Garden Fresh Recipes From Botanical Interests
Botanical Interests produces high-quality seed and garden products. They share many wonderful tips and ideas with gardeners. We’re sharing some of their fresh-from-the-garden-inspired recipes.
Starting your garden with quality seeds makes a difference in how well you garden thrives and produces.
Note from Pam:
I just had a customer tell me she and her daughter tried these seeds this spring and her garden is amazing – even with this weather! Yes, these are wonderful seeds.
We offer Botanical Interests all year long inside Viking Village Foods since they also have a line of sprouts and micro greens which are great growing inside during the fall and winter.
Shared Recipes
Caramelized Red Onions
Red onions have a high sugar content already, so when you slow cook them with honey and apple cider vinegar, they get even sweeter! Make this versatile garnish to enjoy on cheese and crackers, in a grilled cheese sandwich, atop burgers, or over roasted chicken.
Easy Zucchini Refrigerator Pickles
Cucumbers get all the pickle glory. Try zucchini pickles! Enjoy these easy, delicious, no-can pickles. Your dinner guests will be amazed! Debatably better than cucumber pickles.
Meatless Eggplant “Meatballs”
With purple being the new color of health foods, we’re celebrating! These meatless eggplant “meatballs” are savory, a little smoky, and light. Try them over pasta with a little Parmesan cheese, or in a pita pocket with Greek tzatziki sauce.
Basil Simple Syrup
Flavored simple syrup can bring new life to your favorite beverages. And just like the name implies, it is so simple to do! Basil, in particular, pairs deliciously with strawberries and lemons. Try this basil simple syrup in place of sour mix in a strawberry margarita or as a sweetener to homemade lemonade. It’s so refreshing that you’ll be inspired to create your own drink recipes!
Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles
Cucumber plants can be mighty prolific. So when you’re done putting cucumbers in salads, sandwiches, and vegetables trays, try this quick, refrigerator-pickle recipe. They’re ready to eat in less than 24 hours, so make them just ahead of your next barbecue.
You Can’t “Beet” These Chips
Home-grown beets are delicious root vegetables, and the leaves are considered by some to be the best of all greens! Roasting and pickling are traditional ways to prepare beets, but we’re marching to a different “beet” with these oven-baked beet chips! So quick and easy to make, you’ll even get the kiddos to enjoy them.
Garlic Confit
Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Confit (kōn-fēʹ) comes from the French word “confire,” which translates to “preserve.” Today, confit is a condiment made by preserving food (and intensifying flavor) in fat, sugar, or wine through a slow cooking process. For example, a confit can be fruits cooked in sugar, meats cooked in fat, or vegetables cooked in oil or wine. In our case, we are making a garlic confit by poaching garlic cloves in olive oil. This process produces a rich, garlic flavor in the cloves with the bonus of also having garlic-infused olive oil. Delish!
Collard Greens Enchiladas
Collard plants can take the heat and also are among the most cold-tolerant crops, surviving to 20°F.
This delicious and healthful play on enchiladas is gluten-free, full of garden veggies, and easy to adapt to be paleo or vegan by leaving out the cheese. To save time, you could use store-bought enchilada sauce, but we love this thicker, homemade, garden-fresh sauce.
Flea Market Street Corn
When summer arrives, one of our favorite activities is visiting the Mile High Flea Market in Denver, Colorado. But this is no ordinary flea market; besides garage sale stuff, antiques and fresh produce, it also has great food stands! We never miss their “famous” (at least to us) street corn–steaming, grilled corn on the cob covered with butter, mayonnaise (trust us, it’s delicious), cheese and chili powder.
Pickled Red Beets
Tangy on a salad or crunchy in a sandwich, pickled beets are a kitchen staple for beet lovers.
Sprout Burgers
Sprouts aren’t just for salads and sandwiches! Add your sprouts to a few basic ingredients and enjoy a nutritious meal in under 30 minutes. You can add any flavor profile you like–Italian, spicy, smoky–making this a truly versatile recipe.
