Hard to believe it’s school season already! My son is off to preschool three mornings a week, so I’m looking forward to some more gardening time. We’ll see how that works out.
I dug up most of the potatoes late last week. I managed to plant only All Blue taters this year (I ran out of room—and time!), and they are lovely. My son and I had a blast digging up all the buried treasure and finding many wonderful brilliant purple spuds. The harvest was better than I expected, and I still have a small portion of the bed to dig. That section is completely covered with rambling squash vines that I don’t want to disturb.
Of course, having such a fresh and unusually purple harvest, led me straight to the kitchen to see how this season’s harvest would cook up. I scrubbed them up, sliced them thin, and tossed them with some thin onion slices, olive oil, fresh chopped rosemary, cracked pepper and a bit of salt. Wrapped the whole kit and caboodle in parchment paper then aluminum foil and tossed it on the grill for 15 minutes on each side. Delish!
I served them with a piece of grilled salmon and some steamed Music green beans. The only negative about these spuds is their tendency to turn a bit gray after cooking, but leaving the purple skins on seems to remind everyone that they are indeed a lovely lavender inside and not a drab grey. Nice texture and flavor, too!
In the picture above, you can see another bit of our funky harvest this year. The Purple Dragon carrots came in a seed mix with Yellowstone and Scarlet Nantes. It’s been fun to pull up a shovelful of carrots and see what colors come up. I love the idea of seed mixes, because I would never use a full seed packet of each of the separate colors in a single season. Having them premixed means I only have to buy one packet and I can get fresh seeds every year. I got this mix (and several others—including a watermelon seed mix, several different zinnia mixes and a winter squash from Renee’s Garden Seeds. I’ve had great luck with them all.
