Squash Blossoms.

I've been getting a steady supply of raspberries. 1/2 to almost 1 cup per day. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a serving of fruit...and extremely local AND delicious. So far very few have actually made it in the house but I did manage to save enough for 1 cup of raspberry dairy-free icecream the other day (in the tiny Donview 1/2 pint I got at the thrift store). Very nice.

I'm getting about 1-2 servings of peas per week. Next year, I will plant more densely.

I've also had a couple carrots and another beet. This was a nice red and white striped beet (the inside, not the outside, was striped). Milder than the red and didn't "bleed" all over the counter while being sliced. I chopped it fine, along 1 big and 1 tiny (accidental harvest!) of my purple carrots (purple on the outside, orange on the inside), a local garlic clove and a local onion, and fried up in olive oil. I put in a bit of lime thyme and cilantro and parsley from the garden along with the carrot tops chopped fine (related to parsley and taste like very mild parsley), and the beet greens chopped super fine. I mixed in some jasmine rice left over from a few days ago and let the whole mess steam for a few minutes. It is delicious. I was tempted to pick one of my peppers but I'm trying to save the first ones for seed so I can try to get an early variety going.

Other recent treat from the garden!!!!
Squash blossoms for brunch today. Note to self...before picking be SURE the GIANT BEE is not in the bloom. He/She was pissed. I froze for a minute until it found a new bloom to snack on. I picked about 6 blooms from at least 2 different plants (hard to differentiate the plants). All but 1 were open and had potentially already polinated someone. Obviously, I only picked the male blooms since picking the female ones would mean fewer squash at the end of the year. I had read recipes and come up with the general impression that one should make some sort of wet slurry (eggs, milk, or eggs and milk) and a dry component (flour, bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, corn meal). I had a local egg and local whole wheat flour. I picked a couple of leaves of sage in the garden per Laurie's suggestion (Thanks Laurie! hope all is well with you) and chopped those in to the flour. Then, put in a tiny bit of nutmeg because it smells delicious fried. Heated some of that goat butter in a heavy skillet. Dipped one bloom at a time in the beaten egg and dredged in the seasoned flour, then fried lightly (which means turning the heat on and off on my stove since the only settings on the big burner are "off" and "center of the sun") and it worked out fine. I had to replenish the butter now and then since I was being stingy with it. I didn't cut any thing but the stem off the blooms and just a quick dip in water to get big bugs or dirt off, then drained and dipped and fried. They were FREAKING DELICIOUS. Wow. Next time I will try bread crumbs which I will save rather than feed to the worms.