Monday 25 July 2016

Harvest Monday - 25 July 2016

Several of my blogging friends in the USA (e.g. Dave, our host for Harvest Monday) are very keen on making lacto-fermented vegetable products, such as sauerkraut, so I think I know what they would do with this lovely specimen. It's a "Cabbice" cabbage (Pronounced as "Cab Ice" - it's alleged to be as sweet as an Iceberg lettuce.)


It didn't look very big outside on the garden table, but when it came indoors it seemed a lot bigger! It weighed 768g (1lb 11ozs).



We are not keen on fermented vegetables, so our cabbage was cooked conventionally - lightly boiled, and served as an accompaniment to a meal of roast Lamb, with fresh Mint Sauce.




That meal also included the last of my Broad Beans (picked last week) and some of these "Nicola" potatoes.


These potatoes are the best so far in terms of yield. As with the other varieties, I planted two tubers in a 35-litre pot, and these ones yielded 1.33kgs. I have to say though that there were about 100g of very tiny tubers that had to be discarded because they were really not big enough to be worth bothering with, which has not been the case with the other varieties.


The salads keep coming too. This is the latest "Ice Queen" lettuce.


After removing the coarse outer leaves, a firm crunchy heart is revealed. It's rather like a loose-textured Iceberg.



As I described a couple of days ago, I finally got round to removing my exhausted Pea plants, which gave me an opportunity to pick one last little batch of pods. At the same time I got a few of the "Cobra" climbing French Beans, which are just starting to come into their own.




I'm keeping the purple-podded "Desiree" peas to be seeds for growing next year, but the green "Early Onward" ones went into a mixed-vegetable curry that Jane cooked for us.

This week also saw me picking the first Runner Beans of the year, always a precious moment since Runners are amongst our favourite vegetables. This is 350g of "Streamline" beans.

Runner Bean "Streamline"


When there are Runner Beans to be had, the French beans always take second place, but there's no denying that these "Cobra" beans are good!





I'm linking my post to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

7 comments:

  1. That's a very nice cabbage. All your harvests this week are quite impressive, the runner beans in particular. Beautiful!

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  2. That Cabbice is a nice looking cabbage. I too would eat it fresh rather than ferment it, but boiling it brings up terrible memories from my childhood. We much prefer to sauté cabbage in butter, which tends to enhance the sweetness of the cabbage. And I like the looks of the Ice Queen lettuce. I will have to add that to my list.

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    1. David, I know what you mean! My Dad would boil a cabbage for about an hour, whereas I reckon 2 minutes is about right.

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  3. It's good to see what the Ice Queen lettuce looks like when it makes a head. Mine didn't really make heads this spring, though the leaves were tasty anyway. I do like cabbage boiled or steamed, and I bet the Cabbice was tasty with the roast lamb, which had my mouth watering just thinking about it!

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  4. I don't like fermented cabbage either, Funnily enough we have picked our first Cobra beans too. The first of our climbing beans in spite of the Cobra plants looking to be the weakest of the lot.

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  5. That is an impressive head of cabbage and those beans...yum! Our beans are starting to come in as well - we were looking forward to them more then ever this time as pickings were scarce last year.

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  6. Look at that perfect head of cabbage and your potatoes look so good. I think lightly boiled cabbage has a silky texture and wonderfully sweet flavor, but I don't think I've ever had lamb before. Your beans are quite lovely, its amazing how perfect your vegetables are.

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