Zucchini! (and what to do with it)

 

I have the totally cliche gardening problem of too much zucchini, and giant ones at that. So, we have been experimenting with a number of zucchini recipes.  Translation: everyday we are eating something with zucchini in it.  Some of these were better than others - here's a roundup of what we've tried so far.

Zucchini Tots from The Curious Country Cook - I was the only one who liked these.  She claims they taste like tater tots, but I didn't think so.  More like little zucchini quiches.

Zucchini Fritters from Damn Delicious - Draining the zucchini really made these come out crisp, not soggy.  I liked them, but no one else did.  Pfft.

Blueberry Zucchini Cake from I am Baker - I made this with my friend Stephanie, who is vegan, so we subbed flax seed for the eggs.  Oh, and a banana and applesauce for some of the oil.  We baked it in little loaf pans.  It was very good and very sweet and very popular with Matt and the girls.  We didn't mess around with the frosting.

Chicken and Zucchini Poppers from One Lovely Life - These were tasty, healthy little meatballs.  I used italian seasoning and basil instead of cumin and cilantro so they weren't really Mexican/popper-y as the recipe intended.  Still good.

Best Zucchini Bread Ever from Simple Bites- Well, no.  It wasn't.  It was good, I guess.  I can't pinpoint what I didn't really like.  The texture, maybe?  I didn't use freshly ground spices like she said to?  I cut the sugar a little because we used sweetened vanilla yogurt?  Anyway, I'm still looking for a go-to zucchini bread recipe.

Blueberry Zucchini Muffins from In Erika's Kitchen - Very yummy.  Definitely a treat, as they were pretty sweet.  I subbed applesauce for about a 1/3 of the oil and stevia for 1/2 cup of the sugar.

Zucchini Casserole from Our Ohio - I took this to our church life group potluck.  Honestly, I thought it was weird.  I wished it was more cornbread-y.  But, a couple folks complimented it and I was asked for the recipe, so...

Parmesan Zucchini Wedges from My Blessed Life - I ate a bunch of these, but Matt tried one bite and gave up and I didn't even attempt to give it to the girls.  I left out the rosemary and just used cooking spray.  I'd make them again to take to a potluck - somewhere with more adventurous eaters.

Healthy Zucchini Muffins from Gimme Some Oven

Healthy Zucchini Muffins from Gimme Some Oven - These were a hit! Moist, healthy, not at all too sweet.  Cadence said, "Mmm...these were sooo good!  I want another one."

Easy Zucchini Bake Casserole from Canuck Cuisine - This is another one I didn't bother feeding my family.  I took it to a party.  I liked it.  Simple.  I used two eggs instead of one egg and one egg white (ain't nobody got time for separating eggs around here) and used garlic salt to season the zucchini.

Baked Turkey Zucchini Meatballs from Baker by Nature - Delicious.  I halved the recipe and had just the right amount for our family for dinner.  I used frozen chopped yellow onion (I hate chopping onion!) instead of red onion.  I didn't use her marinara sauce but it sounds good.  I think making it again as a full batch and freezing half would be a great idea.

And now, off to make some zucchini bread!

Perseverance-or, why I love gardening

In spite of devastation at the mouth of a marauding cow, two separate infestations of Japanese beetles, and the fact that these are June-bearing berries (and it's August), my strawberries are still kicking.  Glory to God, amen.

Fall Garden Update

There's still some things going in my garden!  I'm pretty pleased with how things went with the garden this year.  Here's the update (and notes for things I need to remember next year):

I bought 3 strawberry plants this year and they took over an entire raised bed.  From what I understand we will have lots of strawberries next year; we only got a few this year.  

These are my banana peppers, still oddly going strong, though the nights are very cool.  I've been picking these to chop and freeze for cooking with this winter.

These are my nasturiums, which have gone crazy!  They are exploding out of the raised bed on the side of the stairs.  I grew these because the flowers are edible, but we really haven't eaten any.  We'll definitely grow these again next year.

And here's the lettuce, my second batch.  It's doing very well, like the lettuce did earlier this year too.  My spinach did not make it for this second planting, which is strange because it did so well this spring.

This picture was taken back at the end of August when I pulled out the last of the tomato bushes.  As I've said before, these really exploded, growing way out of the raised bed.  While the growth was exponential, the amount of tomatoes I got to harvest was less so.  We ate several, and I made a couple batches of tomato sauce, and pizza sauce, but for some reason a lot of the tomatoes didn't ripen well, or rotted quickly, even though I was checking them every day.

