Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Feasting from the Garden

Last night we had our first feast from the garden. I made spanakopita with nettles instead of spinach and potent garlic scapes and we had nachos with lots of green onions. Perhaps those don't sound like they go together but they were really good.

Here are my dependable nettles. That was the first time I had ever made spanakopita, first time I had ever used phyllo pastry, too. I must say I did a better job of the filling than handling the pastry. But it still tasted awesome!

Our first feast from the garden is one of family's seasonal rituals. In the past it has always been nachos with fresh green onions but while I was scoping out the green onions to see if they were ready yet, I noticed just how well the nettle was coming a long and I suddenly had the idea to make Spanakopita. Seemed only fitting on the day our first lambs arrived. Are you eating anything from your garden yet?

6 comments:

Sarah said...

ha, I wish I was eating things from my garden!! The snow finally melted off it though. Not that I have any thing planted in it anyway. First garden feast sounds like a good ritual! So, you can use nettle to replace spinach? Interesting.

Laura said...

i don't have a garden this year :( but both those meals sound delicious.

Andrea said...

Not even walking onions? Did they survive? And that was only one meal.

Lady of Light said...

We live in a condo so we don't have much room but we planted a variety of herbs, jalepenos and we got a couple tomato plants. the seedlings have just started to sprout and it's fun watching them grow everyday! I dream for the day we have a house with a big yard so we can feast too.

sheila said...

Wow - your nettles are about 4 gazillion times bigger than mine! I guess that snow of yours isn't so debilitating after all, lol.

Scapes, eh? Must get me some. Love the idea of them. How did they end up in your garden - seeds, already there, or you planted them?

Andrea said...

Actually they weren't really garlic scapes (isn't that the name for the garlic flower?) They were just garlic tops from garlic I didn't harvest last year because it was growing in the middle of my nettle patch.