Grilled Vegetables From Finley Farms

Photo from "edible Santa Barbara."

Our favorite dinner to make each week is "Grilled Vegetables From Finley Farms." Both us work day jobs in addition to our afternoon/evening backyard farming gig. Simple, easy dinner prep is therefore a blessing. Grilling vegetables is tasty, healthy and simple to do. 

Grilled Vegetables For Dinner

Serves 3 with plenty of leftovers.

You can use any vegetable combination. For this particular dinner, we used:

• 4 leeks (from Finley Farms)(clean thoroughly and slice in half)
• 3 tomatoes (from a different farmer, most likely hot house, organic - we couldn't resist)
• 1 large onion (Finley Farms)(slice into three thick discs)
• 5 carrots (Finley Farms)(no need to peel, chop off stem end if desired)
• 3 fennel (Finley Farms)(chop off tops, leave end on, cut into three sections)
• 4 zuchinni (Los Olivos Roots)(cut in half)
• 11 small golden potatoes

Coat everything with olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Place on grill. Best to put fast-cooking leeks and tomatoes on the top rack. When the everything else is almost ready, bring the leeks and tomatoes down. Everything will finish at the same time. 

This zuchinni produces a nutty flavor when grilled.

As we reach the home stretch, we placed the tomatoes onto the bottom level for finishing.

Grill fennel until soft. It is sweet to the taste. It is finished when it can be effortlessly sliced.

Because no meat was prepped, you can use the same dish for serving. Easy clean up!

Serve with slices of bread drizzled with olive oil.
We also grated asiago and placed in a side dish for sprinkling upon the vegetables, giving the dish a salty, cheesy kick.

Don't have an outdoor grill? You can achieve the same dish by chopping everything up, coating in olive oil, salt and pepper, and placing into an oven-safe dish and baking.

Blue potatoes, leeks, zuchinni, fennel, onion, and brussel sprouts.

The deep blue color of these potatoes is reminiscent of blueberries.
In fact, both blue potatoes and blueberries contain the same antioxidants.

We fed the fennel and carrot tops to the chickens.
All other scraps were composted.
Next up? What to do with Leftovers.

New Neighbors

A darling new couple is moving in next door. And by next door, we mean above the den door. Our daughter, who is visiting from the East Coast, noticed a redheaded bird perched upon the fence. She wondered if he was making use of the birdhouse custom-made by my husband and hoped to catch him in the act. However, he spent most of the day shooing other birds.

She noticed that one brown bird was allowed to freely pass by, toting twine, twigs and moss. When we arrived home from work, she explained her observations and we quickly realized it must be a new bird couple moving in.

We google image searched "red headed California birds" and up came the Red Headed House Finch. Sure enough, that was him!

Phone snapshot of Mr. Red from the kitchen window.

Nest in progress. She even took some
twine left out for typing up vines.

Barbara Kingsolver's Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

We recently recommended that our daughter read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She's very interested in urban farming, eating local, and eating in-season. Barbara's book is a great introduction to all of those topics plus more. The book contains little essays and recipes in between the chapters. One that stood out, no doubt because the strawberries are ripening near Lil Miss' chicken coop, was the Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp. Luckily, we picked up rhubarb and strawberries at last Wednesday's Farmer's Market in Solvang. Our daughter baked the crisp on Friday. It was almost too late - the strawberries were not happy campers. We'd left them out on the counter. However, all was well and the crisp was delicious!

You can find the recipe HERE.

We bought our honey from... I'll have to check today at the Farmer's Market... can't remember at the moment.
Strawberries from Finley Farms and Los Olivos Roots.
Rhubarb from Marcie of Marcie's Pies. (Slice like celery.)
Butter, cinnamon, oats and flour from New Frontiers.

We didn't have allspice, so had to look it up and make our own.
To make allspice mix together 2tbs cinnamon, 1 tbs nutmeg, 1 tbs ground cloves, and 1 tbs ginger. From that concoction, measure out the amount called for in the recipe.

Strawberry from the backyard farm!
These are Lil Miss' favorites!

More strawberries from the garden.

2 cups diced strawberries and 2 cups diced rhubarb coated with 1/2 cup honey. 

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/3 cup butter
Mix until crumbly.

Sprinkle over fruit.
This is just about to go into the oven.

We composted leftover strawberry leaves and rhubarb scraps.
We didn't get an "after" photo because hungry people beat us to the punch.

Last Week's Trip to the Solvang Farmer's Market

Tomatoes are appearing at the Solvang Farmer's Market. Strawberries are abundant. It's exciting to have more than turnips and potatoes to choose from during these warm early summer days. We purchased most of the week's groceries from Finley Farms, per usual. We bought strawberries prompting our daughter to dream of baking a strawberry rhubarb crisp. I wasn't sure if anyone would have rhubarb and made no promises. Our luck, Marcie (of Marcie's Pies) had a few bunches of rhubarb for sale. We bought all three.

List of Today's Purchases:

To save room in the crispers,
slice fennel tops off before storing.

