There are a number of reasons to grow heritage vegetables; great for seed saving, climate/location specific, variety of flavour, colour and keeping/storing properties.
At the moment we are eating really interesting and tempting salads with heritage cut lettuce as the base. We are growing varieties like; Drunken Lady, Prize Head and Lollo Bionda. The contrasting colour of their leaves looks exciting and appetising and they taste buttery and fresh.
The season has been slow here and we have just started to harvest our broad beans. The potatoes are all self sown from plantings years ago and we enjoy a variety, our favourite for salads being Blue Sapphire. Not good for mashing as it looks like blueberry porridge but looks sensational very lightly boiled and cut into chunks for your salads. Add some cooked beetroot chunks too, a dollop of natural yoghurt and a top sprinkling of walnuts or pumpkin seeds.
When you can eat fresh from the garden and enjoy so much variety I'm afraid going out to dinner fails to live up to expectations for us 9 times out of 10.
Go on, DIY and PYO!
PYO? I'm guessing pick your own Tanya.....I like that.
ReplyDelete"Drunken Lady" I wonder how on earth it got that name? So nice to be able to GYO....:)
OUr tomatoes are just starting to colour up, the zucchinis are producing well. The beans are flowering, spuds coming up here and there. Sadly our lettuce aren't doing much, but hoping they will kick on. Your salad sounds lovely and I must put some beetroot in. I have you to thank for introducing me to beetroot other than the canned type!! Hubby was never a fan of beetroot so I always shied away from growing it, but your carrot and beetroot salad was so delicious. I now roast it and use it alot more, so a big THANKYOU from me....Xx
Such a funny name hey? I haven’t been able to discover why or how it got it’s name. Some conjecture that it may have been the frizzy wild hair and the frizzy curled leaf ends. It does flush quite a remarkable pink rather than bronze colour as so many other lettuce types do and I think that is probably more likely the analogy. There is nothing better or more versatile than home grown beetroot ;)
DeleteWe live in a small town with only pubs for dining out and we find that we can cook a better steak at home (hubby is the steak/bbq guru) with a couple of nice salads and veggies so we rarely venture out for a meal. I hope to get a few raised beds established soon to start a little veggie patch.
ReplyDeleteI not sure if this is a good thing or not as i do all the meals at our house but Hubby says the same thing. Why go out and pay for a meal when i can get better at home. I do, however, like occassionally like to sit down for a meal i didnt have to plan, shop for (or harvest), prep, cook, serve, and then clean up but if i had a choice it would be at a friends home rather than a restaurant. Im lucky i have friends that are great cooks. Your salad of heritage veg look amazing and interesting. So great to see food thats different.
ReplyDeleteyour salad looks really good tanya..i'm the same as you about restaurants..i'm invariably disappointed so i don't bother very often..in fact i'd rather have a cheese sandwich than eat out at most places..
ReplyDeleteI just love the names of those lettuces Tanya!
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