I was disappointed that I didn't get any pumpkins, but I'll try again next year.  I don't have a picture, but our zinnias have been pretty too, so we'll plant them next year as well.

Today's Harvest

"When I get bigger, I'm going to eat giant tomatoes." ~Cadence

Garden Update

The blackberries are ripe!  We lucked out and have some growing in our yard.   I already made my yummy blackberry coffee cake recipe (I halve this recipe from Real Simple and bake it in a loaf pan).  I've been going out in the yard every morning and evening to pick any that are ready before the birds get them. 

I finally pulled out all the lettuce and kale last week, and the cabbage and broccoli the week before that.  Next year, someone please remind me not to bother with them (the cabbage and broccoli).  They weren't doing well, and then they got cabbage worms, and it was a lot of waste of time and worry for me. 

The tomatoes are going nuts!  And I've gotten two zucchini so far.  Waiting to see how the peppers, cukes, and pumpkins do...

By far, the garden winners so far have been the peas, spinach, and lettuce.  The carrots and kale did all right.  I'll try all those again next year.

As this publishes, I'm actually out of town again to a reunion with my 5 roomies, and 1 honorary roomie, from my senior year in college.  Then going from there to celebrate my in-laws 40th wedding anniversary.  I've got to convince Matt to take care of my plants and pick the zucchini and blackberries while I'm gone.

Garden Update

Do you see this?  The sugar snap peas are over my head! (Also, I cut my hair.  Well, not me - the stylist lady.  Piper kept grabbing it and it was too easy to just put it in a ponytail everyday.)

We have so much lettuce I've been practically begging our friends and neighbors to come get some.  I definitely feel like our raised bed gardens have been a success.  I've been freezing lots of spinach and some carrots, in addition to all the lettuce and snap peas we've been eating.

I'm not sure how much longer the lettuce will keep growing well.  I don't think it will like the hot weather that is surely coming soon.  I've put in our "warm weather" plants - tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumber, cilantro, and basil.  Hopefully they will do well too.

Up on the north edge of our yard, we have these pretty wild roses growing.  LOTS of them.  It's very cheery.

What's going on in my kitchen

Last week was Matt's spring break which means we were eating real meals at home quite a bit (we also were out of town some so we got to eat out at some great places, like Tupelo Honey Cafe, State Street Barbecue in Black Mountain, and La Pietra Cucina), so I was cooking more than usual, which I really enjoyed.

The salad above was part of my lunch today, and so good!  Lettuce and strawberries were straight out of my garden, with toasted almonds, shredded mozzarella, and balsamic vinagrette.  I've been eating a lot of salads from the garden.  My early vegetables have been hit or miss.  I think it got too warm too fast this year.  My peas seem to be doing well, as did the spinach and lettuce.  But for the radishes to get to a decent size, they had to stay in the ground way longer than they should have and were hot.  Like spicy.  Fine, but not what I had hoped for.  I think my cabbage and broccoli is giving up, and the jury is still out on the kale and carrots. 

Speaking of spinach, some of what I've harvested has made its way into green smoothies.  Matt is scared of them, but Cadence will suck them down like nobody's business.  Inspired by the recipe here, I've been using full fat plain yogurt with a few squirts of honey, because honestly, Cadence could use the extra fat and calories. 

I've tried out several new recipes I can recommend.  For Easter dinner, I made us a turkey breast in the crockpot, and I am never making a turkey in the oven now that I know how good (and easy) it is slow cooked!  My friend Susie told me that's how she did hers at Thanksgiving and she was so right.  I just salted and peppered the breast, plopped it in the crockpot, poured in a 1/4 cup apple juice and let it go on high for about 4 hours.  It was juicy and flavorful and falling off the bone. 

Some of my friends here have raved about the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I thought this week was the perfect time to try it out.  Except I still haven't gotten the book, I followed the directions here.  I did it totally simple; I didn't buy any extra stuff, just baked the bread in a pyrex dish.  It. was. so. good.

And I just now tried out the chocolate peanut butter babies here, which sounded awesome having no added sugar and no baking!  When I saw dates were on sale at Ingles, I couldn't resist making these today.  I love me some chocolate.  Most days, I need me some chocolate.  They were delish and quick, which is kinda what I need since I'm attempting to do laundry, entertain Cadence, blog here, and wash dishes during Piper's nap.  Yikes, I have emails to reply to too.

