Fresh from the Garden

This has been an incredibly rainy summer, which is good for the lawn and for filling up our well (we have our own water source), but not so good for our garden. Everything is growing much slower than it has other summers.

Well, except for those beautiful tomato "trees"! They're growing great...just don't have any ripe tomatoes on them!

But tonight I harvested some things from the garden, using a great big onion and some garlic for dinner!

This is the first year we've grown these so it's kind of a thrill go out and pull them right out of the dirt!

I also used some basil leaves off of my plant on our patio.

In a few weeks, when tomatoes start ripening I'll even have those to use for my Panzanella salad, a staple in the line-up of good summer recipes.

Not my photo! It's from Gimme Some Oven's recipe for the salad which is HERE

I always adapt her recipe, using gluten free bread toasted in olive oil and seasoned well with salt (takes about 20 minutes in a skillet to get it crunchy). I also fried some chicken in olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper instead of the chickpeas. And I used the white onion from the garden instead of a red one (the red is delicious though, and if I'd had one, I would have used it!).

But the concept is a winner every time; and made all the better by having fresh garden items to use for it!