From Finley Farms

• 5 heads of lettuce
• 8 fennel
• 2 leeks
• Tons of carrots
• 9 white turnips
• 3 onions
• Pickling cucumbers (thumb-sized cucumbers, great to eat as snack, no need to pickle)
• Slicing cucumbers (the usual)
• 9 beets
• radishes

From Garden of... Yes and YesYes Nursery:

• Blue potatoes
• Golden potatoes
• Zucchini

Simply slice in half, douse in olive oil, sprinkle with
salt and pepper and grill!

From a Goleta farmer:
The joyous gentleman who runs this stand, is fun to talk football with. He's a USC Trojan fan so our daughter, a Stanford fan, loves to razz him. He has young people help him out and we like supporting that, too.

• 2 stalks celery
• One carton of Brussel sprouts

Not sure what to do with some of these vegetables? Check out our Recipes. Or, simply ask by commenting on this blog!

 From Creekside Apple Ranch, Home of Solvang Pie Company:

• 2  loaves of rustic wheat bread 
• 1 loaf of olive bread
• The pasta was sold out by the time we arrived :(

Next up: Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp with a little help from author/homesteader Barbara Kingsolver and her daughter Camille!

Artichoke Heart and Vegetable Leftovers

Early Summer Salad

Chop up leftovers from last nights grilled vegetable dinner (artichoke hearts, turnips, and sweet potatoes).

Add radishes, carrots, celery, red onion and butter lettuce (from Finley Farms). 

Chop everything in small pieces. 

Drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegarette, salt and pepper. 

Artichokes, Artichokes, Everywhere!

It's us versus artichokes and the artichokes are winning. We have multiple bushes full of the delicious vegetable. We've been eating them for weeks and weeks. Usually we eat the whole thing. The leaves are yummy to scrape with your teeth and eat after steaming. Now some of our artichokes are opening and past the point of eating whole. When the artichoke leaves become too mature and stiff to steam and eat, so we harvested for the sake of eating their delicious hearts. You can also do this with purchased artichokes that have sat too long in the fridge.

The chickens love the big leaves.
You can tear off an
entire stalk and put it in the coop.

Harvest by cutting the stem just below the leaves.

Wash thoroughly to remove bugs and dirt.

See how these one's have opened up?
They are perfect to steam for use of hearts.

Before steaming, peel off all leaves.
Scoop out the purple and light green soft leaves (see in picture).
Steam only what's left.

We served the artichoke hearts (see them between the halved sweet potatoes and turnips) with baked sweet potatoes, our eldest daughter's garlic and onion potato medley, butter lettuce, celery and carrot salad, and baked turnips. You can also make dips. Some people like to eat with mayonnaise (you can make this, too!). Check out our Recipes tab for info on other dishes.

Tomorrow: What to do with the leftovers from this dinner?

Green Eggs Sans Ham

Our eldest daughter is visiting home after spending two years in Western Massachusetts. She didn't bring back the bitter cold (thank goodness), but she did arrive with some yummy recipes. This breakfast is inspired by one of her favorite dishes at The Green Bean Cafe. It's exciting for us because this meal was made almost totally from backyard farm ingredients!

We'll call it "Green Eggs Sans Ham."
15-20 mins start to finish
Serves 3
Ingredients:

• 6 eggs (from the backyard farm, but you can purchase at the farmer's market)
• 6-10 kale leaves (from the backyard farm, but you can purchase from Finley Farms)
• 1 garlic bulb (you can use 6 cloves or less, depending on your garlic preference; we grow it in the backyard farm, but you can purchase from Finley Farms)
• olive oil (Cadia brand from New Frontiers in Solvang; we prefer using local olive oil from Santa Barbara Olive Company)
• salt and black pepper (Purchased at New Frontiers; we used Himalayan pink salt; not local)

Collect 6 eggs or purchase from a local

farmer (always choose organic, free-range, anti-biotic free).
This picture shows 5, but make sure you use 6!

One whole garlic. We used the medium size one.
Pictured: Purple-colored garlic from our backyard farm. 

Kale is the green! Pick about seven leaves.

You'll want enough so you can see the green in the eggs.

Here are two different kinds of kale. We used the top kind.

Before using, remove the stems so you're left with the leaf.

Cracked eggs, kale stems (remove from kale leaf) and chopped garlic.
We composted the garlic skins and egg shells. We fed the kale stems
to the chickens. Don't have chickens? Add to compost.

Put full leaves of kale, eggs and peeled garlic into Cuisinart.
Blend. It will look slightly frothy.

Pour into pan. (First coat pan with olive oil).
Add salt and pepper.

Scramble the mixture and serve!

What results is a warm scrambled egg dish with a garlic aroma. This picture doesn't do it justice. It's really beautiful. Serve with optional side of toast (bread purchased at Solvang Farmer's Market) and/or salsa (best to make when tomato season is full force).

We fed the kale stems to the chickens.
We composted the garlic scraps and egg shells.