Wednesday, October 17, 2012

What can you grow in a Zone3 Garden?

Anything you want! Of course :)


That there is a Bean and Corn Salad. All the ingredients except the dressing was grown in our garden!

Black Beans - dried then cooked with garlic and onion (also ours)
Sweet Corn - Golden Bantam and Hookers Sweet Corn
Peppers - Sweet Bell (green) and Hot Jalapeno
Tomatoes!
Red Onion

Seasoned with salt and pepper. Dressed with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Lime Juice.
Serve with corn chips. (My sister would add avocado to this. I agreed that would be super delicious!)

An almost 100% Edmonton AB TexMex/SouthWest/Mexican Inspired recipe (if we keep out the avocado).

Could we make it 100%? Let's see....

Now, it's hard to replace salt and pepper - usually.
There are salt mines in Alberta. I believe you can buy Alberta salt at the Three Hills Co-op.
Pepper - in this recipe - could be replaced with crushed dried chili flakes (from our garden, of course).

That can be done without a noticeable flavour difference. These alternatives however would give a completely different profile. Not bad, necessarily. Just different....

The olive oil could be replaced with Mighty Trio Organics Canola or Hemp or Flax oils.
Highbush cranberry juice/cider would take the place of lime.

From a 90-something% local/diy grown dish to a 100% Alberta sourced recipe! With most of it still coming from your own backyard (or my own backyard :) ).

Crazy-Cool, huh? ;)




3 comments:

  1. Looks delish! Congrats on this growing achievement!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's amazing! Inspirational really, I'm not exaggerating.
    I crave being able to garden like this but have a long way to go.
    I am following you closely for any tips.

    http://youautoknowblog.com

    ReplyDelete