Trying to keep on top of the Garden.

But first..........last week I received word that instead of starting my kitchen the 28th, they now want to start the 23rd! That's this Wednesday! Definitely good news, but here I thought I had this whole week to get ready and maybe even start painting. Oh well, the sooner the better I guess! Cabinets arrive on Friday, so they'll start tearing out cabinets and laying the floor on Wednesday and hopefully start putting cabinets in on Monday. But that sounds overly ambitious to me, so we'll see. Lots of work to do tomorrow!

Still harvesting cucumbers and zucchinis on a daily basis here. I actually let almost 3 days go past without checking the garden. I knew that probably wasn't a good idea because I noticed that zucchini grow very, very fast but we were busy and it was hot.......excuses, excuses. Sure enough, here's what I found this afternoon..........

That zucchini had been closer to the size of the smallest one there just the other day. It is now over 14 inches long. Oi. Now to use it all up. We did the saute the other day, we made two loaves of zucchini bread, we made zucchini pancakes last week and last night I made a yummy pasta dish.

Zucchini and Corn Pancakes

The zucchini pancakes were based on a recipe from Mark Bittman, posted on the CLBB. I also threw in some leftover cooked corn. My son thought it sounded gross, but I told him that I was pretty confident he'd like it, just like the zucchini bread. My mixture ended up being quite watery, so I had to keep adding flour and probably ended up with a full 1/2 cup more flour than the recipe called for. I imagine this made them a bit more doughy than intended, but they were still quite good. These were perhaps a tad bland, so I served them with salsa. I would have preferred maybe a curried sour cream - the salsa was a bit overwhelming - but we somehow have 3 open jars of salsa that need to be used up, so salsa it was.

Zucchini and Sausage Pasta Bake

The pasta recipe was based on this recipe that someone shared on the CLBB, but I didn't follow it very closely. Instead, I used it as a basis for using up things we had around the house. As I was cleaning out the freezer for the remodel, I found 3 separate links of 3 different kinds of chicken sausage - one with spinach and feta, one Italian and a bit of smoked sausage. These are all pre-cooked - not the raw links that the recipes falls for - but I thought it was worth a shot. We had two open boxes of pasta, so instead of penne, we used ziti and farfalle. No Fontina on hand, so I used fresh mozzarella and a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Happily I had some fresh cream from the farmer's market on hand, so I didn't mess with that part of the recipe.

Surprisingly, this dish was delicious! I wasn't sure if it would work or not, but everyone gobbled it up and DH and I happily ate the leftovers today for lunch. The only thing that didn't work so well was the fresh mozzarella. The taste was great, but it tended to clump, also causing the sausage to clump as well. Certainly not a light dish, but I was craving a cheesy pasta dish after all of the lighter summer fare of late.

The green beans are finally producing so that I can actually gather enough for a meal at one time. They are lovely too......nice and thin, just the way I like them. I planted haricot verts beans from Seeds of Change and am very happy with them. They tend to get long, but not thick or tough. I've always wanted to grow green beans because the beans at the store are usually too big and/or too tough - I don't like it when they get so big that there are seeds forming inside the pod. Even the green beans at the farmer's market gave generally been too big for my tastes. But not these - they are perfect. I blanched them for 3-5 minutes and then tossed them with some garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper (heated up just to take the edge off the garlic). Yummy!

It's fun to eat stuff out the garden, but I'm either going to have to give a few zucchini away or start shredding and freezing it because we're going to get overloaded pretty shortly here. But I have seen a few recipe for chocolate zucchini bread that I think I must try first...........

Taco Seasoning: Getting away from pre-made mixes.

Whew. It's been a long week. My son's All-Star team played 5 games and had 2 practices in the last 8 days. They played hard and did a great job, but ended up losing the district championship game today. The boys were very disappointed and had their moment of sadness and tears - my son cried in the car and his friend (who came over for a sleepover tonight) confessed to crying in the bathtub, but guess where those two are right now as I type? Yep. Outside playing baseball. It's hard to see them lose, but they've been playing since February and football starts in 2 weeks, so it's not necessarily such a bad thing either. And now maybe my stomach won't be in knots every other day! Anyway, they may still have energy, but I'm wiped out, so I'll be keeping this one simple.

