abundance is all possible with enthusiasm and hard work. Honestly, we both agreed we actually didn't work that hard. Digging beds was probably the most strenuous part but it took just a few days total. Right now we're mostly cruising...keep up with watering and harvesting.

One thing we were very glad we did early was to mow the grass when it was green (and not yet going to seed) and used it as mulch on our beds. That's been doing wonders in keeping all the weeds at bay. I pull a few weeds here and there and sickle back the edges may be twice a month and that's pretty much our weed management plan. Granted, we also have a different view of "weeds" than most gardeners. They're helping us do a lot of work like tilling soil, attracting native pollinators, providing shade/mulch as well as improving fertility. But I'll get to that in another post. Now, let's get back to the food!

Our homesteader meal was made of these vegetables we grew and harvested:

Our favorite summer squash this summer. This round zuke is a total winner. Sweet, succulent, and tender. We don't really know what variety it is because we picked up the seeds for free from a seed swap.

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Confession: we don't really like lettuce. We actually didn't plan to grow any lettuce this year. I've grown tons of lettuce in the past at Camp Joy Gardens where I apprenticed and learned that lettuce is usually the first to bolt as soon as the weather warms up and get too bitter to eat and so become chicken food. I thought, why bother growing lettuce when you can grow chard or kale? Or better yet perennial kale?

In a classic twist of fate, we ended up with a seed contract to grow lettuce (evidently, lots of other people love lettuce). We shrugged and thought, sure why not...at least they don't take up that much space and we squeezed them in between our tomato bed. What do ya know...they grew into gorgeous heads with dark shiny green leaves and we couldn't resist eating them. So, ok romaine lettuce is pretty damn good. But no butter or iceberg. That's where we draw the line.

The size on these tomatillos! They're really good roasted.

This is my favorite pepper of all time. This is a padron. It's sooo good roasted with a little dash of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Padrons are often eaten as tapas in Spain. They're sort of like shisito, but I find the padron skin to be less chewy and more tender. The flavor is deeper too and they get very spicy if you let them grow big.

An essential herb in my garden and in my kitchen is Thai basil. Coming from an Asian background, I often crave the flavors of Asian cuisine and the trick to obtaining those flavors is all in the herbs - mint, Thai basil, ginger, scallions, and lemongrass. We are growing three of these five herbs and overtime will continue to add more as we learn the microclimates of our area.

As I mentioned earlier, we don't think of the "weeds" in our garden as weeds. Here is a really beautiful dandelion that volunteered itself in our garden and for us this is food and medicine. @sagescrub loves the bitterness of dandelion greens (which is good for the liver). I'm still not used to bitters so we cooked the dandelion greens which mellowed the bitterness.

Now that we've gathered all the ingredients. It's time to cook.

I began with roasting the tomatillos and then added ground beef (from a local farm). If you're a vegan, you can substitute the beef with grains like brown rice, lentils, quinoa, or simply use more squash. After the beef has cooked through, I added squash, Thai basil and dandelion greens. I flavored this with a little salt, fish sauce, and homemade cayenne pepper flakes.

Meanwhile, I also heated up a big cast iron to roast the padron peppers to have on the side. This was very simply cooked with a little olive oil.

And that's it! Our homesteader's supper is fresh lettuce wraps with Asian inspired beef and a side of roasted padron peppers. I added a few optional garnishes - shredded carrots (also from our garden) and peanuts (these are store bought but we are growing some as well).

We're amazed and inspired by what nature provides. And it feels incredibly fulfilling to enjoy this abundance in a nourishing meal composed of home grown food. What a wonderful reminder of how we are a part of this earth and how we depend on the health of our land and the life of so many other beings for our sustenance.