Another Day, Another Broccoli Raab Post

I harvested the Broccoli Raab this morning before work. Apparently you can eat the heads, the leaves and the flowers. I decided to use it to make a simple pasta dish. I sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms and crushed red pepper in olive oil then added the green stuff. I dumped it over some cooked Penne pasta. It tastes pretty darn good!

The problem is that the Rapini shrinks a lot and I really needed about 4 times as much as I had.

Anybody wanna come over for pasta?

Harvesting Rapini (Broccoli Raab)

This was my first time growing Rapini. I fell in love with it when I tried it for the first time at my favorite Italian restaurant, La Piazza . It has since been moved and renamed Gaetano's after a long terrible feud between the property owner and the chef, but they make their own bread and pasta fresh at the restaurant so if you are ever in Forest Park, IL be sure to visit them. When the chef came over to our table he gave such a romantic description of it that we had to try it.

The heads on this broccoli are really small compared to the standard ones so when I woke up this morning to yellow flowers I looked it up and was really shocked to learn that this is as big as they get."To harvest, cut the budding shoots just before the flowers open. Harvest until shoots are too small and tough." Uh - I'm late. Here's what the tops look like. Now that you've seen what the opening flowers look like you can take a second look at the first photo and see that they are about to open any second. I hope they'll hold on until the morning so that I can harvest a few for dinner.

The Rapini plant has really pretty soft leaves and it's not nearly as big as the standard broccoli I grew last year.

Full frontal view.

Did I mention I have no idea how to cook this stuff? Anybody got any great Rapini recipes?

Tomatoes Are In!

Looks like I'll be eating tomatoes from plants instead of tomatoes from seeds again this year. None of my seedlings made it and although I did throw some more in the milk jugs you see in the photo below, I'm almost certain they won't work.

So, I planted Hierloom Brandywine, Black Krim and Sausage Tomato plants today along with hybrid Sweet 100's, Husky Red Cherry, Grape, Early Girl and Roma. I also planted my bush bean seeds and golden zucchini and I'm just praying that the squirrels don't dig them up. It looks like the raised veggie beds are a favorite spot for them as proven by all the peanut hulls I found in there while I was planting today. Question: does anybody know what the plant below is? I thought it was a weed but when I started to pull it out I realized that it was growing from one of the coconut fiber pellets which means I planted this from seed. It is planted in the same square that I thought was either Rappini or Romanesco broccoli but there is no way. See next photo.

This is in the same square and looks a lot more like a Rappini or Romanesco, right? Yes I labeled them but badly and I can't read it anymore.

And here's the other either Rappini or Romanesco. So, then what the heck is the yellow stuff?

And why must everything be such a pain in my ass?