I’m always looking for new and creative ways to cook and enjoy the harvest but when I’ve got too little time and too much produce, this is one of my go to easy dinners that never gets old. The comfort of classic chicken and dumplings with out the chicken. By all means add chicken if you’d like.
Seafair festivities have kept me away from tending the garden for a few days and now it’s time to catch up with the harvest again. Just a few days was all it took to become overloaded with broccoli, and the never ending green beans so into the dutch oven they went with a few carrots, onions and herbs.
Veggies and Dumplings
1 large or 3 small onions chopped
roughly 1 1/2 quarts of chopped mixed vegetables
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of celery soup
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup water
black pepper
diced fresh sage, rosemary and thyme
1 tablespoon butter
1 batch of Heart Smart Bisquick dumplings (follow the recipe of the box)
Preperation
While preheating the oven to 375, caramelize the onions in the butter in a dutch oven on the stove-top. Add all of the remaining ingredients except for the dumplings. Mix well and simmer for 10 minutes while you prepare the dumpling batter by following the directions on the box (mix 2/3 cup Bisquick with 3 tablespoons milk to form a dough). Drop spoonfuls of dough atop your stewed veggies in the dutch oven. The dumplings appear inadequate but will double in size when they cook. Place the dutch oven in the preheated oven to cook uncovered for 10 minutes and covered for 10 minutes more. Enjoy!
Optional: For added richness, I commonly season the dumplings with garlic powder and/or onion powder before mixing the dough – an old school habit I picked up from my mom.
Today’s bounty has all gone into a hearty salad. Hot food just doesn’t appeal on a hot day but a filling, cold veggie salad is just right. Steamed and chilled broccoli, shredded carrots, diced scallions all from the garden tossed with quinoa, olive oil and Spike seasoning - so simple and so good.
Another favorite way to fnish this salad is by swapping the oil and seasoning for a little vinaigrette and crumbled fetta but I’ve come up short handed today and in the spirit of “living off the land” (by urban standards at least), I make due with what’s on hand.
Speaking of whats on hand – carrots and broccoli might be old news now but the scallions I mentioned are the first of the season.
Typically these can be sown in March and be ready much sooner than this but mine got a later start. I almost always have some scallions, AKA bunching onions, AKA green onions hidden in some corner of my garden.
They’re always reliable and so easy to grow as they don’t seem to mind if its freezing cold or smoldering hot outside, the bugs couldn’t be less interested, a little shade isn’t a problem, they don’t mind crowding and by taking up no room at all, they can be squeezed into any little corner of free space in your garden patch. As you can see from the photo above, even the dry, rocky soil in this new expansion of the garden, that we haven’t amended yet, is good enough for the low maintenance, lovable scallion.
With the peak of the summer harvest upon us, each day’s produce brings the challenge of figuring out what to do with it. Our fridge, freezer and pickle jars are filling up quickly – not to mention our bellies. Our peas and salad greens are still going strong and now we can add to that an abundance of beans, broccoli, carrots, beets, and collard greens.
In the midst of the veggie onslaught, I’ve managed to find time to begin working on a fall crop of Redbor Kale.
Up next on the to do list are new crops of carrots and collards but we’ll save those for another day as I have more beans to pick.
The heat has brought on a broccoli explosion. Last year the broccoli was a big hit so I’ve double the crop this year and I’m going to need some fresh new ideas on ways to enjoy it. This recipe is calling to me and the site it’s on just joined my favorites list. Can’t wait to try this with the next BB-Q
My modest harvest today consists of a single head of broccoli that was ready ahead of the others, a white onion that I pulled up to check on the progress of the developing crop and a small beet that accidentally came up with the weeds.
I peered into the depths of the fridge pondering how on earth I would use these in a dish. I could just eat the broccoli and the beet fresh and save the onion for later use but that’s not much for blog material or for dinner and then it all came together; I happened to have a package of store bought pizza dough, an open jar of tomato sauce and some garlic and shaved parmesan. Perfect! A garden pizza!
I carmelized the onion, microwaved and peeled the beet, and left the broccoli as is. I loaded everything onto the pizza dough with enough garlic to chase off the Twilight vampires and into the oven it went at 450 for 14 minutes. It’s as good as it looks!
