My wife juggling clementines (the fruit, not the dog) yesterday morning.
Today has been unseasonably warm (10 degrees Celsius), so we spent the majority of the day outside cleaning up our yard and putting up our exterior Christmas lights. By “cleaning up” I mean bringing things in for the winter, taking down trellises, pulling up dead summer vegetable plants, sucking up leaves, draining our four rain barrels, and my favourite, harvesting some fall veggies.
Right now, our lacinato and curly green kale, brussel sprouts, Jerusalem artichoke, and leeks are still doing great. Everything else is dead or wilted, and needs to be pulled out of the ground.
I had fun harvesting some baby brussel sprouts which we just had with our dinner. I sauté them with some butter, garlic, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and broth.
I also dug up some Jerusalem artichoke (or sun choke) tubers, kind of archaeological dig style. They were washed, peeled, and chopped up, then roasted with some bacon crumbs, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Sun chokes are very high in inulin, which is a type of insoluble fibre, and is less likely to spike insulin than potatoes.
Speaking of potatoes, I also harvested a bunch of our giant leeks to make bacon potato leek soup.
These leeks are from seeds from last year’s crop, and DW did a wonderful job getting them started this year. They are super thick, and have gorgeous long blanched stems.
Bacon potato leek soup- super tasty!
Today has been a high carb day for me, as we started off our day with some gluten-free pancakes. Tomorrow, I’m back to my regular diet, but for now, I’m enjoying the sugar high.
3 more days until embryo transfer!
Mama et Maman 
It’s so close! I hope it goes perfectly!!
Thank you so much!
I love your photos, but they made me miss my garden fresh veggies! 🙂
Awe, I’m sorry. I’ll trade you some veggies for some beef!
Mmmm! I made some pretty awesome Jerusalem artichoke soup last year, as we often got them in our organic veggie delivery. I’m totally craving some now! Great looking harvest! How do you keep your brussel sprouts so healthy? I had three plants this year and had to rip them out as they were covered in some sort of a worm (I think that targets cabbage type plants).
Thanks, my wife does most of the hard garden labour. She lets me do the fun stuff like transplanting plantlings and harvesting. My brusselsprouts were getting demolished too. Mostly by a furry critter I suspect. I didn’t have a problem with worms, but I tried to keep the plants trimmed up well (lower leaves can be progressively pruned as the plant gets taller). That way, worms don’t have as much leaf shelter and food. As for Jerusalem artichokes, we have so much, we end up donating 75% of our harvest to the food bank. My digestive system doesn’t tolerate them well, so I can only eat a little bit.
Wow, they must grow really well in this climate, because there were often a LOT in our veggie baskets (the soups were a way to make them not go to waste).
Yeah, they’re actually quite invasive. They will take over your yard if you don’t contain them lol. I think that they were very popular with First Nations communities because they last through mild winters and are high producers that require no maintenance. DW went balls out one year and planted them in three parts of our yard. Every spring we find more and more tubers in areas we didn’t even plant them!
Please send your cooking to LA! Harvest looks awesome. Can’t wait for your transfer!
Thanks!
Brilliant harvest, not sure how your fingernails stayed so clean with all that gardening though! I’m not a fan of Jerusalem artichokes – they taste like ants smell to me lol. My dad loves them though so they are all through our/his massive garden.
Gloves help with the fingernails. Though, mine have more dirt underneath them than DW’s, which is whose hands are featured 🙂 I like the taste of the jerusalem artichokes, but we both nearly gassed each other out last night!
You two have the greenest thumbs! You could start our own CSA!!! And yummy looking soup!