J
ust had to post this to prove that miracles do happen (or global warming is worse than we thought). This salad I had for dinner last night does indeed have two cherry tomatoes on it from the garden. Tomatoes in June in Minnesota. Wowee.
Now I did do some extra work to get this to happen. I don’t have a greenhouse, but this year I used Wall-o-Waters to get three cherry tomato plants out early (and the peppers, which are also producing already, though nothing ripe yet). I also planted this particular seed way too early and had to throw out the four other rangy, spindly plants that came of that experiment. Finally, I will probably pull this plant up in the next few days as it is badly blighted and I’d like to prevent the blight spreading to the other plants. BUT, since it had early fruit on it, I just couldn’t bring myself to pull it out before I got a few termaters from it! Because this plant went out earlier, it still faced the worst of the spring rains and weather fluctuations, and thus, blight.
Still, this salad was the first (I think) completely 100% salad product of the garden. It has the last of the romaine lettuce, roasted beets, broccoli, snow peas and garlic scape dressing. The dressing does have purchased buttermilk, yogurt and olive oil in it, and I couldn’t resist putting some feta cheese on there at the end. Still, if you consider the garden veggies free (which I very unfairly do), the salad cost about 50 cents. Even adding the cost of these veggies (and overestimating, given what a small proportion they are of the total), it’s about a $2.50 salad, and amazingly yummy and healthy.