Thursday, July 17, 2008

Left-Overs: Polenta and Tomato Soup

We are getting ready to camp for a few days over the weekend, so I'm cleaning out my refrigerator. That means using up odds and ends so they will not go to waste - left over polenta; broccolini-onion-garlic-cauliflower slaw; stewed tomatoes and corn; ground saussage; one pita bread disc; and buffalo wing cheddar cheese curds (Yancey's Fancy's New York Artisan Cheese). Odds and ends just waiting for an experiment.

I had a small amount of left-over gravy made with pan-drippings, nutmeg and coconut milk so I made that the base for the Tomato Soup.
Then, I added parsley, oregano, sauteed onion and sausage, a bit of fresh sauteed garlic, and croutons made from pan-fried cubes of pita bread. Those were great paired with the cheddar cheese curds and I put them on top of the bowls of soup.
The polenta (on the far bottom left) fries up within minutes, leaving the tops browned and flavorful.

The vegetable hash also is fried in olive oil, and seasoned with oregano, sage leaves and flowers from my garden, garlic and bacon. I get all the ingredients chopped before I stir-fry.
Green onions, parsley, oregano, broccolini and calendula blossoms all add fragrance and color to stir-frys and salads.
These are oregano blossoms, which are beautiful in a salad.

We've been enjoying beet greens on a daily basis,
picking only the leaves so the root can stay in the ground and get bigger. Next week I'll pull quite a few of them, and pickle them with a Harvard Beet Sauce. Years ago when I had a surplus of beets I used to can the beets in this sauce. Now, we just eat them up every day!

My garden plot is a five-block walk from the house, at Franklin Park Community Garden. I go over daily to water and to pull lettuce, snow-pe
as, broccolini and kale. This year I've used every bit of my produce with nothing going to waste. These broccolini were chopped into salads and stir-frys. I made a large bouquet with them, keeping it on my patio until I was ready to use it. As the flowers faded the seed pods developed and elongated - I chopped them up to use as a sprinkling over rice.

Not to see a good thing go to waste, I picked a huge bouquet of sweet peas that were growing down in a ravine at Franklin Park. Mostly pinks, but a few whites were there too. I couldn't help but enjoy their effulgence in a big bouquet for my kitchen window. This last shot is one of their backsides, turned toward the light. Ah, the colors of summertime!