Snow has finally ended the growing season. I like to put as much food on the holiday table as possible from our own garden. This year, we had an odd assortment of successes. We used all of the tomatoes as we harvested them, so there will be no Thanksgiving salsa. We only had one pumpkin survive from our volunteer pumpkin patch, and it refused to ripen fully by either the Halloween or the Thanksgiving deadlines. It’s sitting in the garage with our hopes for squash soup in a couple of months. We have enough frozen pumpkin from last year that we will make pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving from a previous harvest.
My most bountiful harvest of the year has been mint. I have six mason jars full of dried mint, and the mint kept on growing after I harvested that. As I write, I hear my husband and son as they’ve come in from a huge snow storm with arms full of mint to make a giant bouquet for me. The mint will make our wonderful Thanksgiving treat this year:
Homemade Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
My family is going to share Thanksgiving dessert with neighbors this year, so I want to make it extra special. In addition to 2-3 (or 4 or 5) cups of fresh mint leaves, we are adding local eggs, milk and cream (delivered this morning) plus mint dark chocolate (organic fair trade from Theo, made in Seattle) and milk chocolate (organic and soon-to-be-certified fair trade from Green & Black’s, made in Canada). I am drawing on two recipes, one from Simply Recipes and one from Epicurious. We will use the snow that is falling right now for ice in our very old hand-crank ice cream maker.
I will let you know how it turns out.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our U.S. readers. I hope you have warm toes and a beautiful, bountiful harvest table.
