A garden meal

I thought I would give you all an update on the garden and share a meal I made recently inspired by what we have growing!
My meal:
Garlic tilapia with fresh oregano and sage (description below)
Lemon truffle salad (description below)
Bread and cheese (from whole foods)
Mango nectar

The vegetable garden is coming along fabulously! Above you can see the tomato plants – this was taken about 1 week ago, and now the plants are all coming out over the top of the support structures!

Yes, that is a cute little baby deer walking through our lawn…i think trying to get a nibble on the veggies…

The squash and zuchhini are going crazy – as you can see in the bottom left corner of the above picture, i had to put a trellis to separate them from the other plants they were trying to snuff out. The poor cucumbers that I planted next to them are desperately trying to find their way to sun out from underneath the gargantuan squash leaves…hopefully they’ll make it.

Needless to say, a lot of lessons learned for next year!

These beauties (san marzano tomatoes) are soon to become some lovely pomodoro sauce – along with some basil that you cant see not too far away =)

These cherry tomatoes will adorn many a salad…

That is a red cherry pepper – don’t have a great use for these yet…except that I did have some excellent ceviche with very tin slices of red cherry pepper in them and it was AMAZING. Maybe I’ll do that!

Future guacamole/salsa (jalapenos!)

And now for my garden inspired meal:

1) Fish with garlic chive butter, sage and oregano.  I have started making this a lot recently as I tried to find uses for my fresh oregano.

I basically buy fish, put it on a piece of aluminum foil, sprinkle salt and pepper on it.  Then add some lemon juice (actually I do the lemon juice first so that it doesn’t wash away the salt and pepper.  I also poke some holes in the fish with the fork to make it soak in more).  This time I did something a little different – I had some thyme and garlic chive butter I made from our herbs, and added that on top of the fish to add some extra flavor!  Then I just placed some fresh sage and oregano leaves (or the whole oregano stalk) right on top of the fish.

Then I close up the aluminum foil around each fish to make a little baking dish for it.  I leave a tiny opening on the top so that steam can escape.  You can do this with parchment paper also, but i think foil is easier because you can crinkle it closed instead of having to find some other method (like a stapler?).

And that’s it!  Then I just bake at 400 deg for about 15 minutes and its done!

I’m not really that great at presentation, which is why this doesn’t look all that appealing…but it tastes awesome =)

2) Green Salad with lemon truffle dressing made from the last of our greens.  This was me soaking the lettuce to get all the little buggies off… =0

And I added some cherry tomatoes.

For the dressing I mixed lemon juice (usually fresh but used bottled this time), you can add lemon zest if you have some lemons on hand, salt, pepper, and truffle oil.  That is the key ingredient! As far as proportions, I usually put mostly lemon juice – maybe 1/4 cup with just 2 tablespoons of the oil.  The rest is to taste.

This dressing is awesome because it is SO simple to make and tastes so great.  The salad tastes even better if you put Parmesan shavings on it…but didn’t have any.

So that’s my meal!  In the back you can see I got some bread from whole foods and had bread and cheese on the side. YUM.

Oh yes and how can I forget!  My mom brought up a TON of mangoes from her backyard (YAY for mango season!).  I like to eat them freshly cut.  But my hubby likes to eat it Gujarati style, as “mango ras” which literally means mango nectar.  You basically just blend the mangoes and if there is a lot of fiber, then strain them as well.  And enjoy!