How Does your Garden Grow?

After a year of eating three meals a day in the college cafeteria (not the freshest foods to say the least!),  Mary and I were so excited to come home for the summer to some local produce and home- cooked meals! What better way to take advantage of our large backyard and our love for fresh, in-season foods than building a backyard garden filled with a wide variety of our favorite vegetables! Mary and I began planning for our summer garden months in advance, and our dad helped us out by starting several types of seeds while we were still away at school. 

After hours of working in the yard, our dad finished creating a raised bed for our garden filled with a mixture of soil and mushroom compost. We planted over 15 vegetables, including lettuce, radishes, beets, cauliflower, eggplants, green beans, carrots, kale, and of course tomatoes! While the plants are still in their early stages, we can't wait to harvest our home grown veggies and herbs throughout the summer and make some great, fresh recipes!

After many trips to various garden stores, we couldn't resist purchasing this beautiful salad bowl starter plant filled with many different types of greens including spinach, green leaf and red leaf lettuce. Lately the bowl has been growing pretty fast and getting rather full, so we thought it would be perfect to have home grown salads for dinner! 

Shoutout to our mom for finding these adorable chalkboard slate garden stakes from the Target dollar section! We wrote on them using a white paint pen so that the writing would not erase with the rain! 

To top off our salads, we prepared a simply grilled lemon dill salmon and added in some kale, avocado, and chopped veggies. We can't wait until we can make some tasty salads filled with more of our garden-fresh produce! 

Here's the recipe we used for grilled lemon dill salmon! 

Grilled Lemon Dill Salmon in Foil

Recipe by Cooking Classy

Ingredients

•     4, 6oz wild caught salmon fillets
•     2 cloves garlic, minced
•     8 fresh dill sprigs
•     1 lemon, thinly sliced
•     2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
•     sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

Cooking Directions

1.  Heat grill to 400 degrees F.           
2.  Cut four sheets of aluminum foil into pieces about 14 inches long.           
3.  Rinse and dry salmon with paper towel.                  
4.  In a small bowl, stir together olive oil and minced garlic.                  
5.  Place salmon fillets in aluminum foil and fold over edges over to create a foil packet.                  
6.  Drizzle about 1 teaspoon of olive oil over each fillet and season with salt and pepper to taste. 
7.  Top each fillet with about 2 springs dill and 2 lemon slices.                  
8.  Wrap sides of foil inward over salmon then fold in top and bottom to enclose completely.          
9.  Place foil pouches in a single layer on the grill and cook 15-20 minutes until salmon is cooked   through.                 
10.  Unwrap foil packets and serve warm.          

Be sure to stay tuned for updates on how our garden grows and some delicious recipes along the way!