Taco Seasoning

Taco seasoning. This is one thing I've been very lazy about - simply out of habit and pure laziness, I repeatedly reach for the pre-made taco seasoning at the store. I've been trying to get away from unwanted added ingredients, so I when I reached for it the other day, I forced myself to turn the package over and look at the ingredient list. Yep, there they were - stuff like MSG and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Blech. So I put the seasoning back on the shelf. Surely it couldn't be THAT hard to make my own!

I did a little surfing and found this recipe over at AllRecipes. With over 900 reviews and a 5-star rating, I figured it was a pretty safe bet. And it was. Flavorful and with just the right amount of heat for us. This recipe ended up making about 3 tablespoons of seasoning which, for us, seasoned 1 pound of ground beef.

Next time I'll make up extra and keep it in the freezer. Very easy to throw together, but still that familiar taco flavoring we know and love. Our tacos were definitely a bit elevated that night.....we made our own seasoning and used grass-fed ground beef from a local farmer. Now if I had made my own taco shells............

Fennel - A First

The recipes and the vegetables are piling up! Baseball and various other things have been keeping me busy, so I'm still falling behind in my posting. I still have a blueberry recipe or two to post, not to mention recipes from earlier this spring! Between the garden and me being a little over zealous in my purchases at the farmer's market last weekend, I'm furiously trying to use everything up so that it won't go bad. And, again, baseball doesn't make that very easy seeing as how we're gone from 3:30-8:30 on game nights.

Last weekend I found fennel at one of the farmer's market stands. I do not like black licorice or the other things of a similar flavor profile like anise or fennel, but I've been warming up to fennel seeds in some of my cooking so I decided it might be time to try fresh fennel. I had no idea how to prepare this vegetable and I had no idea what to put with it so I started an internet search (What the heck did I ever do without the internet for recipes??) hoping to find a recipe for fennel and cucumber since we seem to be getting at least one or two cucumbers out of the garden each day.

Fennel and Cucumber Salad

First I found this recipe that sounded simple and refreshing. But then I realized that I really had no idea how to even cut up a piece of fennel or even what parts to use. Fortunately I found an informative article that told me pretty much all I needed to know. I ended up using mostly just the bulb itself with a bit of the stalks too, tossing the fronds. The fronds didn't appeal to me as a garnish and I didn't think I'd like the flavor of fennel for a soup stock, so in the compost they went. In texture, the bulb of the fennel is a bit like licorice flavored cabbage while the stalks are a bit more like licorice flavored celery.

This simple salad combines cucumber, fennel and radishes along with mint, chives, lemon and EVOO. The flavors play well off each other. The mint and fennel give the dish a sort of sweet angle while the radishes give it a bit of bite and some welcome color. The cucumbers play an understated supporting role. It was very nice and refreshing and while we all liked it and enjoyed the change of pace, I don't know that I'd seek out fennel again. I'm learning to tolerate and appreciate some different flavor profiles these days, but I don't know that fennel will ever be a favorite.

More baseball tonight..........I'm about ready for baseball to be over - we need a little break (and it will be a very little break) before soccer and football start! We're also counting down to the kitchen remodel which will begin in just over a week. ACK!

Using up the Zucchini

After all that garden talk, it's time to share a few recipes showing how we're using our bounty. Okay, so "bounty" is probably overstating things a bit, but it sounds good......

So far it's mostly been zucchini and cucumbers coming from the garden. I'm definitely lacking in cucumber recipes (and I'd better find some soon as we're about to be overrun), but there seem to be infinite ways to use zucchini. I only planted one zucchini plant, so I don't think we'll be totally inundated. And that's probably a good thing seeing as how none of us actually love zucchini. So why the heck did I plant it? I guess because everyone always seems to be trying to get rid of their zucchini and it's always super abundant at the farmer's market, so I figured it must be easy to grow. I suppose I just wanted a sure bet.

Even though none of us are crazy about zucchini on its own, it's very easy to disguise and or fit (or is it hide?) into other tasty dishes. Like zucchini bread. My son wrinkled up his nose and said "EW!" when I mentioned zucchini bread, but then I reminded him of how tasty carrot cake is and that helped him keep an open mind.

Zucchini-Pecan Sauté

But before I go on to the zucchini bread, the first zucchini I picked I used in one of our favorite savory zucchini dishes - Zucchini-Pecan Sauté. A really simple dish that, for whatever reason, really elevates zucchini from just "meh" to "yum".

I'm sure there are lots of great zucchini bread recipes out there, but for some reason I've never strayed from this one from Jane Brody's Good Food Book (she calls it "Grate" Zucchini Bread). I like that it uses half whole wheat flour and she tries to keep the oil and sugar to a minimum. Even though it's fairly healthful, it is still quite moist and delicious.

