First Harvest & Early Pizza

On Saturday I gathered my first few leaves of arugula sylvetta from some plants that had overwintered in the garden. Last year my first harvest came in April, and it was from some incredibly hardy overwintered Tuscan kale that put out a few small new leaves before going to seed. As usual, the chives are up an' at 'em early as well. I decided that pizza night would put this tiny harvest to best use.

In the interest of my resolution to keep better harvest records this year, I duly weighed that harvest. My baking scale of course couldn't handle such trivial quantities, so I had to get out the tiny metric scale. I'd harvested a whopping 5 grams each of arugula and chives. I felt pretty silly about this. But there it is, nonetheless, on my side bar: my first harvest tally of the year.

We added other things from our garden to the thin crust pizzas we made. Each one had a different combination of last year's smoked cherry tomatoes, pesto made from our homegrown purple basil and garlic, the freshly harvested arugula and chives, cheese, and some of the local pastured bacon I bartered for recently. The pesto and the smoked cherry tomatoes had both been frozen. I like to make these tiny pizzas because they cook in about four minutes on a baking stone, and we can try lots of different toppings. Except for the chives, this one pretty much has it all:


It's best to add the arugula when the pizza comes out of the oven, and just let wilt a bit. Some of the cherry tomatoes were still juicy enough to squirt warm tomato juice on our faces when we bit into them. Ooops! Is that too much like food porn for a family blog?

I'm looking forward to when more of our harvest ingredients are from this year. Have any of you northern folks managed to have a harvest meal yet? Do tell!