If you saw our menu yesterday you would think we were trying to keep people away from us. It was quite the opposite. It was only our second session of Growing the Future and we were at full capacity with 35 students cooking, planting and learning about GARLIC!
We are planting garlic and daffodils (planted last week) this fall since they need a period of cold temperature in order to grow properly. In case you are thinking of planting your own garlic, here are some quick steps:
Break apart the head into individual cloves, and plant the individual cloves separately, about 7-12 cm apart. Each garlic clove will become an entire bulb by the time you harvest it next summer. Make sure to plant the cloves the right way up and make sure each clove has four inches of soil cover.
Did you know there are two types of garlic grown in Ontario? hardneck and softneck.
Enough about planting, you must be wondering what did we end up making with all that garlic? We made Garlic bread, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Garlic Greens. We also harvested a lot of greens from the youth garden for the garlic greens dish. By the way I wrote the word garlic 15 times in this post!
If you also harvested some garlic from your own garden or bought some from the farmers’ market, here’s one of the recipes for you to try:
Garlic Greens
Adapted from www.reneesgarden.com
Note: You can use any dark green leafy vegetable for this recipe. Some greens you can use are: spinach, kale, beet greens, mizuna, collards, mustard, turnip greens, and bok choy.
Ingredients (Serves 6)
1 pound greens, cut into strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup water
Juice of one lime or lemon
Directions
Heat oil at a medium temperature in a large pan.
Add onion and garlic and fry until onion is softened.
Add greens and stir to combine.
Add salt and water.
Cover and reduce heat. Cook over low heat until greens are just tender.
Sprinkle with lime or lemon juice and toss.
