BellaOnline Forums Money Frugal Living What food do you have growing in your own yard?

Today, I used wild grape leaves to make dolmas. They are grape leaves stuffed with seasoned meat and rice. After boiling them, I had some broth left. Rice and quinoa went into the leftover broth, along with some seasonings. The whole thing was yummy!

Dandelions are great. We make salads and wine out of them. They only last a short while though.

Right now we have wild raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. We are growing tomatoes, zucchini, squash, eggplant, and hot peppers. For herbs we have a giant sage hedge, a large rosemary plant, three kinds of basil, five mint plants, big fluffy dill, four stevia plants, and some catnip and cat grass for Julie. Oh and a brussell sprout survived from last year so we may actually get to eat some this year.

Gardening is a great way to get tons of very cheap food!

I also picked mint and dill for the dolmas. The water mint has escaped from the water, and it's growing around the pond. As with all mint, there's plenty of it.

I used it in tea with lemon this morning. It was great!

We are growing tomatoes and peppers. The Lamb's Quarters are growing themselves. I'll pick some for a big pot of greens...maybe Thursday.

Since I still have the spine surgery coming and hurt like crazy I limited gardening this year. Tomatoes; roma, pilgrims, and grape. Raspberries, oregano (froze basil last year) and catnip (goes with the territory I will miss all the fresh veggies.

Next year I'd better be back to normal, by gosh, it will almost be a whole new spine after the last surgery and the upcoming one.

I need to find out what kind of red peppers are on Domino's Pacific veggie pizza, love them. I am going to plant them next year.

We have had so much rain, having trouble with everything wilting. The plants need little water wings

I did finally get the rock garden planted. With the maple trees and flowers it really turned out pretty. I'll have to take a picture.

Tomatoes, lettuce, rocket, sunflowers, nasturtium, borage, evening primrose, mints, a bonsi basil tree, majoram, oregano, corriander, parsley, spinach, sorrel, marigolds, cornflowers, strawberries, thyme, radishes, carrots, potatoes, chives, dandelions, poppies, fennel and I have a Bramley apple tree!

Lots of the plants I use the flowers in salads, and the seeds in smoothies or cakes.

It's so hot here that nearly everything has wilted but I have mint for tea and hope that my hyacinth bean vine produces enough for me to try.

Oh Chives, yes we have a bunch in the side garden, I forget about them because we only rarely use them. They're more like a decoration.

We have one patio tomato (fairly large sized tomatoes) three grape ones, two salsa ones and I think two cherry sized ones. We tend to like the small salad ones the best.

We ate at a wonderful little bistro yesterday that had an herb garden along its north wall that looked wonderful. I noticed that they had put little bunches of chives and some other fragrant leaves in little vases of water on each of the tables. Maybe if we don't eat them we can still enjoy how they look and oh..those wonderful smells! FWIW, my friend who was with me does not share my sense of smell and thought that they stunk!

Has anyone ever processed and used acorns in recipes? The tannins from the acorns need to be leached out before the acorns can be used.

To leach out all the tannins (very bitter taste) , the acorns need to be shelled and the meats put in a stock pot. Cover with water and bring to boil. As soon as it starts boiling, drain the dark water off, refill with fresh water and repeat till all the tannin is leached out. It may take as much as five repeats of this process.

Then the acorn meats have to be dried. When dried, they can be ground into flour.

I found a good site for information on collecting and preparing the acorns: Acorn Collecting, Processing, Preparing, Recipes

I have never tried this but am very tempted to taste some breads with the nutty taste of acorns. It sounds wonderful.

Im growning broccoli, caulifower, beets, 3 ypes of beans, corn, carrots, radish, a radish fence of icicle radishes,- they keep the volls out of the garden. Borage, mint, spinach, endive, lettuce - 3 types, potatoes, 4 types of squash, eggplant, and tobacco.... We have lambs quarters grwoing everywhere wild and the more I pick it the more it grows. 8 packages in the freezer so far. Probably wont bother to plant spinach next year. White yarrow grows wild here.. but I am having fun planting a giant variety of red and lavendar yarrow amongst the sagebrush around the house. Its very showy and adds nice color to this dessert terrain.