I love cooking at this time of year (which is also true for pretty much the rest of the year, too, but for other reasons). There is such a cascade of delicious, fresh, on fire ingredients to delight my palate that it’s hard to get it all cooked up the way I want to before it’s time to move on to the next fresh thing.
We’re about to harvest our potatoes; my ultimate comfort food, and of course we had to “rob” some and do a little quality control before sharing them in the csa boxes. I always go way overboard when making potato anything, because after that first heavenly meal of potato whatever that I become simply giddy over (truly just ask my friends), I want leftovers.
I want to eat them cold as a salad ingredient, I want to fry them up in butta and eat ‘em with eggs in the morning, I want to turn them into soup, I want to make them into veggie fritters, I want to make a “crust” for quiche out of them…give me potato anything, especially leftover potato anything, and I am a happy farm girl.
I made the veggie fritter thing this past week from left over fresh garden mashers with peas, added into a dinner of veggie coconut curry with carrots, celery and yellow zucchini with turmeric and cardamom rice. Jen whipped up some raita with freshly picked, and I mean FRESHLY, PICKED walla walla sweet onion and a cuke from a friend (who’s way ahead of us on cukes this year), our own carrots and tangy goat yogurt from the co-op. We were dining somewhere on a farm in India that night (pakora is the East Indian inspiration, which is a chickpea battered veggie fritter); balmy breezes wrapped in a bizarrely tinged orange sunset, thanks to the smoke from our fire stricken neighbors to the north. The only thing missing was the mango lassi, well and lots of other things too, but you get the picture.
Had it not been for the fact that zucchini is the one vegetable that Iris doesn’t like, there would have been grated garden zucchini or yellow summer squash in those leftover mashed potatoes with garden peas fritters, because it’s summer, but I cannot lie to Iris about squash!
I saw recently that it was national leave a zucchini in your friend’s open car window week or something like that, which if you don’t grow zucchini, but do get a csa box from any farm, any where, you’ve got extra zucchini. Barring zucchini bombing your family, friends, neighbors and business associates who don’t grow or otherwise acquire large amounts of zucchini with which to bomb you, you can also find a vast array of recipes for cooking with them, where else but, online.
Provided, that is, that your internet connection is actually moving faster than the speed of drying slug trails on morning dewy zucchini leaves! If not, remember, there are always cookbooks, available in places like libraries and bookstores, which actually do still exist, thank goodness, and neighbors and friends with as many ideas as there are zucchini!
But I digress. Zucchini, or summer squash types that look like various cousins of zucchini, such as are appearing in your boxes in abundance just now, are an excellent easy addition to just about any meal you are preparing. As a raw vegetable added to a tray with other freshies and a whipped up dip o’sumpin’, they are among the most easily digested raw veggie snacks. They take almost no time at all to cook to perfection in whatever you’ve already got going on, and on the bbq with some of kind of fresh-whipped dippin’ sumpin’ sumpin’, or stuffed with mushrooms, cheese and french bread crumbs, even non-zucchini eaters (except Iris!) can’t help but chow on ‘em, and just as long as Iris doesn’t know it’s in there, if it’s cake or sweet bread, she’s gonna eat it, with ice cream, given the choice. Good stuff, right there in your box; give them another glance, give them another chance, I challenge you to do something surprising and delightful with your summer squash zucchini types. And when you do, let us know so we can try it.
Happy Zucchini Appreciation Month!
Jeannine
We’re about to harvest our potatoes; my ultimate comfort food, and of course we had to “rob” some and do a little quality control before sharing them in the csa boxes. I always go way overboard when making potato anything, because after that first heavenly meal of potato whatever that I become simply giddy over (truly just ask my friends), I want leftovers.
I want to eat them cold as a salad ingredient, I want to fry them up in butta and eat ‘em with eggs in the morning, I want to turn them into soup, I want to make them into veggie fritters, I want to make a “crust” for quiche out of them…give me potato anything, especially leftover potato anything, and I am a happy farm girl.
I made the veggie fritter thing this past week from left over fresh garden mashers with peas, added into a dinner of veggie coconut curry with carrots, celery and yellow zucchini with turmeric and cardamom rice. Jen whipped up some raita with freshly picked, and I mean FRESHLY, PICKED walla walla sweet onion and a cuke from a friend (who’s way ahead of us on cukes this year), our own carrots and tangy goat yogurt from the co-op. We were dining somewhere on a farm in India that night (pakora is the East Indian inspiration, which is a chickpea battered veggie fritter); balmy breezes wrapped in a bizarrely tinged orange sunset, thanks to the smoke from our fire stricken neighbors to the north. The only thing missing was the mango lassi, well and lots of other things too, but you get the picture.
Had it not been for the fact that zucchini is the one vegetable that Iris doesn’t like, there would have been grated garden zucchini or yellow summer squash in those leftover mashed potatoes with garden peas fritters, because it’s summer, but I cannot lie to Iris about squash!
I saw recently that it was national leave a zucchini in your friend’s open car window week or something like that, which if you don’t grow zucchini, but do get a csa box from any farm, any where, you’ve got extra zucchini. Barring zucchini bombing your family, friends, neighbors and business associates who don’t grow or otherwise acquire large amounts of zucchini with which to bomb you, you can also find a vast array of recipes for cooking with them, where else but, online.
Provided, that is, that your internet connection is actually moving faster than the speed of drying slug trails on morning dewy zucchini leaves! If not, remember, there are always cookbooks, available in places like libraries and bookstores, which actually do still exist, thank goodness, and neighbors and friends with as many ideas as there are zucchini!
But I digress. Zucchini, or summer squash types that look like various cousins of zucchini, such as are appearing in your boxes in abundance just now, are an excellent easy addition to just about any meal you are preparing. As a raw vegetable added to a tray with other freshies and a whipped up dip o’sumpin’, they are among the most easily digested raw veggie snacks. They take almost no time at all to cook to perfection in whatever you’ve already got going on, and on the bbq with some of kind of fresh-whipped dippin’ sumpin’ sumpin’, or stuffed with mushrooms, cheese and french bread crumbs, even non-zucchini eaters (except Iris!) can’t help but chow on ‘em, and just as long as Iris doesn’t know it’s in there, if it’s cake or sweet bread, she’s gonna eat it, with ice cream, given the choice. Good stuff, right there in your box; give them another glance, give them another chance, I challenge you to do something surprising and delightful with your summer squash zucchini types. And when you do, let us know so we can try it.
Happy Zucchini Appreciation Month!
Jeannine
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