Richard's handiwork! The garden in full bloom. Corn, peas, tomatoes, squash, cucumber,peppers, green beans, and potatoes, with some sunflowers thrown in for color. 
Fried ZucchiniWe've started to collect zucchini! I currently have 11 sitting on my cupboard. We eat them sauteed with onion, garlic, and tomatoes, but our favorite is fried zucchini. I heat a small amount of olive oil in an iron skillet, then toss sliced zucchini in corn meal, and place it in a heated pan. It really doesn't absorb much oil if the pan is hot when you place the squash in it. I think the picture makes it look 'oily' for some reason...it sort of sparkles. I'm really not a very good food photographer!! After both sides are browned, I place a small amount of cheese on each slice. Tonight we had swiss, but last night we had parmesan. Monteray Jack cheese is my preference, but I had to use what I had on hand. A small amount of salt is added to the corn meal before tossing the slices in a bag. I don't 'wet' the slices with milk or an egg wash. They are damp enough from slicing them and the corn meal sticks with a very fine layer since I don't really like a lot of breading.
I also made a double batch of zucchini bread. It made two loaves, and 1 1/2 dozen muffins. Richard stopped at the store and brought home some cream cheese to use on the slices. It's a really nice treat with a glass of iced tea! I didn't have oil, so I thawed out frozen applesauce and used that instead, making them low fat!! Very yummy indeed!!
My next post??? Tomorrow the little granddaughters are coming for the weekend and they are bringing their dad along. I'm going to make ice cream in my ice cream maker. It makes absolutely outstanding coffee ice cream. I'm also going to try to make a batch of mint ice cream using Jazzy Mint tea from Ceylon Tea Co. I'll make a simple syrup using the tea bags, then infuse that into the cream/milk mixture. We'll see how it turns out. I'll let you all know!! (hahah that cracked me up...ALL...like there are a bunch of people reading this blog!! .... delusional!!
This is a change of subject, really, but when we were growing up, we played a lot of board games. We had a huge game chest and had pretty much every game you can imagine. Every year at Christmas it was a tradition to purchase a new game and that went into adulthood, as well. Recently our daughter mentioned a new game she had and it sounded like such fun we went out and bought it. We're having 3 couples over on Sunday afternoon to play the game. The name of the game is 'THINGS'.
Each couple is bringing a salad, and I'll be making bread and a dessert. We're having pasta salad, lettuce salad, caprese salad, and I'm hoping we have new potatoes so I can make a potato salad with a vinaigrette dressing. Since the zucchini is plentiful, I'm making zucchini bars for dessert. They have a scrumptious cinnamon glaze on them. I plan on making a pot brot. Do you know what that is? I believe it's German for pot or casserole bread. It doesn't require kneading and is baked in a stoneware bowl, yielding a rustic, crusty loaf of bread. I'll put herbs and onions in it and serve it toasted with my homemade spinach pesto that I made earlier in the spring! YUM!
I'll try to remember to take some pictures and post them after the weekend is over. Let me know if you have any favorite zucchini recipes!
Yeah, a new post. :D
ReplyDeleteOh, Teresa, I'm so jealous of your garden! It makes me wish I had a balcony or even a sturdy ledge outside our one window so I could grow a few clay pots worth of peas or strawberries. You are so lucky to have all of that soil and space with which to work!
Let me know how the mint ice cream works out. Before I developed my dairy allergy mint chocolate chip was my favourite flavour of all time. I wasn't able to taste it again for 10-15 years. It was only in the last couple of years that I found a soy ice cream in that flavour. It's pretty rare, so I buy them whenever I can find them.
Have you played "Things" yet? What other games would you compare it to - it is a money-making game like Monopoly? A mystery game like Clue? A family game like Life? A game good for younger children like Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land? A strategic war game like Battleship?
I don't have any specific recipes, but my favourite thing to do with cucumbers by far is to turn them into pickles. I think I could eat a pickle a day for a month before I began to grow just a little tired of them.
Sorry, just ignore that last comment. My mind somehow translated zucchini into cucumbers as I was writing my comment. :O
ReplyDeleteAlthough after some quick internet research apparently you _can_ make zucchini pickles:http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1636,134176-247194,00.html
I wonder how similar they would be to regular old cucumber pickles?
WOW just caught up on your past couple of posts ... green gardening looks and sounds scrumptious ... my garden is 1 cactus which requires water 1x per month and 1 hearts and flowers plant. no food just something green to look at on our deck :)
ReplyDeleteJim Schoch
Having your own garden to eat from is truly the best part of summer. The corn from the store is good...the corn from our garden is amazing! I wish everyone had the opportunity to have their own garden space, even if only for a tomato plant and a few other items. There is no comparison to a tomato picked from the garden, warm from the sun, and popped into your mouth. It's just so different from what you can purchase. Although, farmer's markets are a close second. It's a big difference though, when tasting veggies from the Farmer's Mkt. and straight from your own. Some of the sugar content is lost minute by minute.
ReplyDeleteI wish you were here to enjoy it with me!
Glad you can get that ice cream once in a while. I'm planning on making coffee ice cream this evening when people come to play the game. I will let you know how the mint turns out when I make it.
In the game things, each person writes a response to a question that the reader reads to the group. The object is to match reponses to the person who wrote them. You can keep guessing as long as you make correct guesses. Sample questions: Things you wouldn't do with glue. Things you shouldn't say to your in-laws. Things you wish worked by remote control.
So..you can see that this game is only as funny as the people who are playing it!! We'll see how the evening goes!?
your green garden is so GREEN! I almost forgot already how gardens in Ohio look in July. Out here the green is an accent color to a landscape in shades of brown. :D
ReplyDelete