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Dilly Beans and Pickled or Dilly Carrots
If you haven’t tried Dilly Beans you are missing a treat. Crisp-tender green beans, they are pickled in a simple vinegar, salt, and water solution and seasoned with garlic and dill. Hot peppers or pepper flakes can be added if you like them with more of a bite. Preparation is fairly simple. They can be canned by hot water processing, or if not processed they must be kept refrigerated. I also pickle carrots the same way. Just peel, cut into 4” lengths, and quarter them on the length, and then process like the green beans. Don’t bother using multi colored carrots to make them look nicer, though. I tried that and found that the vinegar bleached all the color out of them during pickling anyway.
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From My Herb Garden
Fresh herbs, snipped this morning at the peak of their flavor, washed and laid out on towels to air dry. Top left is parsley, lower left if French tarragon, center chives. These will be chopped and blended together, put into a zip lock freezer bag, and stored in the freezer for use throughout the year to flavor scrambled eggs … a combination that elevates eggs from ordinary to sublime. On the far right is rosemary, just waiting to be finely chopped and added to Orange-Rosemary Biscotti (recipe to follow). Yesterday I harvested a big bunch of chives. Washed, air dried, and finely chopped while still garden fresh, they keep like new when placed in zip lock freezer bags and frozen. They remain as green and supple as when they were harvested, ready to use in soups, stews, mashed potatoes or…
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Planting Tomatoes
I began this morning as I do most mornings these days, by pulling back the curtain and staring out at the tomato plants growing right outside my window. I check the growth on the low hanging Big Boys…that appear not to be there today (Rats! Damn woodchucks!), and the clusters of cherry tomatoes that hang like grapes from another plant, anxiously awaiting the day they will show signs of ripening.
