Tipping into summer
six new recipes, three more wine stops, and a garden tour
We’re tipping into summer, and I am SO ready. We have a lot packed into this week’s harvest. Three more stops on the My Fruit Trees tour, six new seasonal recipes on the site, a garden tour recap, essays you may have missed, and more! Let’s get into it.
People are calling My Fruit Trees “the wine of the summer,” and thank you to everyone who has purchased a bottle (or more) so far. Our launch party at Bucatini was so much fun — nearly 100 of you came out to taste and celebrate. We have a very limited quantity left and it will sell out. Use code “carmeninthegarden” for free shipping on 3+ bottles. Pali Wine Co. is also running their semi-annual sale right now, so it’s a perfect time to stock up on some of my other favorites like Huntington. Just three more stops on the My Fruit Trees tour, would love to see you:
SAN DIEGO // Bar Dinner Takeover Saturday, June 6 · Cellar Hand · 1440 University Ave, Hillcrest. A prix-fixe dinner paired with My Fruit Trees and two surprise Pali wines I picked just for the night. The menu features cucamelons and herbs pulled straight from my garden. Reserve here.
SANTA BARBARA // Wine Tasting Meet & Greet Saturday, June 13 · Pali Wine Co. Funk Zone Tasting Room. Come hang out with me at the Funk Zone for a guided tasting of My Fruit Trees alongside a few of my favorite Pali pours. Reserve here.
LOS ANGELES // Good Boy & Friends Festival Saturday, June 27 5pm-late · Francois Ghebaly + Night Gallery Campus. We will be pouring alongside 60+ wine and beverage producers a limited quantity of My Fruit Trees and other Pali Wine Co. natural wines at the Good Boy & Friends wine festival. You can purchase tickets here.
Read more about my wine collaboration here.
There are 6 (count ‘em, 6!) new, seasonal recipes on carmeninthegarden.com. All of my recipes are free, with no ads and no paywall. My goal is to make seasonal cooking more accessible to anyone curious about cooking with what’s abundant right now — the resource I wish I’d had when I started gardening. (read: I never planned to be a gardener).
Rosemary Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (Easy Appetizer): Cocktail-sized beef meatballs baked and finished in a quick garlicky tomato-rosemary sauce. Perfect for hosting.
Whipped Lemon Ricotta with Charred Mushrooms: Cool, lemony whipped ricotta topped with mushrooms that have been pushed past golden into properly charred. Served at room temperature with toasted bread or seedy crackers.
Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Carrot Top Salsa Verde: Rainbow carrots roasted and topped with a bright salsa verde made from the carrot tops themselves, plus mint, chives, anchovy, and lemon. A zero-waste, garden-to-plate side dish.
Basil Turkey Burgers with Quick-Pickled Carrot Ribbons: Juicy basil-and-parmesan turkey burgers piled with bright, coriander-scented carrot ribbons quick-pickled from the garden.
Mom’s Sticky Chicken Adobo with Green Beans: Adobo is often considered the unofficial national dish of the Philippines, and every Filipino family has their own cherished version. This one is mine. I grew up eating it weekly, and whenever my mom visits, it’s still the dish I ask her to make. The flavors are classic. Soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and bay leaves work their magic in a slow simmer. What sets this version apart is the generous amount of garlic and the finish: the chicken is broiled until the skin turns glossy, sticky-sweet, and just a little crisp. It’s an extra step, but it transforms the dish.
Carrot Coconut Fish Curry: A silky coconut curry built on a base of blended carrots, gently spiced and used to poach mild white fish until just flaky. Highly riffable — swap fish for chickpeas, or do what I did last week and use clams.
This week I filmed a full tour of the garden over on TikTok. All ten raised beds, the fruit trees, chickens, and my stunning passion fruit vine. Five and a half years ago, this was all grass. I can’t believe what it’s become. The questions came pouring in the comment section: what’s a cucamelon, what’s your irrigation setup, what do I do with leftover produce, what do I do about pests? So I’m doing something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: a proper bed-by-bed garden tour for paid subscribers, with photos of every bed, every variety, and answers to the questions you’ve been asking. I’ll include the stuff that’s hard to fit into a TikTok. Coming next week. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, this is the one.
A big misconception is that I have formal training in gardening or I grew up “crunchy.” I wrote about how I stumbled upon gardening during a dark period of my life and how it changed my life.
In case you missed it, this Instagram carousel post delineating the differences between content creators and recipe developers stirred up quite the conversation. I chimed in, but not in the way you might expect. I was interested in understanding more clearly the way that people define themselves. I wrote more about it here: “Not a content creator.” In an ever-flattening world, where gatekeeping mechanisms are not able to uphold our previously held identities, what are we to do?
I shared a sneak peek recipe from Erin O'Brien’s debut, New York Times Bestselling cookbook, Dig In! I used produce from the garden and farmers market to make her Peach, Kale & Crunchy Quinoa Salad.
If you’ve ever asked, “what the heck is a cucamelon!?” I talk more about them here. Cucamelons AKA Mexican Gherkins are just about the cutest thing you can grow in the garden.
I hosted a 16 person garden party to raise funds for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. We did a wine tasting with bites from the garden to pair.
A special harvest basket for my father-in-law’s birthday. Their reaction to the basket is so cute!
I’ll always be amazed by what I can get done in the garden while my baby is napping.
Take a trip down memory lane, my first “garden to table” meal that went viral 4 years ago.
That’s the harvest for this week. Hope you find something here that makes its way onto your table or into your garden.
xo,
Carmen