This weekend’s garden haul

As the cats explored the back this past Sunday, I tended to the garden and gathered this:

It had been two weeks since I last did a basil cutting and I ended up with an impressive 268 grams (more than half a pound) of basil. I can only imagine how much that would cost if purchased from the grocery store. As usual, this batch will be turned into pesto for freezing — great for those days when I just don’t feel like cooking. My goal is to have enough pesto in the freezer to last me until next Summer.

The Japanese and Fariytale eggplants will probably end up in the freezer, unless I can get more from the garden in time to make something right away. Last week, I made an eggplant ziti recipe by Snarkyvegan that was excellent and everyone should try. I used a combination of Melanzane, Fairytale and Japanese eggplants — the three varieties I’m growing this year.

The oregano and thyme were set out on drying screens. More on my yet-to-be-finished drying rack later.

The tomatoes and jalepeno pepper went into a salsa with some leftover corn from the farmer’s market. It goes like this: finely chop three medium tomatoes, a bunch of cilantro, mince two cloves of garlic and a green onion and combine in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and white vinegar. Stir in kernels from one ear of corn (mine were cooked), then salt and pepper to taste.