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Monthly Garden Dinners
Saturday, June 26th 2021 was our first of three scheduled in-garden dinners this summer. It is actually the first ever garden dinners held in the kitchen-pavilion, "seven-sides" building. 31 people partook in Sayuri and Sarah's excellent menu, themed, "After the Flood."
A dozen or so people arrived about 6:30 to saunter in the garden and for all of them, except neighbors, it was the first time experience, even after having been to many dinners at the house over the fifteen years we've been doing garden dinners. From the deck, visitors to the house dinners could see the garden about 150 feet below through the trees and imagine the garden from which many items on each menu came, but we never had an adequately sheltered place to hold events with the thirty to fifty people who would attend our dinners, until last year when we hosted a wedding in our barely dried-in pavilion in March 2020. A year later a flash flood seemed to put a damper on any plans we had for garden dinners and even a garden due to significant damage to our garden machinery, including our tractor which was covered in floodwaters and corrosive, yet fertile muddy water and mud. The plants that we had already planted by this time bounced back without much pause, but it three months later, we are still relocating storage and irrigation operations to a building still under construction on higher ground. Thanks to a flood of support we have been able to accomplish this response and manage to hold our first of three dinners this summer, June 26, July 17, and August 21. Here are the some flood recovery pics.
"After the Flood" menu June 26, 2021:
Salad: We were surprised that the red cabbages and kale survived the five feet of muddy water moving on top of them. We later transplanted lettuces, arugula, cucumbers and beets from the house where they were raised from seed, to the flood enriched soil. We used these items, marinating the beets, and topping it off with walnuts, feta cheese with a homemade miso-ceasar dressing. Sayuri says that the dressing is like the beginning of the muddy flood waters.
Main course: Curry and mixed wild rice represents the mixture of everything brought by the flood and the surviving onions and new potatoes which we planted after the flood and probably benefited from the nutrients deposited by the flood. The potatoes had to wait until the tractor would run again after a week of working on it. The Chickpeas remind Sayuri of the chickens Joe and our neighbors, Tom and Vivian Lamb, helped save as the floodwaters rose, moving their pens to higher ground. The sauerkraut was made using the surviving green cabbage. The yellow squash and zucchini were planted after the flood and were roasted and seasoned with homemade red pepper sauce from last fall's harvest before the frost.
Dessert: Chocolate "mud" pudding with whipped cream, strawberries, blueberries and fresh mint. While cleaning the pudding-like mud from every surface and corner in the kitchen-pavilion after the flood, she thought that the dessert for the first dinner should be a chocolate "mud" pudding. While the organic strawberries on top of the pudding were not grown at Revival Gardens, our strawberry plants did survive and we expect them to produce well next year. Sayuri cut and arranged them on the pudding in the shape of the small flowers she noticed blooming already after the flood had subsided. A final blueberry was put in the center of the strawberry flower to represent all the flowers and fruits that survived because of their strong roots. The support Revival Gardens received after the flood was like our roots that helped us survive, bloom and be fruitful this year with dinners that may not have happened otherwise. Thank you everyone for coming out to the dinners, buying produce, and supporting our gardening adventures!
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