MId Summer Harvest

Early pickling cukes are coming in, and I’ve been able to put up some quarts of pickles. Using my mom’s old recipe for dill pickles. Thankfully, I’ve been able to grow some large pickling dill plants, with large heads of seeds, which is critical for flavoring pickle, and more important that the leaves are. Our summers have been unseasonably cool recently, so this years’ heat and humidity promises greater harvest from these heat loving plants.

I’ve been thinking about writing a salad book, since I get asked about my salad dressing recipes more than anything else. This one, is a fresh beet borscht salad, which I invented today. It used roasted beets, sour cream, buttermilk, crispy pickling cukes and fresh dill and vinegar. Served with warm boiled potatoes, it is a homage to my moms summer borscht that she would make on the hottest days of the summer. I tested it on my sister today, and she liked it. I am still experimenting with the recipe, I might try cutting the beets differently than the jullienne on the mandoline, but everyone did like it this way. I am imagining this with micro diced beets, too.

The tiger swallowtails seem to be attracted to all of the purple and magenta flowers, particularly the phlox, and the monarda. I watched them float and flutter to both, avoiding everything else in the garden.

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