Winter seems like a good time to look back at the past year’s summer bounty and see what did well for us out here in the high desert. Here are some of the highlights:

‘Lemon Boy’ tomatoes. I’m trying to keep my acidic food intake low and these tomatoes are great. They are low acid but still taste tart and delicious.

‘English Custard’ squash – a weirdly shaped summer squash that tastes delicious despite the odd way it grows.

Real baby carrots. These are so much better than the kind that come in a bag! When Chad thinned our carrot patch I get these delightful baby carrots to use in meals.

Endive, from the chicory family, as a salad green.

Heirloom snap beans in the most beautiful colors.

Borage. The flowers are delicious to nibble on in the garden or as a garnish for salads. Chad made borage juice out of the leaves. The flavor of the leaves was a little too fish-like for me (compared with the flowers, which have a lovely cucumber taste).

Apricots, apricots everywhere, and plenty of them to eat!

Cilantro. I turned a bunch of this into Zhoug sauce, a really weird combo of some of my favorite flavors, a staple of Yemeni cuisine – reserved only for cilantro fans, of course.

Edible flowers, like red clover. Great in salads.

Cherries. We harvested just enough to make about 3 cherry pies.

Last summer was actually not a very prolific year for us. We had late frosts that gave many of our veggies a rough start.

But this was balanced out by our plentiful cherry, apricot, and apple harvests.

Our pantry is stocked with dried apricots, and cans of apricot jam and apple sauce, helping us make it through the winter.