Garden Meals – Eating Well

Gardening, homemade, Recipe, Reflections,

Despite not following some of the gardening strategies that I had mentioned earlier this year, like planting by the moon and companion planting, our gardens have produced abundant crops. For the last several weeks we have been blessed to be enjoying meals prepared with fresh home grown vegetables. We are thankful to be eating well.

Some of the meals we’ve enjoyed include:

Yesterday’s Dinner – Beef Stew (with home grown potatoes, swiss chard, celery, tomatoes and garlic)

Thursday’s Dinner – Pepper Steak over White Rice (with home grown bell peppers, tomato and garlic)

Wednesday’s Dinner – T-bone Steak, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Acorn Squash and Sautéed Swiss Chard. (with home grown potatoes, garlic, squash, and Swiss chard)

Eggplant Parmesan

Stuffed Cabbage

Spaghetti – with home made/ home grown sauce

Corn on the Cob

Green Beans with Garlic Butter

Swiss Chard

Cucumber Salad

Tomato Sandwich

Banana Pepper Poppers

All this, my friends, is why we do what we do.

The Banana Pepper Poppers are one of our favorite side dishes. They are easy to make so I decided to share the recipe. (Please note that I am one of those cooks who does “a little of this and a little of that” so the amounts do not need to be exact. Feel free to put the word “about” in front of each ingredient listed.)

Banana Pepper Popper Recipe

6 – 3 to 4 inch banana peppers

4 ounces cream cheese softened

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

three strips of bacon cooked and cut into bits

a few shakes of crushed red pepper (optional)

bread crumbs (optional)

Slice peppers in half lengthwise and remove stem and seeds. Place in baking dish. Mix together the cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, bacon bits and crushed red pepper. Fill each pepper half with cheese mixture. Sprinkle each pepper with bread crumbs (optional). Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes (until peppers have softened). Enjoy! 🙂

Leftovers keep well in the refrigerator they are even good eaten cold.

Are you eating any in season vegetables?

Do you have a favorite seasonal recipe you would like to share?

43 thoughts on “Garden Meals – Eating Well”

  1. Pingback: July 2022 Garden Update | Don't Eat It! Soap and Skin Care

  2. Hi Ruth – I get an e-mail every week from “Click Americana” which is a vintage site. I discovered it when Googling how to spell “Pick up Stix” last year. Anyway, I was just skimming through it and saw something about “Little House on the Prairie” – you are younger than me, but maybe you watched it in syndication? Anyway, it was one of my favorite shows back in the day and I read all Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books too. I was looking at this site about the series and saw these fun recipes … mind you, recipes made mostly from items they grew themselves. So I thought about you – sometime, in the middle of Winter when you have some time on your hands, have a look at some of Ma Ingall’s recipes – preserves and pies especially: https://littlehouseontheprairie.com/little-house-on-the-prairie-recipe-index/

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    1. I read and loved the little house books and remember watching the shows. In fact since we have antenna TV a lot of the stations play old shows and we still catch an episode now and then on one of the stations. I will check out the recipes, That sounds like fun. Thanks for thinking of me. 🙂

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      1. I’ve heard of antenna TV Ruth – I had it on a list of items to check out. I don’t know if it is compatible with the TV I have which is from the late 80s/early 90s … just 19 inches and the big back on it. I cancelled my cable TV years ago as I really never watched it and get news and news programs online. I’m glad you liked that show and books too – I am sure I never missed a show when it was on. In fact last night I watched a few clips on their site … after I sent you this note, I saw they have some crafts too. I thought you’d have fun with this site and maybe get a few recipes. Glad I sent it to you Ruth – have a good day.

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      2. We don’t have the actual Antenna TV that the advertise on TV just an indoor rabbit ear type antenna. Before we got a HD TV we had to have an it hooked to a HD converter box as well as the antenna to get stations to come in.

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      3. I looked tonight after reading your comment and it looked confusing and they did mention the converter box – it was lost on me as we only used it with Comcast cable. I bought a small digital TV for my mom to watch in bed but even with a flat antenna, but that 7-inch TV skipped and lost video and just froze constantly. I have to look and see if this TV has antennas and we collapsed them due to the cable.

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  4. You are a success story Ruth and your diligence and the sunniest June on record in Michigan not to mention those massive rainfalls every so often has helped you do well too. I have no recipes to share unfortunately – I will just admire what you do instead.

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    1. Thanks Linda. My husband and I were talking about difficult it is to be at the mercy of the weather. Farmers always are and some year will be good and some not so good. I think that’s why it’s important to grow a variety of things or “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” because there is a better chance that some things if not all will do well.

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      1. You’re right Ruth and I was listening to an owner of a cider mill that was opening this weekend – I think it was Blake’s. He said that the weather in the Spring was bad for their apples and they worried that in addition to the pandemic, they would lose their apple crop – he said to the contrary, the apples turned out sweeter than usual.

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      2. We did have some late season frost when the fruit trees and bushes were beginning to blossom. I think it did effect our cherry tree because we had fewer cherries than last year. But the blue berries and apples seemed unscathed.

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      3. That’s good there were no issues with your apples and blueberries Ruth … you likely held your breath what would happen. That torrential rain this morning gives you a break with the watering too – we got an inch of rain this morning.

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      5. And a cold rain at that – it was garbage day and I ran the car – it was a drastic change. Not as much as Denver with their 14 inches of snow and a few days ago they were swimming!

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  10. Our crop from the garden totals four tomatoes so far. We’ve been buying one large Cherokee Purple tomato a week from the local farm stand. We each have one BLT from it, complete with dripping hands and satisfied smiles. Obviously, we do not farm on your scale. You are rolling in fresh produce!! Marvelous!

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    1. I’ve never tried that variety of tomato. We did grow some very large orange tomatoes this year but didn’t really care for them. Fortunately the chickens like them so they did not go to waste. We haven’t had BLT’s yet – I will have to add them to the menu this week. 🙂

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      2. Bacon, lettuce and tomato (with Hellman’s mayo) is the perfect food combination in my opinion. Sadly lettuce is usually done producing by the time tomatoes are ready so we have to buy lettuce.
        Our chickens love tomatoes. When I make tomatoes juice I even save the skins and seeds for the chickens and they clean them right up. 🙂

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      5. You are right, Ruth. Now is the time to plan next year’s garden. I would like to have one that never needs watering or weeding and would self-prune at the proper time. If the plants would clean up after themselves, that would be even better. Sadly, I am a most reluctant gardener and would rather nurture people than plants. Meanwhile, I will enjoy reading of your success, happy to praise someone who is much better at it than I am.

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      6. I actually meant that comment for someone else Anne. Not sure why it ended up where it did. Guess I wasn’t paying attention. I think you are doing well by shopping at your local farm stand. Farmers need and appreciate people like you.

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I would love to hear from you.