Garden Journal 6/16/08: The First Fresh Dill & A Chance to Win A Summer of Wild Salmon

Quick Comfort Food - Salmon Patties with Garden Scallions & Dill

So what have I been doing for the past nine days besides eating scallions? Dealing with strawberry diseases and potato beetles, clearing weed-choked raised beds, still trying to get more pepper and tomato plants in the ground, wondering if this otherwise much needed late spring rain is ruining my gorgeous garlic crop, repotting my mail order French tarragon plants (which are doing great), and even starting a few heirloom cucumber and summer squash seeds in containers (because there's no unweeded room in the garden for them yet). Oh yeah, and we've been putting up hay — an enormous, exhausting, sweat-drenched job that takes precedence over everything. It also happens to be one of my least favorite things to do on the farm — yep, I'd rather shovel out the sheep barn than bring in hundreds of bales of hay from the field and stack them in the barn. But it feeds our animals through winter, so it's worth it. At least that's what I keep reminding myself when I can barely get out of bed the next morning.

As for the all garden goings-on, I've been learning a lot, taking plenty of photos, and am hoping to get back to my newly revived regular posting schedule very soon. Meanwhile, a girl's still gotta eat, and last Friday we showcased the first dill from the garden in one of our quick comfort food standbys — salmon patties. These healthy burgers are easy, inexpensive (we use canned wild Alaska salmon) and delicious, and thanks to the dill and our beautiful bounty of scallions, Friday's were the best I've ever made.

I'm headed back out into the hayfield now so I don't have a chance to post the recipe yet, but I'm mentioning it because I wanted to make note of the first dill harvest and tell you about the salmon recipe contest over at MarxFoods.com. Enter your best salmon recipe (maybe it includes something you've grown yourself?) and you might win a summer of wild salmon - three 5-lb. shipments throughout the summer (totaling 15 lbs.) of different varieties and river origin of wild salmon. Yum.

Salmon should be the star of the dish, but the recipe can incorporate any variety of salmon — fresh, frozen, smoked, canned, pickled, etc. The winning recipe will be judged by the MarxFoods.com staff on deliciousness and originality. You'll find the salmon recipe contest details here, along with all of the recipes submitted so far. But hurry — the entry deadline is Friday, June 20th.

I just discovered Marx Foods, but this fifth generation family business in Seattle has been supplying top restaurant chefs around the country with the finest and freshest ingredients since 1895. Last year they started selling directly to home chefs, helping to foragers, farmers, fishermen and artisans to "supply you with the best and connect you to the source." So does it really make sense to order fresh food online? Actually, it can. Says Marx:

The truth is that most of your food travels along a very long supply chain as it zigzags the country or world, travels on and off many trucks, and in and out many warehouses. Not only does that increase costs, but it diminishes quality as the food bounces along and experiences one temperature change after the next.

We ship via Fedex and connect you directly to wild mushroom foragers in the Pacific NorthWest, artisanal pasta makers in the NorthEast and game bird farms in the SouthEast, to name a few. If you order five items, you are likely to receive five separate FedEx boxes, each having arrived from a different place.

My simple salmon patties won't be winning any recipe contests, but we love them just the same, especially when there's fresh dill to be had in the garden. The nicest thing about dill — a cold-tolerant annual that is easy to grow from seed and is almost never bothered by pests — is that once you plant it, it almost always comes back year after year on its own. It isn't called 'dill weed' for nothing. I haven't had to buy dill seeds in years.

My only complaint is that my volunteer dill is always ready to pick well before I have any cucumbers, but gardeners getting something for nothing can't be choosy. You can dry your dill, and while the flavor isn't the same as fresh (and I wouldn't recommend using it for homemade pickles), it's a lot tastier than nothing come winter.

Have you ever ordered fresh food by mail? And, more importantly, what's your favorite thing to do with dill?

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where we also love adding dill to homemade beer bread and herbed yogurt cheese.