From the garden to the kitchen

We don't go to the garden as often as we used to any more.  These days, it has been raining and grey and cloudy so the plants would have more than enough water.  Besides, we don't really want to go out in such dreary weather.  All I am worried about is always the weeds.  My fear is that the weeds would take over the garden and grow all over our veggies, herbs and flowers.

Yesterday, the sky cleared enough for us to brisk walk there to plant some Asters, a type of fower, that I had sown on my balcony.  When we got there, we were pleasantly surprised.  Finally the garden has shown some life.  A large part of it is due to the weeds but we were happy that our vegetables have done just as well. 

The lettuce beds are full of healthy, juicy leaves.  The potatoes have continued to grow.  The row of carrots have such long, healthy leaves growing above the ground.  The two surviving cucumber plants have even started flowering.  The squash plants have done very well, too.  Lots of yellow flowers are blooming and we found some beautiful, long squash growing from them. 

This week, we didn't buy a lot of vegetables and since the babies are doing so well, we decided to take some home.  We picked the biggest squash, pulled up a potato plant and some lettuce.  We also picked some baby carrots.  They could leave them to grow even more but we had to thin them anyway, so that the remaining carrots would have more room to grow.  So the baby carrots went into our bountiful basket.

With the vegetables, I decided to make a light summer salad with a quick, tangy dressing made with mayonnaise, mustard and lemon juice.  Soft, boiled eggs rounded off our light lunch.



squash and baby carrots



hand-picked lettuce



chopped squash



a thorough wash and a couple of whirls in the salad spinner and the lettuce is ready



the almost ready salad



the dripping yolk and creamy dressing made the salad even better