Escarole Soup

I tried for my first new recipe using Escarole.



Ingredients:

• tiny bit of chopped salt pork, 3 chicken drumsticks, 2 mild italian sausages
• chopped parsley, oregano
• chicken stock and water
• 1 can of cannelinni beans
• 3 cloves of garlic thickly sliced
• 1-2 heads of escarole
  

Cook the salt pork down till the fat melts and the pieces are brown. In the fat, brown your chicken legs and sausages. When cooked, allow to cool and dice meat up. In the same pot, now cook the garlic, parsley and oregano. Do not let the garlic brown. Put the chopped meat back in. Let it all heat back up. Gently add chicken stock while stirring..I eyeball everything. If I had to guess I think it's about 1-2 cups. Add some water too because stock can be salty. Just enough so that the meat is covered. Simmer for a while. Add the chopped escarole and beans.

I cooked some tiny pasta to eat the soup over. Enjoy!

Broccoli Heads

I was wondering when the broccoli would start forming heads since I really need to make room for my tomatoes. I stumbled outside today and to my surprise, they have heads!


I have 8 plants. Once I harvest them, I'm going to thin them out to maybe just 1-2 plants. I'm going to keep the 1-2 plants for the side shoots which form more baby heads of broccoli. I'll freeze them for the winter.


Pickling type cucumbers. I thinned them out to 4 plants. I don't know where I'm going to plant the English cucumbers this year. I also have Armenian cucumber seeds too. Oh my!


Pole beans are really developing. I'm not sure if I'm suppose to cut the first two sets of leaves back to promote upper growth. I'll have to look into that.


Here are the Patty pan squash, yellow squash, watermelon and sunflower seedlings. When the squash get a real set of leaves, I'll plant them out into the garden. I'm not sure where yet either. They get so wide that there is never enough room.

Kale and Escarole Recipes

I have a whole lotta kale and escarole from the garden, so I'm looking up recipes to use it all up. It's a great way to really get me cooking different things and try new recipes.

Using cooks.com, I looked up some recipes using Kale or Escarole. Below are a few that I would like to try.

Kale has a distinct flavor, but it soaks up whatever flavor it's cooked in. I tend to agree with cooking kale in chicken broth and some garlic. It holds up nicely too as a side dish. It's heartier than spinach, but not as tough as collards.

Portuguese Kale Soup
Kale and panchetta

The only way I know how to use escarole is to cook it down in soups. Escarole has the texture of lettuce, but is bitter tasting if you just sauteed it. I always make some variation of escarole-n-chicken soup or escarole-n-sausage soup.

Escarole and Lemon Sauce
Italian Minestra (soup)
Baked Escarole Parmigiana
Escarole Pie


Escarole before I harvested them today.


Basil likes escarole!

Lettuces

Here's an update on the raised bed along the side of the house. The lettuces and such are growing in nicely.


Wide shot of the bed


Bok choy


Radishes (top) and Lettuce (bottom)


Irises


Basil

Fairytale Eggplant

It's been a really busy weekend. On Friday, I received 3 Fairytale eggplants that I ordered last year from Burpee. I kept them watered, but they were drying out quick in the little pots they came in. I debated whether I should plant them outside or not since low temperatures at night are still expected. Ultimately, I decided to plant them anyway. It's better than leaving them to dry out and die.



I pulled out the sugar snap pea plants and planted the eggplants there instead. I sacrificed the peas since I know I can plant more in the fall. I buried the pea plants into the soil since they provide nitrogen to the soil when they die. When I dug the hole for the eggplants, I filled it with extra compost. To the left is the kale which I have been harvesting for dinner to make room for the other plants.

Happy Hump Day

It's rained and it's chilly! It's a good thing I haven't put out the summer seedlings yet. The cold weather crops are doing great!


Kale and peas. I harvested some kale for dinner last night. It was delicious!


Escarole - They are about 8" in diameter now with lots of leaves! The little 4 leaf seedlings next to them are zinnias.


Broccoli is getting really big. I noticed some holes in the leaves. I'm not sure what to do about them. I read I can use row covers. I might do that.


Radishes and lettuce.


Bok choy - They are starting to look like bok choy now.


Spinach

My tomato and pepper plants inside the house are doing well. The tomatoes are really tall. The peppers are still slow, but they seem to be doing better since I gave them a larger pot. I'm sure the heat that we're getting this weekend will help.

FREE Seedlings!

Basil helped me give away my extra seedlings. Someone almost took Basil having mistaken him for a delicious herb she wanted to use for salads. Just kidding!



I put out all the extra seedlings that I can't use. In 20 mins, the neighbors had divided them amongst themselves and everything was gone!

It was a beautiful day to work outside yesterday. I planted some zinnias into the bed with my cucumbers and escarole. I repotted the pepper plants into large containers and started my squashes and watermelon seeds. I picked up some Verbena, Lantana, and Coleus for my planters on the deck.

The forecast is showing a week of raining which is great for the garden. It's quite chilly so I brought my other seedlings back inside instead of keeping them outside to harden off.