Favas and Fishing

This evening I picked all of my fava beans and set about shelling them. Fava beans are kind of a pain in the ass because you not only have to pull them out of the pod, but then you have to blanch the beans in salt water and then remove the edible seed from inside of a tough skin. I took a picture at the end to show how much "waste" is produced versus the amount of edible material. To be fair, the bowl of edible favas is actually a little smaller than it should be because I couldn't stop tasting them as I worked. In the end I've decided it was worth the effort, because they are just so sweet and tasty once you've finally got them done.

Left: Edible Fava Beans, Right: All the stuff I picked through to get them

Next year I definitely need to plant more fava plants and give them more room to grow. The nasturtiums I planted between them got much bigger than I'd expected and probably outcompeted the fava plants for light. I've started the battle of tearing out the nasturtiums, plucking their seed pods along the way. With the ones I picked today I'll be making "capers" tomorrow.

This morning and afternoon Elliott and I did a day trip fishing with a group of families from Pilgrim. I caught three Sculpin in the morning (Elliott was busy puking from sea sickness, as was most of the group) and we caught 12 Perch in the afternoon after the captain wisely moved the boat to calmer waters.

Fishing!

For dinner I coated the little perch fillets in butter, garlic, and dried herbs then broiled them. Fresh fish that we caught ourselves and fresh picked fave beans from our garden...it couldn't have been much tastier.

Dinner

Harvest:
5 lbs Fava Beans (before shelling)
1 lb Nasturtium Pods