Category: Meals

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I am so happy that the recent sun and high heats have hit my garden the last couple of weeks. The spring here has been cold and wet and I second guessed, third guessed, and fourth guessed whether my spring plantings were going to be viable in making produce.

The great news is that my leafy greens are all doing well and have come to maturity for harvesting. My tomatoes are finally putting forth fruit. Truth be told, I keep looking for more blossoms and hunting for more new fruit. I really want to put away more pasta sauce and try my hand at tomato paste. Usually we just go through so much sauce that I really don’t get the opportunity to make anything else. So fingers crossed, I am so hoping to make other tomato products.

My corn is finally starting to outgrow my oldest child. Fortunately I drive past farms that grow fields of corn, so I compare my humble hobby garden to the professionals. And I’m glad that my few rows of corn are keeping pace with the large farms. So there’s hope. And particularly since I grew popping corn last year, for the first time, my boys are hooked with “our” popcorn. And I planted more corn than I’ve ever done before in hopes of making a year’s worth of popping corn. When the ears have matured, I’ll make a post on this so you can know which types of corn to grow to make your own popping corn. Also, you can see just how easy it is to make pop corn. Other than the wait, making pop corn is super easy!

I won’t go into all the details of everything that I’ve grown this year, but I will end here by stating that my fall seeds have already sprouted and are doing so much better than my spring planting. And even today, I’ve come across so many videos on YouTube talking about what crops you can plant in August and still harvest in the remaining time for this growing season. So if you are curious to try your hand at growing something before fall hits, there is definitely still time!

Fresh is what’s for dinner!

Out of the five items I harvested from my garden this morning, I used three of them for dinner tonight; Cabbage, Bok Choy, and Mizuna.

If you’re asking, “what is mizuna?” believe me, so did I. This past fall I bought seeds from Baker Creek. (Not an affiliate link, just a great product.) When I got that delivery I found out that the gift packet of seeds I got from them was mizuna. I had never heard of this green before. So I took a chance and grew it on the blind. And tonight I found out that it is a type of bitter green. Some of the bitter greens are quite bitter and I have to douse restaurant salads that come with them, because they’re so bitter. However the mizuna is not so strong. It has a mild bitter flavor, but is not bad at all if you’re sensitive to the bitter profiles, like I am.

Knowing that I have so many green to bring in starting tomorrow and for the next week or so, I had to come up with a new idea on how to use them. Other than dehydrating my greens and turning it into a powder to use in countless recipes, I can’t think of a way (other than freeze drying, but I don’t have that machine yet) of preserving them without becoming a wilty mess. Granted Cabbage is good for kraut and ferments–which I will be doing when I get a few more heads ready for harvest. Once my green cabbage comes in I’ll post an amazing Italian ferment that I found. And with the red cabbage I’ll post on making a red kraut. So there are a few things to keep an eye out for.

Back to dinner, I needed to find a use for these three greens to make dinner. Cabbage and Bok Choy can both handle some cooking. But one look at Mizuna and I knew I couldn’t do a stir fry with it. It’s definitely a salad green.

But Asian sounded so good!

And that’s when inspiration hit. Two of the three greens could handle the heat, so I cooked my rice and chicken in a marinade (Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet).

While everything cooked, I prepped the greens.

For a single plate I used (from top to bottom) 4 stalks of Bok Choy, a few leaves of Cabbage (the head was small, so I used about 5 leaves), and 4 stalks of Mizuna.

The Bok Choy and Mizuna I chopped. Because the cabbage is raw, I rolled the leaves together and julienne cut the leaves. Once these are cut, they just mix together easily like this.

I usually dread buying mixed salads at the store because either their mixes don’t taste good to me, are old, don’t keep long in the fridge, or all the various recalls over the last few years. Now that I have these greens ready to pull from my garden (plus spinach once it reaches maturity), I can put together a salad mix that is far superior than what’s found in the stores AND it takes less time than driving to my local store (about 4 minutes away).

The great thing about this mix combo is that I can place hot rice right on top of the salad and it retains its crisp texture. Cabbage isn’t phased by the heat. Bok Choy naturally can be cooked for a couple of minutes and keep firm texture in the stalk with mild wilt in the leaf, but retain full pleasurable taste. Mizuna, I fully expected to not hold up to the heat, just because it did wilt in the time between me rinsing the greens off and making dinner.

All in all Mizuna acted much like Bok Choy. The greens did wilt. BUT the beautiful purple stalks remained crunchy just like the Bok Choy stalk.

Top off the salad greens with rice, and then marinated chicken. And as a side note, left over chicken is just as perfect as having warm chicken. I ate this both ways.

You can see here that the rice I had on hand in my kitchen is basmati rice. I couldn’t have picked a better rice for this dish. White (short or long grain) rice tends to be sticky and would just be globular bunches of rice on this dish. Brown rice could be used. But if given the choice between basmati and brown rice, I would pick basmati for textual reasons. But know that you can choose your favorite rice.

Alternate Ingredients

I don’t have much experience with grain alternates to rice. I wouldn’t recommend quinoa (too nutty for this flavor profile), potato, or riced cauliflower(too gummy of a texture). Couscous could work, especially if you use a different marinade for the chicken.

If you didn’t want to use Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet, Teriyaki would be just as perfect for this rice on salad. Sweet and Sour would be a fun alternate. I’m leaning toward trying the next time I make this, using a honey ginger sauce. And maybe you’re not into a sauce at all, for any dietary reason, but prefer vinaigrettes. You are most certainly not limited in how you dress your chicken or rice.

And once you opt for a different dressing, you can make any of your other alternate grains work in the place of rice.

You’ve also then opened up the window for other additional ingredients. Have garbanzo beans that you’ve been looking for something new to make with it? What about dehydrated fruits or vegetable chips? Pomegranates, fruit slices (fruit or canned)… as you can now see, you can really turn your salad on its head with adding a heated element on top of something traditionally thought of as being a cold entre. You can use dehydrated or preserved ingredients–especially if you need to use up some of your previously shelved preserves to make room for what is coming up in your current garden.

I can’t even begin to share with you just how excited I am about this! With all the recent hot weather and the lack of desire to cook dinners, I am actually looking forward to making this a meal a couple of times a week, different meats, different dressings, different additions. Plus it’s the bonus of eating all the leafy greens that don’t normally keep well, like some of the other produce I grow to preserve. And that’s not even taking into consideration all the edible flowers that abound this time of year (such as culinary lavender and dandelions)!

As you can see here, with how beautifully this all mixed together I’m positive your imagination has already added in additional ingredients to make this meal individually you!!!