This summer, even with my limited growing space, I harvested some wonderful edibles.

Just before the big snow fall, I picked the last of the kale. It has been deep green and beautiful all summer long (as soon as I got rid of the pesky earwigs, that is!) and I enjoyed looking at it as much as harvesting it. I confess that I planted it before I really knew what to do with it, except that I’d heard people say it made great chips. That sounded like hard-core, health-nut kind of thing to eat but once my garden was full of big green leafy plants I didn’t have much choice (a girl can only eat so many green smoothies). As it turns out, toasting kale in the oven with a little olive oil and salt makes it delicious. Even my chip-eating husband agreed they were good! (pro tip: don’t eat too many in one sitting. Kale is of the brassica family–think cabbage.)

And if I can get chips from my garden, surely I can get cookies (the second essential food group) from it, too.

First, I harvested lavender. I took the flowers off the stalk and put a generous amount of them in a mason jar filled with white sugar. Then I put the jar in the back of the cupboard and forgot about it until last week. That’s when I pulled it out, pulsed it in the food processor and made little rounds of shortbread speckled with purple! I used one of my favourite shortbread recipes, which only calls for a small amount of white sugar, so they have a nice, gentle flavour (in other words, they don’t taste like potpourri). Yum!

Then I had another thought. I grew a ton of rosemary this year and even brought a pot of it into the kitchen (I am going to try and keep it alive all winter. I make no promises.) As it sat and stared at me begging for more sunlight, I realized it might make good cookies, too. So I got out the food processor again, whirred it with the sugar and made another batch of shortbread. Wow! Rosemary is my favourite herb, I’ll admit, but I had no idea a savoury cookie would be my kind of thing. Double yum!

The pot of rosemary notwithstanding, I won’t have anything more to harvest from my garden this year. But finishing up the season with cookies and chips seems pretty great. Also, I now have a few cookies to share (provided I don’t eat them all) which will be perfect for Christmas. Here’s to my junk food garden!