It’s a busy time of year in my garden; in late August the produce is really starting to flood in, meaning a LOT of kitchen time between now and October!
All the time and effort spent thus far in my garden is really starting to pay off though. We have our own private organic farmer’s market just outside the back gate! Here, I’ll show you…
Let’s start in the fruit “orchard” where we have one apple tree, two peach trees, and three or four grape vines. Believe it or not, these are two of the peach trees I started from seed, documented in this post from 9 years ago! I make the grape jam that I love from the grapes, and have been starting to use our cut-up Winesap apples as the fruit in my morning green shake. Later on, I’ll make big batches of applesauce with them.
This is another favorite zucchini recipe of mine, and right now is the perfect time to make it, with fresh basil and massive amounts of zucchini coming out of the garden. It’s an easy one-dish wonder, and I love to eat it any time of day — leftovers are great for breakfast! I also like to freeze slices of the pie and pull them out in mid-winter for a nice treat.
Zucchini Pie
3 cups grated zucchini
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup grated provolone or mozzarella cheese
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp fresh basil, chopped (use more if you like!)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss everything into a large bowl and mix it up well! Pour into an oiled, 10″ round pie plate (or similar baking vessel, like an 8″x8″ pan). Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until golden brown and a butter knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool 10-15 minutes before slicing.
Over the past Labor Day weekend, I felt like a little girl on Christmas morning, having just received a new play kitchen!
No, we haven’t moved…but we did rearrange some furniture in our apartment, and now I have a new toy! A “Hoosier kitchen.”
My hubby’s mom received this Hoosier many years ago, and she painstakingly refurbished it, stripping off multiple layers of paint and restoring it to its original glory. And it’s still in the family; F. has carted it with him wherever he’s moved — which I find amazing given its somewhat rickety and delicate build, circa 1912! It’s served mainly as a computer desk & miscellaneous junk storage hutch, but now it’s back in its original role in the kitchen as my new Baking Center and I can hardly get over my excitement! Especially since we’ve always had only this much counter space to work with, the addition of the Hoosier really upgrades the overall cooking experience in our kitchen! Take a look…
Baking supplies and spices in the top cabinet, fold-out flour dispenser (big pink thing) and jars of beans and grains in the left cabinet.
Making gazpacho at the Hoosier
We love the new setup!
And since we have so much garden produce at the moment, I’ve been working hard in the kitchen to use it up and bake things to put in the freezer for the coming winter. Here are some of my baking projects this past weekend: Italian Lamb Meatloaf (I added about a cup of shredded zucchini to the recipe, excess water squeezed out), Wild Grape freezer jam from grapes in our alley, gazpacho (we ate that up right away!), mixed herb pesto, and zucchini spice muffins; I had written up what I hoped would be a zucchini spice cookie recipe, but the batter was too wet, and so it turned into yummy muffins. They’re similar (no surprise!) to these Whole Wheat Zucchini Muffins.
It sure has been cold here lately. We’ve had temperatures down into the teens, with our first snow storm a few days ago. This is highly unusual, and most of the leaves haven’t had a chance to turn colors yet, and are now hanging limply from their branches, frozen! Kinda sad!
It’s the perfect time, therefore, to bake some Chocolate Zucchini Cookies and have a glass of milk.
Geez, where has the week gone? Friday already! I hope you’ve had a nice week!
I opened the fridge today and noticed that one of my yellow zucchinis had just hours of life left, and needed to be used then and there. I thought about the dozens and dozens of zucchini recipes I’ve collected over the years. I thought about opening my overflowing recipe binder and looking through all those recipes…assessing each one, deciding if it sounds appealing…determining if I have all the ingredients…etc.
I can easily spend an hour looking through multiple recipe books, comparing ingredients and methods, trying to decide what I should do with the food in my fridge. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe it’s only me.Sometimes, I get totally paralyzed by my recipes.
Dinner: Lindsey's Zucchini Cake with Spiced Frosting
Well, I was trying to ‘get it together’ all week and post something, but it just didn’t happen. Not that I really did anything this week, because I didn’t. My visions of recovering from my surgery included getting a whole bunch of reading done, writing lots of posts for my blog here, writing letters, organizing my photos on the computer, and re-doing my recipe binder. And I have done preciselynone of that! (Click below to continue reading…)
This is a delicious, classic-tasting chili recipe that I created, using only fresh tomatoes. It’s the perfect thing to make on a chilly Autumn evening, when there’s still a bounty of fresh garden produce to use up. (Click below for the recipe…)
After a week away, the garden didn’t look a whole lot bigger, but there sure was a lot of food in there! 10 lbs of cucumbers, 15 (!) lbs of zucchini, and probably about 5 lbs of tomatoes.
Harvest time is my favorite part of the year. It’s like Christmas! 🙂
I was recently watching a Julia Child episode on DVD, when she launched into this little sermon about peoples’ irrational fear of failure while learning to cook. I liked it so much that I recorded it and posted it so you could see it, too:
We must not be deterred if our cooking flops, because that’s how we best learn the quirks of the ingredients we cook with, and how to combine things for the best results. I sometimes get pretty frustrated when my cooking doesn’t work out, especially when I waste good ingredients (and precious time!). But I also know that mistakes can be very good teachers…
Welcome to The Herbangardener!
This site is dedicated to nourishing the body + spirit, backyard organic gardening, traditional foodways, and homesteading in the heart of the city. Do come along and join me!
"There's nothing more pleasurable than making things by hand, and nothing more beautiful than handmade things."
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Only after the last tree has been cut down; only after the last fish has been caught; only after the last river has been poisoned; only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
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