Zucchini Bread

My two zucchini were a lot bigger than I thought, so even though I had planned on making two loaves, I still ended up with a lot of grated zucchini left. Stay tuned for some yummy vegetable pancakes I made to use up the rest of the grated zucchini.........

If you have some zucchini that you need to use up, check out these other zucchini recipes we've tried.

It's a jungle out there.........

Wow. The garden sort of exploded in the last 2 weeks and things are looking up since my last post. The last photos I took were on the 28th of June.

The pepper plants are producing, at least a little.

And you can see what a difference 6 days makes. The photo above was taken on the 10th and this one was taken today.

I also have a few sweet Italian peppers.

The beans have about doubled in size and are beginning to show a few teeny tiny beans.

Since taking that picture above 6 days ago, I have harvested a small handful of pencil thin beans. Not quite enough for a meal, so I'm holding onto these for a few more days before I cook them.

The cucumbers are all over the place. We have harvested 5 with A LOT more to come.

The basil is still getting chewed on, but I've got plenty. I've churned out one or two batches of pesto already. I just need to buy some more pine nuts to make more. I harvested some sage, but I'm not sure what to do with it. I might chop it and freeze it for use later.

But the tomatoes. Holy cow! These are definitely the biggest plants I've ever had and they are twice as big as most I see in other gardens around here.

After 6 days, they have grown even more! And keep in mind that I have not used one bit of fertilizer. I just plunked them in the lasagna beds and that was it. (And yes, one of them has a toppled branch or two. I tried tying it up, but it didn't work.)

I do see a few green tomatoes showing up here and there. I'm beginning to see more blossoms on the plants, so maybe we'll do okay after all. If these plants had not been ravaged by that fungus (or whatever it was), I can't imagine how many tomatoes we'd have gotten. Apparently tomatoes like lasagna gardening!

I did have one entire plant topple over though. I don't want to straighten it for fear of damaging it so I'm just going to let it be and see what happens.

The zucchini blossoms are pretty. We've harvested 3 so far with several more pretty close to being ready. I did lose a few to some sort of deformity or rot.

Most exciting of all is the appearance of some cantaloupe! They are far from harvest, of course and anything can happen, but I am very excited about the possibility of getting to eat cantaloupe from the garden! Here's the biggest one......

And we have a few smaller ones too.........

I can see that I'll be spacing things out a bit differently next year. Some of my poor pepper plants are getting shut out by the towering cherry tomato plants that are getting much bigger than I expected.

My sage is also feeling a bit crowded by the beans.

But live and learn, that's what gardening is all about. I'll have an easier time planning it out this winter, based on what I've learned this year. One thing I know for sure - I need more beds and I need to extend the beds I have.

Stayed tuned for recipes involving cucumber and zucchini!

No Fuss Blueberry Jam

Okay, so I guess I technically cheated - I made freezer jam. But, the point is, it worked.

Last Monday, we picked 23 pounds of blueberries and yesterday we were down to our last 6-8 cups and I have to say, they weren't in terrible shape considering it has been over a week. Some were getting a bit too soft, but quite a few were still firm and only one showed any sign of mold. Not bad.

However, it was quite apparent that we were reaching a crucial point and really needed to use them up, so I decided to try jam since, compared to most recipes, this would use up the largest amount of blueberries. I have never done any canning before and though I plan to learn, this wasn't the time. After doing a bit of reading, I decided I wanted to try freezer jam and went to the store to get some pectin.

Once I was there, it was a bit confusing. They had regular pectin and freezer jam pectin. The freezer jam recipe looked incredibly easy - no cooking at all. Then I took a look at the ingredients and noticed that the freezer jam pectin contained several added ingredients, including a preservative: dextrose, fruit pectin, citric acid (assists gel), sodium citrate (controls acidity), potassium sorbate (preservative). I wasn't too keen on using something with a preservative since that's part of the attractiveness of making my own jam in the first place, but then I noticed that with this recipe, you only use 1 1/2 cups of sugar per 4 cups of berries. That's a lot lot less sugar than a cooked jam recipe where the ratio is generally 1:1.

Anyway, I ended up grabbing some regular pectin and one package of the freezer jam pectin. Once home, I kept hemming and hawing and finally decided to give the freezer jam pectin a try. It's very easy. You mix 1 1/2 cups of sugar with the package of pectin, add 4 cups of crushed berries, stir for 3 minutes, let it sit for 30 minutes to let it set and you're done. Ridiculously easy!

