Food Preserving {Eggplant Cutlets}

Given that this is the first year we've ever had a real vegetable patch to call our own, this is one of the first times we've had to consider how to preserve our precious crop.

Our most abundant crop to date has been the eggplant. We are growing the Black Beauty variety, and they are big and gorgeous. We could have eaten all of the eggplant, if that was the only thing we planned to eat for the next two weeks. Obviously, that is not something we wanted to do. Remember, I am a rationer after all.

My husband loves Eggplant Parmesan. It is probably his favorite dish ever. I can't say that it is my favorite (I'd much rather have a big juicy ribeye), but I definitely love it. 

We thought that the best way to preserve the amazing eggplant plucked from our garden was to make cutlets and freeze the cutlets after they were cooked/fried. 

We have been following a VERY GOOD America's Test Kitchen recipe for eggplant cutlets. The recipe actually calls for white bread pulsed in a food processor rather than any breadcrumbs at all. It is phenomenal.

It was definitely a cook-two-eat-four type of situation for a while there. It was almost like we had never seen food before.

Needless to say, we were sad to Put These Babies in the Corner of our freezer, but it will make meal planning/weekly cooking easier for me, and we can enjoy the eggplant all fall. 

Garden Update {First Eggplants & Peppers}

I thought you'd all enjoy a little garden update. 

We just harvested some of our Black Beauty Eggplant! Naturally, I took some glamor shots.....

 

Don't they look amazing!!! We are very excited, and have grand plans of drinking lots of wine and making batches of eggplant cutlets to freeze. 
 

We also harvested some Red Marconi Peppers. I have never had these peppers before, but they are supposed to be sweet. We couldn't find Red Bell Pepper seeds ANYWHERE so there were a suggestion. Not sure what we will do with them yet, Husband suggested that I figure it out soon though. Red Bell Peppers are good in stir fries, quesadillas, and fajitas, right? Maybe I'll just chop them into their appropriate size for the dish and freeze them. 
 

This one was especially perfect! 

Hope you enjoyed.

HOLLER!

Garden!

Hiiii! We have been thoroughly enjoying our garden. Hubbs is out there for probably 3 hours a day, minimum. I think that if he could, he would sit out there all day and just watch the plants grow. I don't have a full blown garden update, but I can show you the last of the lettuce that we harvested, and some carrots. 

Here is our Big Boston lettuce and some carrots! The carrots were pretty small, smaller than we anticipated. Chris (Husband) said that our soil was soooooo sooooo hard that the carrots might not have been able to get through. Same thing happened to our beets and radishes, that didn't even make their way to the blog because they were nothing. 

Our Big Boston was amazing. I am not sure if it was supposed to form a tighter head, but either way there was plenty of lettuce for a salad. 
 

 

The other lettuces we had growing in the garden were Flame and Tango. They were both leaf lettuces, rather than head like the Big Boston. This was the final time we harvested those two lettuces, we have probably had 5 salads total from the leaf lettuce. Here is the last of it, and man does it look amazing!! It really did so well. 

(Flame)

 (Tango)

There is our most recent harvest. We have also harvested bush peas, not sure of the variety, but we ate them raw in salads and they were deliciously sweet.

Hope you enjoyed!

HOLLER!

A Little Late ... Peonies!

I know that I am about 2 weeks late with this update, but I thought that I'd give my peonies a little love on the blog.

I was seriously soooo excited to see the peonies in our new house bloom for the very first time since we moved in less than a year ago. Like everyone else on the planet, I think peonies are just gorgeous. Here are our pretties:

 

But of course, I had to make a bouquet with a select few stems. I thought they would look wicked nice in a sterling silver water pitcher.... 

HOLLER!

Garden Update

Another Sunday garden update for you!

We planted some nasturtiums in pots near our front door. I am seriously in love with these flowers. Well, I actually haven't seen the blooms yet, but the leaves are just gorgeous. They are like something I've never seen before. They look like miniature lily pads.  Apparently both the leaves and flowers are edible and taste amazing. We'll see/taste!

Clematis is quite active, climbing like a maniac!

 Our Pear Tree is looking amazingggg!

Our Pixie Crunch apple tree.

Our Goldrush apple tree.

Our Macintosh apple tree.

Our Liberty apple tree is a semi-dwarf and a little ahead of the others. It has some nice looking apples on it! 

 

Raspberries are looking better. They still aren't growing as much as I thought they would. They are definitely doing better though. Some of the canes even have some runners.

Our lettuces are doing very well!

Peas!

Broccoli!

Beets!

Radishes!

 Carrots!

Potatoes!

Zucchini!

Zinnias!

Cucumbers!

New England Pie Pumpkin!

Basil!

Rhododendrons!

Red Currants!

Strawberries!

Habanero Peppers!

 Rhubarb!

 

Some pretty tree that we have in the backyard...

Peonies!

Look how many buds there are!

That's the garden update for this week. Hope you enjoyed.

HOLLER!