Grow Your Own Round-up #7

One of the things I enjoy most about Grow Your Own is the variety, and we have plenty of that this month. We have 12 participants from Crete, Singapore, Philippines, Brazil, Australia, and the Unites States and we used 22 different homegrown ingredients in our dishes. How's that for creativity?

I have couple quick announcements before the round-up:

• The Grow Your Own page now has links to all the round-ups so that you can easily find them. Thanks to Susan of Farmgirl Fare for the suggestion!
• March Grow Your Own is underway. The deadline for this month is March 28.
• I need to apologize to one our participants from last month because I inadvertently left her out of the round-up! My humblest apologies to Kim of Live, Love, Laugh, Eat! I included her entry in this month's round-up and listed it first.

Here are our delicious entries for February! Click the photos to visit the posts.

In the Virginia Beach area, Kim of Live, Laugh, Love, Eat! (Virginia, United States) has a garden full of tomatillos! She made a salsa verde with them and served it with an easy enchilada casserole for their annual Porch Potluck. She inspired me to plant some tomatillos this spring! And during our email exchange, we realized that we had met before! It was fun to reconnect with her.

Tsikoudia is a type of brandy produced on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean made from the pomace, or pieces of grapes pressed during the winemaking process. Many families distill their own tsikoudia and the alcohol content can vary from 35 to 65%. Ivy of Kopiaste (Athens, Greece) made an orange liqueur using the tsikoudia made by some family friends of her son and the beautiful oranges grown by her in-laws in the Lakonia region. Salud!

In Melbourne, Australia, Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe (love the blog name) is learning about growing things in containers. She has a lime tree, and a lemon tree, parsley, mint, rosemary, and other herbs so far. I think that's a great start! She made some delicious dips using some of the mint and rosemary, a pea bean and mint dip, and a smoky sweet potato and bean dip.

Lynn of To Short Term Memories (Singapore) started growing her own herbs in her kitchen garden, and she was very excited to receive a gift of fresh verbena that a friend of hers grows in her garden. She wrote a lovely post about her first taste of verbena in Provence and included her recipe for a refreshing verbena ice as well as a chicken soup with verbena. Both of these look very tasty!

Mike of Mike's Table (Florida, United States) bravely grows his own naga jolokia, the hottest peppers in the world. These fiesty peppers are even used as elephant repellent in their native India! What better way to use the world's hottest peppers than to put some in homemade chili? The chili looks great! I'm betting my husband will want to grow some of these peppers now alongside his habaneros.

Gay of A Scientist in the Kitchen (Philippines) decided to spruce up her favorite salad with a Thai inspired vinaigrette. Her leafy green salad was made with the malunggay, lemongrass, and kamote tops she has growing in her garden. It looks so fresh and the vinaigrette sounds very tempting!

Root vegetables make great comfort foods, and this tasty dish served up by Jennie of Straight from the Farm (Pennsylvania, United States) looks perfect. She browned rutabaga and turnips in butter with an assortment of herbs, garlic, and scallions then topped it with panko.

Sue of Coffee & Cornbread (Virginia, United States) froze a good bit of her herbs and vegetables left over last fall as well as some fresh herbs from her kitchen garden and made a delicious dish of meatballs and rigatoni. She used her homegrown tomatoes, peppers, onion, oregano, basil and thyme. The tomatoes were roasted with garlic, onion, and oregano before freezing, and the basil was frozen in olive oil.

Cris of my favorite Brazilian cooking blog From Our Home to Yours went all Italian and made a delicious Bolognese polenta. She shared her mother's recipe for hard polenta and flavored her meat sauce with some of the fresh basil from her indoor garden.

Mary of Baking Delights (Texas, United States) is a busy woman. She has eight children, six of whom are still at home, she home schools, and helps her husband renovate their 100-year-old home, all while still finding time to participate in all sorts of outdoor activities. They raise their own chickens and goats, and she used a dozen of those lovely brown eggs in this amazing cake flavored with orange. Mary, can you send slices of that cake to all of this month's Grow Your Own participants? Please?

These amazing lamb spareribs come to us from Susan of Farmgirl Fare (Missouri, United States). She uses her own home raised lamb meat, and crusted it with loads of onion flakes and fresh herbs and roasted it in the oven. Talk about easy and delicious!

And my contribution this month is the sloppy Italian Beef Sandwiches I made for Michael on Super Bowl Sunday. I used lots of the fresh oregano from our kitchen garden.