As I mashed the blueberries, I was looking at the rather gross mush on my plate and having second thoughts. For some reason, squished blueberries make me think of squished bugs - they just look gross! (My photos of the final mashed product didn't come out.....too bad, huh?) Then I started thinking about having to bite into a jam full of blueberry skins. Even if I could get past it, I knew the family would not. And these problems are unique to blueberries - any other kind of berry - no skin, no brown squishy "guts".

I finally decided that I simply had to run them through the food processor. Not only would this eliminate the problem of biting into all of those skins, but I knew from making blueberry ice cream, that it would make the whole mixture turn a much more attractive color of purple instead of the brownish colors you get from just crushing the berries. I had read that you shouldn't use a food processor because it can break down the natural pectin in the berries and prevent your jam from setting (the Ball instructions also say not to process the berries), but I decided to try it anyway. If it didn't work, I figured I could probably find some way to save it.

Blueberry Freezer Jam

I'm happy to say that it worked just fine. In no time I had a lovely blueberry jam. I suppose I don't have chunks of fruit as you should with a proper jam, but as I said earlier, that might not be such a bad thing when it comes to blueberries. Since pureeing the berries reduced the overall volume when compared to crushing them, I decided to go with 3 1/2 cups of pureed berries versus the 4 cups of crushed berries - I was afraid the jam might not set if I had too much berry puree. This seemed to work great. It's a tad on the sweet side, but very good nonetheless and certainly A LOT less sugar than most recipes.

So, my experiment was a success. I now have 6 1-cup containers of blueberry jam in the fridge and freezer, waiting to be enjoyed the rest of the year. I'm still not keen on the preservatives used in this pectin, so next time I'm thinking about trying the freezer jam recipe I found inside the package of regular pectin (which contains dextrose, fruit pectin and citric acid). The drawback there? 5 1/4 cups of sugar for 3 cups of berries. Hmmmm..........

More Bobby Flay....

It's been hard to decide what else to make from Bobby Flay's Boy Gets Grill which I have on loan from the public library, but I settled on a chicken thigh recipe with a peanut sauce.

This recipe calls for grilling chicken thighs with a honey glaze. The chicken, along with mint, cilantro and lettuce, is rolled up in a tortilla and served with a peanut dipping sauce.

Overall, I liked this recipe but there were a couple of problems or confusions.

Soy-Ginger Chicken Rolled in Crisp Lettuce
with Peanut Dipping Sauce

First, the title of this recipe is Soy-Ginger Chicken Rolled in Crisp Lettuce with Peanut Dipping Sauce. The introduction to the recipe explains that in Vietnam, "hot food such as grilled beef or fried spring rolls is often rolled up in cool, crisp lettuce leaves with large sprigs of mint and cilantro." So, naturally I thought that the lettuce acted as the wrap, but then the recipes goes on to include tortillas. Not only that, but it calls for 16 6-inch tortillas for 8 chicken thighs in which 2 pieces of chicken go in each tortilla and the recipe says it serves 4. Um, that doesn't quite compute, does it? Must be a typo. Anyway, I decided to try the recipe with tortillas and it's a good thing I did because the lettuce I bought would not have been good for rolling anyway.

As far as flavor goes, this recipe was tasty but was unfortunately overpowered by some local wildflower honey I had purchased on a whim. The wildflower flavor was so strong and perfumy, it overwhelmed the other flavors in this dish. It was still good, but a milder honey would have worked out much better here. The peanut sauce was good, but I have other recipes I like better.

Although this recipe wasn't the greatest success in the world, we did enjoy it overall and I would like to try the glaze again with a milder honey. And perhaps a different peanut sauce - many sauces I've made call for cooking the sauce first and perhaps that was all that was needed here to kick up the flavors a bit.

I've renewed the book for 3 more weeks and am looking forward to looking through it more thoroughly and picking out a few more recipes to try.

It's Blueberry Time Again!

Strawberries have pretty much wound down for the season but fortunately that means it's time for blueberries. It's a little bit early in the season around here, but our local blueberry farm was teeming with ripe berries on many of their bushes. The big fat ones were less abundant, but they had plenty of the smaller variety. Last year we picked about 16 pounds in two trips. This year we took DH along and he had a 5 gallon bucket. Apparently he felt he needed to try and fill this 5 gallon bucket - by the time I convinced him that we had enough, we were up to 23 pounds of blueberries!

