When we recently returned from vacation, there was hardly anything in our fridge to eat the next morning: a half-dozen eggs, 2 medium red onions, a couple of cloves of garlic. For breakfast the next morning, I caramelized the red onions with garlic, then de-glazed the onions with balsamic vinegar before adding the eggs… the result was delicious! I topped the eggs with some basil right from our garden, and we had a lovely breakfast indeed.
Here’s how:
Our garden continues to grow apace. The tomato plants have gotten tall, and so, as they fruit tomatoes and some of their branches weigh down, we’ve had to find ways to secure the plants — we’ve put stakes, tied a couple to the balcony railing itself, and added a cage around one pot. The tomatoes seem sensitive to changes in temperature, and we found a few baby tomatoes sadly rotting… but all in all they look great and there are quite a few tomatoes growing healthfully.
Here’s one of the big ones:
The basils are doing fabulously — we’ve already made several batches of fresh pesto (paleo version), and have used them in sauces as well as scrambled eggs. They keep growing back and then some. It’s wonderful to be able to just step out onto the balcony and harvest our own basil as needed! The thyme and sage are doing, well, too, and have been useful in cooking. It’s a very satisfying feeling to have a herb garden that proves useful in daily cooking.
My current garden excitement are the shishito peppers — they look gorgeous, and more keep growing… I can’t wait to eat them! I planted them solely because I love grilled shishito peppers and thought it would be great if we could just grow them ourselves and not have to pay for them. We weren’t confident how well they’d do, but they seem to be doing very well. Although I suspect that their pepper growth will not keep up with my appetite, I am impressed with how well they are doing.
I went through a meatball-making phase about a month ago, venturing out beyond my regular beef meatballs and turkey meatballs I’ve made in the past. One of the new versions of the meatball I made was a veal/pork one. The basic method of making the meatball is the same — but the change-up in the ingredients makes for a new meatball tasting experience. The veal/pork combination tastes a little sweeter and perhaps more tender in some ways than straightforward beef — we particularly enjoyed the cilantro/habañero pairing with the meats in this variation of the meatball . (If you are not a fan of cilantro, you can use parsley.)
eat. live. paleo. 