Ready to make some delicious dairy-free recipes using fresh garden produce?
You don’t have to be a master gardener to enjoy homegrown vegetables and all the satisfying dishes you can create with them.
Here are seven easy dairy-free recipes that keep us growing a simple box garden in our little backyard year after year.
And yes, these are kid-approved!
Full disclosure here, it’s my husband who does the gardening at our house.
And I’m sure thankful it’s a hobby he thoroughly enjoys.
There’s something so rewarding about growing your own food…
even doing it organically…
sharing the bounty with friends and family…
and hopefully teaching your kids the skills to grow their own food someday, too.
I definitely need to learn more about the process of planting and tending to the garden, myself.
Instead, I’ve spent most of my garden dedication to creating easy recipes as my hubby brings in the harvest.
It’s my mission to make sure none of my hubby’s hard work goes to waste.
That’s important, too!
I guess teamwork has made the dreamwork when it comes to my husband and I doing this garden thing together.
Yes, eating cherry tomatoes and sweet peas right off the vine is incredibly tasty in and of itself.
In fact, some of our fresh produce lends itself perfectly to packing easy, healthy dairy-free lunches for my kids.
But there’s also a lot of satisfaction in using garden vegetables as fresh ingredients in recipes, too.
For example, my house is full of teens in the summertime, and they always request my fresh salsa made so quickly in the blender.
They even ask for the recipe so I thought I’d share that one plus some others with you today!
All dairy-free and easy.
SMALL BACKYARD BOX GARDEN
Our garden pursuits definitely started small.
First, I planted a few tomato plants along a fence.
Then, we added a four by four foot box garden I bought at Aldi.
Eventually, that led to my husband building up a larger box garden in the corner of our irregular backyard.
Each year, we better perfect our gardening strategy.
Yet, we don’t grow anything too complicated or fancy…
just our favorite vegetables that have proven easy to grow.
Lettuce, spinach, sweet peas, basil, cucumbers, tomatoes, and zucchini.
We added a separate box garden of strawberries this year, I guess that’s fruit not veggies.
And hubby always throws in some flower seeds like cosmos and zinnias for bouquets all summer long.
He’s a keeper.
Now here are our favorite dairy-free recipes that make gardening even more worth it!
GARDEN PRODUCE RECIPES DAIRY-FREE
Here are 7 of our favorite dairy-free recipes to make using produce from our summer garden.
- strawberry salad – using garden lettuce and strawberries
- blender salsa – using garden romaine tomatoes and peppers
- bacon lettuce tomato sandwiches – using garden big boy tomatoes
- tomato basil dip – using garden basil and tomatoes
- nut-free pesto – using garden basil
- zucchini muffins – using garden zucchini
- zucchini brownies – using garden zucchini
- cucumber sandwiches – using garden dill and cucumbers
Ok, that’s actually 8 in our list now.
And hopefully we add more as the years go by!
Hope you’re encouraged to give gardening and garden produce recipes a try!
If you don’t have your own garden yet, just pick up ingredients at your local farmers’ market.
For more garden inspiration, we have a post on how to grow tomatoes.
Plus, we have several box garden videos for you over on Pinterest.