Gleaning! & my very first published recipe

While harvesting carrots at Paradise Produce this morning in the hot hot sun, I asked Farmer Stacy if it would be okay if I took home the small carrots that weren't big enough to bunch and sell. To my delight, he said yes! I am officially a gleaner, just like Ms. Ruth from Biblical days. I left the farm with three bunches of itty bitty carrots (about 2" long): one went to Miss Sheila, Maggie's daycare teacher, one came home with me, and one was traded for a bar of Olive and Sinclair chocolate (coffee bean, mmm).

Today also yielded several tidy bunches of garlic scapes, an exciting piece of garlicky goodness that I only recently discovered. Garlic plants send up these flower stalks when they feel ready to produce seeds, a process that also leads to the plant shutting down its growth. Today it was my job to snap off the scapes to allow the plant extra time to fill out the underground bulbs that will become the familiar garlic I dearly know and love.

Garlic scapes are wondrous things, lovely to behold and tasty to chomp. I threw these curly, wonderful lovelies into the soup pot with the baby carrots and some potatoes and whipped up a nice little spring meal for myself and my dear friend Colleen. Perfect end to a hard day's work.


Potato and Garlic Scape Soup

• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 cup diced carrot (I used babies)
  
• 1/2 cup garlic scapes, chopped (more if you're feeling adventurous!)
  
• 6 cups diced baking potato (about 2 pounds)
• 4 cups vegetable bouillon
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup 2% milk (I used raw!)
• 2 tbs flour
  

Chop garlic scapes as you would green onion. Drizzle some olive oil in a pan, add onions and sauté 5 minutes. Add potato, carrots, broth, salt, pepper, and bay leaf; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until potato is tender; remove bay leaf.

Use a potato masher (or a big spoon, or really anything capable of mashing) to break down some of the potatoes -- but leave it chunky. Take 1/4 cup of the milk, add the flour and stir together. Slowly stir this mixture into the soup, then add the rest of the milk. Cook over low heat until thoroughly heated.