Dealing with a Disappointing Harvest
I visited my pea-patch in the community garden yesterday, and found some rather disappointing results. It’s my fault, I hadn’t visited in a while, and I have been neglecting the need for soil amendments, but I did have a few things to harvest. The problem was—with what was available to me, what could I possibly do?
Here’s my harvest.
- One very large zucchini.
- Fifteen blue lake green beans.
- Six cherry tomatoes.
- A bumper crop of green tomatoes on the vine—so I harvested some to give the vines a better chance with the rest.
- Five extremely large (read: neglected) pickling cucumbers.
So what to do?
Perhaps it was the stress of this underwhelming produce yield, but I felt compelled to mull this matter over some fried food and a beer, pub-style.
And then it hit me, I had exactly what I wanted right in my farm basket… for a perfect plate of pub food.
I sliced the woody cucumber up, and dropped it in a big bowl of iced saltwater to take the bitterness out. (It did nothing for the woody skin, but it wasn’t too bad, and I could have cut it off).
And then I whipped up a cornmeal-based batter for the green tomatoes.
If you’ve never had fried green tomatoes, you’re missing out. Typically, we think of these as a southern dish—typically creole, but food historians say it likely came with Jewish immigrants in the north and Midwest, then Pennsylvania Dutch also make a version. A classic southern-style recipe is here, but I prefer to use bacon grease for this versus vegetable oil, the way my grandmother did.
The combination of the firmness and tartness of an unripe tomato plus the crusty crunchy friend crust is fantastic. The classic southern accompaniment is shrimp remoulade but I served mine with a salsa of hot sauce, peaches and ripe tomatoes.
Once my tomatoes were done, I had a little batter left, and the problem of a few green beans. So I battered them next. A favorite neighborhood pub used to serve deep-fried green beans, and I think they’re on the TGI Friday’s menu too.
I’ll steam the zucchini with some sweet onions tomorrow. The cucumbers came out fine in their saltwater bath with good texture and flavor.
Fried green tomatoes and green beans plus fresh cucumbers
Yes, we ate a bunch of fried food, but it’s a rare occasion around here, and there is a satisfaction to growing your own food.
PS: Next week, I’d like to do a post on menu and meal planning. Let’s compare menus and meal planning techniques. Do you keep a list? Do you compare weekly or monthly? Before or after shopping? If you have a chance, post a picture of your master meal plan on our Facebook wall or email it to editor@beingfrugal.net. (If you belong to the “winging it” camp of meal planning–I’d love to know that too, and a strategy for keeping costs under control).
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Author
By Jessica Ward, on Sep 9, 2011
Jessica Ward is a full-time writer and adoptive mom to two wonderful children. She writes to support her parenting/adopting habit. For frugal family tips see The PennyWise Family or @jessc098 and my google+ profile.
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I think mine would have gone into one big pot of saute steamed veggies. Start off with some bacon ends/pieces chopped up, and let fry up in a big cast iron dutch oven. Drain off the bacon drippings to the drippings jar.
Semi-saute diced-up everything else, with a small onion too, for about 5 minutes. Then add some water, cover, and let steam/cook for 1/2 hour plus til everything is al dente or more. Add some Everglades seasoning (or Johnny’s, or your fav mix), some garlic powder, and some onion salt. (And yes, green toms work fine in this)
Delicious! The water added to the little bit of bacon drippings left makes a wonderful “broth.” This would also work as a stir-fry.
Oh! Love that idea! I also considered doing a rattatoillie, but I really felt like I needed a yellow or orange squash to make that happen, and I was all out of onions. :)
Hi, I like reading your blog, except it’s very annoying to have a 2-inch wide and page long black pop-up fill the top of the page every time I hit the page down key or I scroll down. There is no X to close this pop-up. Can you help? Thanks.
I don’t know what you did, but there is no more big black bar following me when I visit your blog. So much more enjoyable and relaxing. Thanks so much!!
I will check with the site owner (I’m lead writer). I noticed the bar, and didn’t have any issues with it on my gint-screen desktop PC at home, but it’s REALLY annoying on my smaller laptop which I just recently busted out. In my experience, it only comes up for a few seconds and then vanishes. I will ask and see if it has been fully disabled or if it will sneak back to haunt us. :)
I’ve never had fried green tomatoes but I’ve always been told that they’re good. I guess it’s one of those things I’ve never attempted to make. Still, they look fantastic so thank you for the recipe. Perhaps we’ll give it a shot this weekend – we have some company coming over and what better way of trying culinary experiments than by forcing them on unsuspecting guests!
I believe that great harvest is a result of hard work. You already said that you neglected your garden for quite some time, so don’t be disappointed with the result. There is always the next season when you can give your garden a better attention. Besides, you made wonderful dishes out of that harvest, so there’s no reason to feel that way. I will be looking forward to your menu and meal planning suggestions.
Great ideas. I think community gardens are great abd growing your own veg is a great money saver. Here’s some other ideas for frugal living.http://www.freshfrugal.com/