Grow Grow Garden

Y'all may remember that little garden we planted awhile back. Well, time has passed and, surprisingly, we managed to grow a few things! It wasn't spectacular (but it also sounds like this year was rough for lots of gardens in Indiana), but we got enough to eat and make some stuff.

One fun thing we grew this year was tomatillos. Those got blitzed up according to this recipe for salsa verde. It came out pretty great, but maybe a little hotter than I was planning. If we make this again I think I'd only use one jalapeno instead of the two I put in. It's still really good though, and Leslie even used it to make one of my favorite recipes we posted about last year.

Our garden also produced a few chilies, so we decided to do something different with those as well. What did we do? Make hot sauce! We didn't have a lot from the garden, so I supplemented our Habanero, Dragon Cayenne, and Carmen with some Jalapenos and Hungarian Hot Wax. The sauce came out pretty well, I think. It's not overly hot, and is rather sweet actually, but has a good flavor. I haven't used a ton of it yet, but I've enjoyed it so far. Hopefully we'll get a few more chilies next year and can make a bigger, better batch.

We also managed to get some good sized zucchini out of the garden. Leslie made some delicious zucchini bread and we shredded and froze the rest. I'm looking forward to more of that lovely bread all winter.

And lastly, tomatoes. They did about the best of anything in the garden. We ended up with quite a few and decided to try our hand at making some sauce. We blanched them, skinned them, and stuck them in the slow cooker with some onions, garlic, and herbs for a day before blending and freezing it. Ideally we would have canned it, but we don't have canning equipment yet. Maybe that will be our next experiment next year.

Leslie and I are also big fans of bread (in the words of Matt Bellassai, "You don't need people to have fun, you just need warm carbohydrates."), so we will occasionally make a meal out of bread and dips. One of our favorites is a bruschetta recipe with balsamic vinegar (we bust out the good, garlic-cilantro infused stuff for this). This recipe tasted even better this year when we used tomatoes and basil we grew ourselves. Delicious.

And that's about it. We used some more of our garden goods for a new recipe, but that's another post you should be on the lookout for soon. Thanks for reading and we'll see ya soon!