Veggie Garden - Year 3

In our three years in our townhouse, we've realized some things....

1. Our backyard is really shady
2. No matter how hard we try to trim the giant trees, the leave still block most of the sun
3. Tomato plants don't like shade

You probably sense a common theme, our attempt at gardening in the backyard has yielded sub-par results. This year, we almost didn't plant a vegetable garden since we can get organic veggies at the DeKalb Farmer's Market right down the road and since we've had sub-par results from our own attempts in the backyard. But last minute, we decided to try a few things in the front of our house in pots.

Our first large {ish} harvest from the garden:

Cubanelle peppers, Sun gold cherry tomatoes, Regular cherry tomato, and a Green Zebra tomato

We put together some yummy appetizers when my friend {and MOH} Ana Maria visited a few weeks ago.
That's two different types of crostini: Roasted heirloom tomatoes on goat cheese with a drizzle of honey, and pan fried cubanelle peppers on goat cheese. Both were delicious! When we made the cubannellle toasts again, we drizzled some honey on them too.

Our second harvest of tomatoes:

Green Zebra, Sun Golds, Cherry Tomatoes, and our first Black Cherry Tomato and Pink Thai tomato!

We made yummy flat breads for two nights out of those. Soooo delicious!

Tasty flatbread with our heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzerella and
homemade french bread with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar

Soon we'll be harvesting our pimento pepper and trying to make pimento cheese for the first time! We've got a bunch of Cubanelles ready to harvest too, so we'll have to decide what to do with them this time. 

Totally Homemade Paninis

We've been really into a make everything from scratch mood lately, so I though I'd share one of our favorites. It's a panini with sourdough bread, mozzarella cheese, tomato, and basil pesto! Technically, the tomato and the mozzarella are store-bought, but the tomatoes will be from our garden soon. And well, I'm not going to get into cheese making, so farmer's market mozzarella will have to suffice.


Let's start with the sourdough bread, it's amazing. It takes a total of 2 days with all the rising time, but it's completely worth it. If you've never made it before, I highly suggest trying it, so much better than the store-bought stuff! For sourdough bread, you start with a 'starter', which you have to feed once a week or so to keep alive, then you add flour, oil, sugar, etc to get the dough. I don't know for sure, but I imagine the recipes are different depending on the exact starter.

So onto basil pesto, it's delicious! And it's super easy to make using a food processor. Just toss in a few garlic cloves, then a handful of toasted pine nuts, then a handful of {washed} Basil {preferably from your garden!}. I usually chop it in that order, then add in olive oil until it's the right paste consistency. I mostly do it by taste not so much by amounts.

 Just assemble and you're ready to grill! We assemble our panini in the following order- mozzarella, then basil pesto, with tomato on top. Then grill it in our panini press until golden brown. Delicious!