Wintertime Sunday Dinner

Even with a pretty nice afternoon, it's hard not to feel some serious winter blahs when the sun sets at 4:09 p.m. We're working on just over nine hours of daylight here, and that's nothing short of terrible.

One thing that did help make that early nightfall better was a really great Sunday dinner. First, a tray of vegetables ready for roasting:

This is full of fresh-picked carrots and leeks, plus potatoes and garlic from winter storage. They were cut into pieces, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, and given a generous helping of rosemary leaves and whole sprigs of thyme.

After an hour of roasting veggies and the beef, the house smelled great, and it was time to eat. Green salad to start:

Fresh from the cold frames and greenhouse tunnels are lettuces, mache, and arugula. There are also some slices of fennel bulbs that we pulled last weekend. Non-garden ingredients are thinly sliced Granny Smiths and pomegranate seeds. Yum!

Then the main course:

You can see on the left the roasted vegetables, which turned out really great – roasted garlic cloves and caramelized, falling-apart leeks made them extra good. Also on the plate are Yorkshire puddings with gravy and slices of roast beef. On my roast beef you can see a generous dollop of freshly prepared horseradish, from a root we dug just that afternoon. (You can catch up on how to make it here.)

I was way too cavalier about that amount of horseradish – it was much spicier than we had let it get during our first go at grating it on Thanksgiving, and on my first (large) bite I had that sinus-clearing sensation sweep clear around to the nape of my neck. Apparently my reaction was more than enough to keep Jonas away from the stuff, but Tiegan tried a tiny taste and gave it a thumbs up.

Despite my first ultra-intense bite, I do love it – especially when spread around more sensibly. I think we should be working on lots of new recipes and uses for horseradish. We have a ton, and it is so good!

Too bad every day isn't a Sunday!