Harvest to Table

July means winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Winter wherever you are is one the prime seasons for citrus. At the farm markets in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile this month look for kumquats, grapefruit, limes, early mandarins, oranges, and tangelos. Other winter fruits ready for harvest include late apples, avocadoes, and [...]

You can eat the bitter melon thinly sliced raw, but chances are you’ll prefer it, cooked. How about deep fried, stir-fried, parboiled, or stuffed? Season bitter melon slices with salt, turmeric, and a little chili and then deep fry or remove the central pith and stuff this gourd with seasoned minced pork, shrimp and chopped [...]

 Chard leaves have a hearty, yet mild spinach flavor. Chard stalks have a delicate, celery-like taste and crunch. To get a bit of both flavors and texture sauté chard for 2 to 3 minutes after slicing leaves and stalks together crosswise. Here’s how we sautéed our just picked from the garden chard to match with [...]

Here is a recipe for a blueberry crumble that will be prepared and out of the oven in 40 minutes, that’s not counting the time passed in the garden picking the blueberries. This recipe is so simple. The hardest part was picking up a box of zweiback crackers–which means heading to the baby section at [...]

When it comes to fresh picking and eating, there are about 30 varieties of blueberry worthy of your attention. These can be divided into three categories: the highbush, the lowbush, and the rabbiteye. Highbush blueberries are the most common blueberries. These are the large, plump and sweet berries with which you are most familiar. Highbush [...]

Aubergine or eggplant? You’ll find this vegetable under either name in cookbooks. Eggplant is the name used by most American speakers. Aubergine is chiefly a British usage. Eggplant was the name originally given to the white-skinned, egg-shaped variety of the vegetable sometime in the mid-eighteenth century. Aubergine followed about 30 years later. By the middle [...]

Slicing cucumbers and pickling cucumbers: that’s how cucumbers are divided. It is said that the ancient Roman Emperor Tiberius demanded cucumbers on his table every day of the year. The story does not say if they were slicing or pickling cucumbers; maybe both. The English or Holland or European cucumber are thick meated and seedless; [...]

Native Americans called it isquoutersquash. The British call it marrow. Squash is the American English term. Zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, and pumpkins grow best once the air temperature averages 65ºF (18ºC). That means squash can be sown in late spring just about everywhere, and if you live in a long growing season region where [...]

Tomatoes can be planted in your garden if night temperatures are averaging warmer than 55ºF. One key to tomato success is simply to remember that tomato blossoms don’t set fruit when the night temperature is below 55ºF or above 70ºF (13-21ºC). It’s best to choose tomato varieties suited to your climate: varieties for cool weather, [...]

June is the month to look ahead to the fruit harvest. Peaches and apricots–the early producers–should be thinned by now and many have already come to harvest. Apples, pears, and plums–like the ones above–need your attention now and should be gradually thinned during June. Fruit trees commonly produce many more fruitlets than they can bear. [...]