I’ve never managed to overwinter a rosemary plant, so I’ve been harvesting the branches for a week or so. Tonight it’s supposed to go down to 32, so I finished up this afternoon.
After drying the branches on parchment paper for a couple days, it’s easy to peel most of the herb off. I don’t worry about getting every single blade of rosemary off because I’ll throw the stalks into stock pots.
Today I made potato leek soup. Good for a raw, rainy day like today.
We’re at the point in our shopping cycle when we’re “eating down the fridge.” Like to see it get fairly empty before stocking up again. It becomes a little bit of a game
This salad from last week was good, unusual for us. Butternut, chic peas, and cauliflower gave it a hearty, main course feel. There’s feta cheese and lots of escarole too. Obviously I used the ingredient list below as inspiration but not gospel.
Here it is served with salmon, rice, leftover coleslaw and peas, but really the salad could’ve been the main course.
Also last week, I tried out a new recipe for a root veggie gratin. Parsnips, rutabaga, turnips, and potatoes mashed up and then baked with Gruyère, Parmesan and some cream. I didn’t really like it maybe because of the texture. A little ick. Unfortunately, we have a ton leftover.
The best part of making that dish, honestly, was the comical grocery store scene. “Charlie! What’s this?” (holding the bulb aloft). Charlie: “Rutabaga! Code ####.” “Charlie! What’s this?” “Turnip! Code ####.” Of course I was naming them too but Charlie could supply the codes.
I often buy vegetables the clerks can’t identify. Endive. Ancho peppers. Broccoli rabe. Not sure if that says more about me or them.
Dee~ I love reading about your cooking adventures. Aspects of the salad really caught my imagination. Your photos make it all shine and look so tempting.
The walk at city park has so many rosemary bushes! J. always rubs a pinch between his fingers for us to get an even deeper whiff. Rosemary and sage, my two favs. We had some planted at the old place and have talked about patio planters for here…the smell alone make the world a better place. 🙂
California offers an obscenity of riches when it comes to rosemary. It surprises me every time I walk my brother’s street. And I do the same thing as J — brushing the shrubs to release the scent and get a touch of fragrant oil on my fingers.
Can’t wait to make this salad!
We have a rather large old rosemary. Very tough. It came with the house – was already big – 10 years ago. This is in NJ (still not as great as CA for growing). Maybe this rosemary is why I agreed to buy this house? Or was it the ancient oak?
3 years ago the roofers knocked the rosemary out of its root-hole(?) with their ladder. I was worried andd a very annoyed they didn’t even acknowledge the damage, but I pushed it back down into the hole and propped it up with a broken window box and got bigger than ever this past summer in spite of the drought. There is something about the soil and the light in this one bed that make it great for sage, rosemary and chives, but not parsley.
How lucky you are to have that rosemary shrub. Sometimes I forget that NJ is in a much more forgiving growing zone than New England. Even Long Island is. Glad you were able to save it!
Great food photography … I especially like the pops of vivid red in some of the backgrounds
As for produce codes, Texans are rabid about HEB grocery stores for many reasons (for instance, they are true first responders, with trucks designated for emergency relief during disasters, and most recently they donated $5M to foodbanks in the face of SNAP delays) … on a more mundane note, the stores have scales in the produce section where one can print labels to expedite checkout, all that by way of saying that I have many codes committed to memory (4225 avocado, 4084 artichoke, etc)
I had to look up HEB grocery store. The nearest to me is, guess? San Antonio! I don’t see scales in stores anymore. And why am I not surprised that you can rattle
off many of your veggie codes? (As in: color me impressed).