Needless to say, it's been blueberry week at our house. So far we have made a couple of favorites from last year - Blueberry Buckle Coffeecake and Blueberry Ice Cream. This time the blueberry ice cream was even more luscious since I was able to use local eggs and rich cream from a local dairy farm - yum.

We've also tried two new recipes...one for a blueberry banana muffin that I'll share later and one for this fabulous Blueberry Galette. While searching for a recipe, I discovered that there are many incarnations of a galette, some using a puff pastry crust, some using a yeasted dough, but to me, a galette has always been basically a free-form pie. I have always been attracted to the rustic look of a galette - it just seemed much less intimidating and fussy than a more structured pie.

The galette is ready to hit the oven.

I didn't look too long to find a recipe over at I Shot the Chef. In my internet travels I did notice that more than one recipe called for cornmeal in the crust. I wasn't sure if I'd be pleased with the texture of the cornmeal but I wanted to try it.

The crust went together very easily - just a few pulses of all your ingredients in the food processor and then the addition of the cream and ice water until the dough begins to come together and you're done. The dough gets a 2 hour chill (or can be done the day before) before getting rolled out into a 12-inch circle. The dough was quite easy to work with and was not overly sticky.

Next, a mixture of blueberries and sugar is piled in the middle of the dough, leaving a 2-3 inch border. The blueberries get topped with bits of butter and then the dough is folded up around them - very, very simple to do. A quick brushing of cream and sprinkling of sugar and it's ready to hit the oven.

Blueberry Galette

The crust ended up being delicious - flaky and slightly sweet, with just a little extra texture from the cornmeal without feeling unpleasantly grainy as I feared might be the case. The sprinkling of sugar also gives an added crunch as well as nice sparkle. The filling only oozed a tiny bit in one spot where the crust must have been rolled a bit too thin and was not at all runny when we cut the galette to serve - unlike many of the berry pies I've tried in the past. We topped the galette off with a bit of homemade whipped cream using luscious, rich cream from a local dairy as an added treat.

This is my first time making a galette, but I can assure you it won't be my last. Very simple and unfussy, yet it looks elegant and tastes delicious. What's not to like?

Garlic Scapes

Happy July 4th! Looks like this week got away from me, but today is pretty quiet, so I'll sneak in a quick post.

Until this year, I had never heard of garlic scapes and then suddenly they were everywhere - a post over on the CLBB and a lot of pictures on Food Gawker. I even saw them at my local farmer's market, but skipped them over since I really didn't know what to do with them. Finally I saw a recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto and decided that I had to try them.

For those of you not familiar with scapes, according to the Really Garlicky Company:

Hardneck garlic developes an impressive flowering stalk, called a scape, which can grow from 24 to 48 inches in height. At the top is the "seed" pod, more properly called the umbel, which contains the flowers and bulbils. The umbel pod is covered in by the spathe, which often has a pronounced beak. Some garlic varieties give improved yields if the scape is cut before umbel development. The scapes on Rocamboles form beautiful circular curls. These are prized by floral arrangers in some countries, especially Japan.

After buying them, I was quite sure which part of the scape to use - all of it or just the portion below the pod. After reading on the internet, I decided to use only the portion below the pod, but I have since seen a few photos showing cooks using the entire scape. Using the whole scape might make more sense if you were leaving the scape intact for effect rather than cutting them up for something like pesto. I also thought my pods were quite a bit larger than most of those I had seen pictured and wasn't sure if this might create and undesirable texture or flavor.

Garlic Scape Pesto

I tried a bit of scape before tossing it into the food processor to make the pesto and I was surprised with how garlicky it was after most of what I ready described scapes as being much milder than a regular garlic clove. They are definitely milder - had a I used a similar amount of garlic in this pesto, it would have been overpowering - but they had more bite than I was expecting.

This recipe is a pretty basic pesto but it does not use as much basil as my go-to basil pesto and it includes a bit of chardonnay which added a nice zing to the pesto. In place of the lemon olive oil, I used extra-virgin olive oil and a bit of lemon zest. We'll be using this pesto on paninis this weekend.

I imagine that scapes are probably out of season by now, but the next time I happen to spot them at the farmer's market, I'll grab a few and try them as is - in a saute or on a pizza - rather than chopping them to bits in something like a pesto. It's always fun to try something new!