You've Been Chopped "Garden Style"

[TiggerToo]

Time for a quarterly contest!!
For this one, here is what I have in mind!

Spring is near and we have been actively planning our gardens!! If any of you have ever seen the Food Network TV Show Chopped, we are going to do a "play" on this theme.

1) Post the items you will be planting in your garden.
2) Create a "meal" from those ingredients, and tell me what that meal is going to be. Make up an actual or pretend recipe

Have fun with your concoction, because I know some of you will be planting strictly Flower beds....but you know you can eat some flowers.

The contest will run through March 16th . Sorry for such a long contest but I am going out of town next week and will be coming back on the 15th!

Whatcha gonna win????
An potluck envie of 25 Non-insert Qs and a $10.00 GC to one store of your choosing (the winner picks from the list below):

Home Depot
Lowes
Bachmans
Target
Walmart

I will pick a winner at 8:00 pm CST on March 16th through random.org

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nascar88]

I just wanted to say....

Awesome Idea...

And thanks for doing it....

[stephpinktree]

I planning on planting onions, potatoes, peppers, lettuce, herbs, beans, tomatoes, and flowers. I take my onions, potatoes, peppers, beans, and some herbs to make some vegetable soup. I add water and it makes its own stock. My husband's father will also use them and make his signature vegetable soup.

[Amalgamate]

Thanks for doing this! I'm going to *try* growing a wide variety - lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, cauliflower, kohl rabi (though I don't know what to do with this yet...), broccoli, winter squash, corn, pumpkins, bell peppers, herbs, watermelon, cantaloupe, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, peas, green beans, lima beans, and carrots. I also have a couple of apple trees, peach trees, and pecan trees.

I'm going to try my hand at canning homemade spaghetti sauce (loaded with extra veggies like zucchini but I haven't decided on the exact recipe yet) and use it over the spaghetti squash. I'm allergic to wheat, so I discovered I like squash in place of pasta. I figure some good salads will come out of the garden - a typical lettuce, tomato, carrot, and cucumber salad. And I love spinach, strawberry, and pecan salads! Salads with a side of watermelon or cantaloupe slices - that's a cool, refreshing lunch when I'm working out in the hot sun.

A dinner of produce sounds delicious - grilled corn on the cob with slices of grilled squash, roasted carrots and peppers, and steamed broccoli. Dessert would be grilled peaches drizzled with honey from a neighbor. You've made me hungry thinking about all of the possibilities!

I also love smoothies for breakfast - a handful of berries blended with an apple and cauliflower for that extra boost of veggies. Delicious! Or peaches, strawberries, a carrot, ice, and a little honey. Yum.

[heartse]

I am planting several sruits and veggies this year - tomatoes, onions, peppers (seedlings have been started), carrots, garlic, potatoes, squash (yellow and butternut), lettuce, cukes, pumpkins, watermelon, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.

I make a mean squash bread that I got from allrecipes.com, but I have modified it a bit.

3 eggs, beaten
2 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups shredded summer squash

Top with 3/4 cup oatmeal, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter and 2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the eggs until fluffy. Beat in the sugar, oil, and vanilla. Gradually mix in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Fold in the squash. Transfer to the prepared baking dish.
3. Bake 45 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

I am also planning on trying my hand at making jams from the berries... and maybe something with the watermelon if I can come up with it.

I LOVE gardening! My DH is making another raised bed for me... I can't wait to have the third.

[floppydee]

I am planting Kale, Chard, Toms (Heirloom), Cukes, Squash, Beans, Carrots, Peppers, Loads of Lettuce and Brussel Sprouts. We also have a separate area for Strawberries and an herb/rock garden. We plant thyme, rosemary and lemon balm, etc in between the rocks...it comes out gorgeous!

This will be our first year experimenting with watermelons on our back hillside.

I have many recipes from Kale Chips, to green smoothies, to salsa to soups and salads. However this year is my first attempt at making my own baby food from scratch! My little one will be born in a few weeks, so I am excited she will be starting solids around the same time everything is ready to be harvested! I won't be able to do much fruit from my own garden, but to just know her veggies came from mommy's garden, is really going to make me sooo happy ;)

Good luck everyone...be nice to us Mother Nature!!

[Gardencook]

We always grow a lot of greens: several varieties of kale, Swiss Chard, spinach, mustard, turnip greens, French sorrel and Asian greens like mizuna, pak choy, and typhon. They are ripe about the same time as the green onions grown from sets.
Pea pods are coming along about then, as well, but rat tail radish pods grow a lot more readily in our climate. Usually have to buy the celery, peppers and carrots in early spring.
Later in the season, we've got more selection, including summer squash and farmer's market veggies.
We feast on stir-fries!
Love to use toasted sesame oil with a little Mongolian fire or chili oil as the frying oil, add little soy sauce and then toss in toasted sesame seeds at the last minute.
Another favorite is to add canned pineapple and make a sauce of the drained pineapple juice, soy sauce and cornstarch. Toasted slivered almonds are great on top of that.
Chicken broth with soy sauce, thickened with corn starch and a LOT of celery in the mix is another favorite.
Since the rhubarb is usually going strong in spring and early summer, a rhubarb crisp sweetened with frozen apple juice concentrate instead of sugar hits the spot for dessert.
I agree entirely with Amalgamate on the homemade tomato sauce over spaghetti squash. I roast my tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic with some olive oil and white wine. Then toss it in the food processor, seeds, skins and all. It can also be run through a Foley mill, but we like sauce chunky. Just had homegrown spaghetti squash for dinner again a few nights ago, but had to settle for bottled sauce this time of year.
Finally, grew spaghetti squash at the base of the tomato plants along a brick wall last year and they loved growing together. The wall kept things nice and warm, while the squash shaded and insulated the soil, keeping it from drying out.

[TiggerToo]

Bump for more entries!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nlowndes]

We are planting tomatoes, jalapenos, green peppers, habaneros, onions, cilantro, dill, potatoes, carrots, strawberries and corn.

We will be making lots of salsa this year. (We made one last year and around the beginning of December were very sad when it ran out!)

Looking forward to the traditional, hot and mild salsa, but this year will also be doing a pineapple salsa, mango salsa and strawberry salsa (hopefully it tastes as good as it sounds!)

[TiggerToo]

Bumpin for more entries!!