Harvesting and Salvaging

We are picking green beans every other day, cooking them the third day.  All from the 2/3 of our 4 x 4 plot.  The beans have been marvelous; tender and bursting with green beaniness.  Several of the onions have been sacrificed to the alter of the beans and all to the good.

But the onion flowers have been an amazing surprise in the garden this year.  Perfect, round and white.  With the most incredibly fleshy stem rising up to support them.  Combined with the trellis we added for the cucumber it has made a  very picturesque scene.

My current obsession is the tomatoes.  Green tomatoes.  Fried green tomatoes.  I bought a bag of Hodgson Mill organic Cornmeal just for these tomatoes.  And it makes really good corn tortillas.  And Cornbread.  And Johnnycakes.  It does not make the best polenta because it is so finely ground.  But it's not bad with enough Parmesan and butter.  Wow - I am thinking johnnycakes with maple syrup for breakfast tomorrow!

Big Flashing Red Alert!!  My raspberries are disappearing!!  I had three (3) ripe raspberries this morning and tonight there are none!!!  I think it is the birds......thinking about a cat.

                     
This recipe came from Yankee Cooking and is my favorite.

                               Johnnycakes
Serving Size  : 8  

1 cup  Stone ground whole grain cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon  salt
1  teaspoon  sugar
boiling water
milk

Combine first three ingredients. Pour boiling water over mixture very slowly, adding just enough to swell the meal. Let it sit several minutes, then add enough milk so mixture will drop from a spoon. Heat greased pancake griddle or iron skillet and spoon batter onto hot surface. Turn to brown other side. Serve with maple syrup and butter.

NOTES : Some New England cooks make johnnycakes from white or yellow cornmeal, but many prefer a special johnnycake meal that is milled in Rhode Island. In 1906 Charles Kenyon purchased a mill built in 1886 and expanded what had been a local miller's trade into a commercial business. Today the mill still supplies many New England kitchens with johnnycake meal, plus an assortment of other stone-ground flours.