Cooking Differently with Our Weekly Farm Harvest
It keeps amazing me what our land produces every single week. Thanks to the dedication of our farmer and all the volunteers, we enjoy a beautiful harvest of seasonal vegetables — fresh, healthy, and grown with care.
This week’s harvest basket was bursting with goodness: green beans, Chinese cabbage, bok choy, red beets, fresh salad greens, onions, potatoes, leaf beet, tomatoes… nature’s gift to our kitchen.
As luck would have it, we had some friends from the farm over for drinks and dinner. This particular group of friends are our “logistics crew” — the ones who, together with us, make sure every member gets their fair share of the weekly harvest. So it felt right to celebrate with a meal made almost entirely from our own vegetables.
We decided to try something new: cooking outside above our firebowl using a recently purchased cookpot. It was an experiment — and a successful one!
Our dinner menu:
Vegetable stew (recipe below)
Hot-dogs (with home made sauerkraut, caramelised onions, vegan sausages)
Patatas bravas (Spanish tapas)
Zucchini chips (thin slices, oven-dried)
Tomatoes in olive oil, white balsamic, and pepper
Stuffed eggs & egg salad (from our own chickens’ eggs)
Our friends brought along a delicious onion soup and a leaf beet quiche, plus some lovely bottles of wine. Naturally, both dishes were made from vegetables grown on our farm.
The star of the evening was our vegetable stew, cooked slowly above the firebowl. First, we burned plenty of wood to get a nice bed of hot ashes. Then we placed the cookpot above and let the magic happen.
Vegetable Stew Recipe
Ingredients
3 onions, cut into half rings
11 small potatoes, chopped into medium pieces
6 medium carrots, chopped
400 g green beans
250 g capuchins (from the freezer)
250 g broad beans (from the freezer)
400 ml tomato juice (homemade from fresh tomatoes)
2 zucchinis, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Good olive oil
Smoked paprika powder (to taste)
Spice mix — I used homemade tomato/carrot and Mexican spice blends (from the book Spice Wise Green)
800 ml water (or as needed for stew consistency)
3 bouillon cubes
Optional: fresh rosemary and thyme
Preparation:
Heat olive oil in the cookpot. Add the onions and fry for a few minutes.
Add garlic and spices, fry for 1–2 minutes.
Add potatoes and carrots, fry briefly.
Stir in zucchini, green beans, broad beans, and capuchins.
Pour in tomato juice, water (enough to cover vegetables), and add bouillon cubes.
Simmer for about 30 minutes until all vegetables are cooked through.
Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve with fresh bread slices.
(If you eat meat, you could add it — though personally, I think the stew is perfect as is. And adding abused and killed animals does not add anything to the flavor)
Cooking together, sharing a meal, and enjoying the harvest straight from the land — that’s what community farming is all about.