Garden Update

The garden is looking pretty good, y'all.  Weirdly, one of the raised beds Matt built for me is performing much better than the other, but I think it's what I'm trying to grow in the second bed, and it's just not filling out as quickly.  I've had some trouble with weeds popping up - from our free soil - but hey, it was free. 

This is the one that's doing really well.

Lettuce!  I've been harvesting some every day this week to put on my sandwich or make a little salad.

Spinach!  And peas next to it!

On a whim at Wal-mart last week, we got a strawberry plant.  So far it seems happy, and there's several little white strawberries growing.

This is my low-budget seed starting operation.  I've got my tomato, peppers, and some other stuff starting here.  In old frozen dinner containers.  I couldn't see why I should pay for anything else to start them in if I'm just going to move them, but I guess we'll see how they do with this method.

I'm a really lazy gardener, but I'm having so much fun with this!

First spinach harvest

I'm a really lazy gardener.*  I told my friend Lydia recently that if I can't just stick the seed in some dirt in the sun and occasionally water it, I really don't want to bother.  Also, I have a 2 year old helping me so things aren't going to be perfect.  Hence, our pot of spinach was looking like this:

A little crowded on the one side, eh?  This is where you're supposed to thin things out, so I picked some of the baby leaves the other day and put them in meatballs!

 I sort of fudged the recipe from my favorite turkey meatball recipe from Ellie Krieger.  (I loved to watch her back in the old days when we had TV.  Recently I discovered you could watch her on Hulu and that made me happy.) I added the chopped spinach and some ricotta cheese, because I had it in the fridge.

They were yummy.  We ate them for lunch today with some pasta, and Cadence noticed the suspicious green thing on her fork.  She quickly asked me what it was, and when I said it was spinach from our garden she was totally eager to eat it.  For a kid who's totally not a veggie fan - it's shameful, I know, especially when I will eat anything under the sun, and gladly - this just proved to me that all that stuff I've heard and read about how growing a garden will make kids want to eat vegetables might actually be true!

*I'm also a cheap gardener.  All our seeds this year are actually from last year (except the sugar snap peas, which I bought to do the old start-a-sprout-in-a-plastic-bag-with-a-damp-cottonball-on-a-window-trick with Cadence.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, clearly you have never been involved with preschool or children's Sunday School).  I didn't use all the seeds in the packets, so I put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge and, so far, they are growing fine.  I think the secret to saving seeds is making sure they are not exposed to moisture.  Hence the baggie&fridge storage method.

End of Spring Break

Yesterday was the last day of Matt's spring break and it was bittersweet. We returned from Florida with a sick girl and Matt came down with it yesterday too, so he'll be home today but spending all his time in bed. He also spent all day yesterday working on our taxes which was extremely stressful as at one point it appeared we were going to owe close to $4000 (which made no sense as both of us were unemployed for at least 3 months last year). Anyway, the tax thing turned out fine.

What was fun was checking out how my little container garden was growing.  Have I mentioned we are moving again?  At the end of June, probably, we'll be packing up and heading down the road to...the next house, just on the other side of the cow pasture.  We'll be getting two bathrooms and a garage.  It's been gutted and is in the process of being totally renovated.  So, though I am desperate to grow us some veggies, I didn't want to put anything in the ground here. 

spinach

carrots

peas

tulip?  this was already in the yard

While Matt was taxing it up and guzzling Emergen-C and I was coaxing Cadence to drink some juice I found time to make totally homemade pizza and it was yum!  I used the recipe for the dough here, and topped it with ricotta, leftover spaghetti sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni.  We like our pizza crust pretty flat so this was a bit bready for us. Next time, I'll freeze some of the dough and make a thinner crust.

Our first veggie garden disappointment (and some cute pics)

We're been working outside...Cadie's work basically consists of keeping her hat on and carrying her Elmo ball around. Matt's working on redoing the beds at the front of our house.

I've been working on my veggies. My tomato and pepper sprouts are doing great; the zucchini looks good. I'm not really sure how everything else is - we've got sprouts but they don't seem to be growing as quickly as they should.

It was time to harvest the radishes this week. I dug them up to find...nothing. All scraggly roots, no radishes. Seriously disappointing. See? We had a couple of weirdly hot days that I think must have messed them up. Boo.