Good week!
Happy holiday!
Hanukkah is one of my favorite holidays. It always comes during the short dark days of the year and it occurs within our daily life. It doesn’t totally stop our routine, but adds seasonal festiveness before the slowness of the cold of winter. It marks the end of the olive harvest and the end of summer crops in gardens and in fields and it fills our lives with celebration and joy… this is what I call "light".
Now there is a variety in nature!!! You can see it in our latkes: potatoes, of course, but also sweet potatoes, butternut squash, lentil sprouts, new onions, a leaf variety – and they so add to latkes. I suppose the Maccabees, who were farmers, ate latkes made of lentils, hubeza, spinach, Swiss chard… Here is an archive of our recipes of latkes (among my favorite foods!)
We also received organic chestnuts, roasted and peeled.
What is happening in the garden?
Lots of planting and sowing… Let's start from the bottom:
There are many roots – organic beets, a variety of radishes, organic celery root… of course all of which are connected to delicious leaves, which are fresh and nutritious. The beets are connected to beet leaves, which is really organic red Swiss chard. The celery root is connected to celery leaves, a little less thick and radish roots have leaves that I chop into salads and sandwiches or add to soup. They also give a delicious twist to Hanukkah latkes. All of these roots can and should be eaten J
Before we get to the leaves, we also have organic kohlrabi that is a thickened stalk, which we also eat entirely, along with its organic leaves, if they come to you together. We continue on to the organic broccoli, that in our home we like best to eat the stem. It is as sweet as the flowers for which it is grown.
While we are talking about organic broccoli, which is very similar to organic Kale, it is only natural that we continue to the organic cabbage which was planted in the bed previously along with organic New Zealand spinach, which seeded itself… a real growing salad J
Beside it were planted organic lettuces of 3 kinds: round (American iceberg lettuce), red curly lettuce and romaine lettuce. Organic green onions and organic cilantro were also planted which, I hope, will protect the organic purple cabbage, which caterpillars love to devour. Yes, really, really devour. It is amazing how much a caterpillar eats in a day!
The moisture and warmth together are excellent conditions for growth, but it also means a lot of weeds… which do not at all disturb us. I think weeds help to balance the garden and to heat and protect the organic crops. Among them we also find hubeza and nettles, which I often replant in their own beds and locations… 🙂
May it be a balanced winter, warm and nourishing to everyone.
Happy Hanukkah!
Maggie
Expecting in our our organic vegetable boxes (draft only) : cabbage Parsley Swiss Chard Tomatoes ... Cucumbers lettuce ButterNut squash sweet potato onion beets In the larger baskets also : Turkish Spinach coriander celery Peppers Organic fruit baskets ; Oranges Sweeties Clementines Larger ones also: persimmon grapefruit
