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Tag Archives: crookneck

What a bounty! Woohoo!

by Amy on August 20, 2008 in Harvesting & Preserving

Wow. I haven’t even set foot in the garden in 3-4 days because of the heat then rain and I was thrilled by what I found. Our first red roma tomatoes, crooknecks and zucchini, lots of corn and more. Check it all out :thumb

And the crookneck squash siamese twin that wants to be a porn star:

General growy-ness

by Amy on August 15, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Just a general update on how things are going in the Garden of Eatin’ today.

The weeds are taking over. I need to get out there and attack with the weed whacker, it’s that bad. It’s not stopping things from growing, so that much is good! But it won’t happen in the next few days…yesterday we had 100F+ temps, today we’re due for 105F and tomorrow is supposed to be 100F, and Sunday 90F…temps should be back in the mid 70s on Monday, so I’ll plan on going lots of work in the garden then, with before after after pics.

The tomato stake experiement has literally been a giant FLOP. As soon as the tomatoes started getting big, the plants got so heavy and thick they’ve tipped over, breaking the stakes and I have lots of tomatoes on the ground at risk from bugs…trying to keep them UP but they just keep growing and falling more :help

The corn is nearly 7′ high with lots of ears. I think we might have some grilled steak and corn for dinner tonight.

The lemon cucumbers are finally growing, well….like taking over their corner of the garden. I definitely planted too many. And the little vines have built in protection to keep me from picking too early, their thorns leave me bleeding when I try.

The strawberries stopped producing fruit all together after giving us hardly anything and are producing runners like crazy. I tried stopped that to see if it would encourage fruit, but it didn’t.

I’ve gotten 6 gigantic zucchini now and there’s lots more growing. I’ll be shredding and freezing it this weekend. Those suckers grow fast!

The crookneck is finally starting to grow fruit, but only after the plant grew to “Little Shop of Horrors” porportions.

Out one pumpkin is about basketball sized and just starting to turn orange.

Potatoes will finish being harvested tonight, there’s 3 plants left and I want to make potato salad. I forgot to write down the ingredients I used last time, I’ll do that this weekend and post the recipe

Zucchini treats

by Amy on August 4, 2008 in Recipes

My parents didn’t teach me to cook, I had to teach myself and there were no family recipes that I grew up on (we never had christmas or thanksgiving or easter dinner), so I abuse the internet recipe websites frequently. I figure any recipe that almost 1000 people give 4 or 5 stars for, has to be good.

So, thanks to allrecipes.com, I’m making these today:

Zucchini Bread

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

And these cookies (which another member of mothering.com posted on the forums):

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Makes about two dozen)

1 egg, beaten
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

Combine in large bowl.

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg

Combine in a separate, small bowl and blend into liquid mixture

1 cup finely shredded zucchini
12 oz chocolate chips

Stir these into other ingredients, mix well. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350°, 10 to 15 minutes.

Stir Fry

I’m making stir fry tonight, for me, the kids won’t eat it. Normally I use frozen stir fry veggies, but tonight I’ll keep it simple and use zucchini, some crookneck squash, some green beans and maybe a little celery and onion from the store (the garden onions are still tiny).. I use a simple recipe for the flavoring: cubed chicken breast in a gallon baggie, 1/3c corn starch, 3-4T soy sauce and a bunch of ginger and garlic powder. Make sure the baggies is sealed tight, mix and let sit for 30 minutes. Fry in a little oil, remove from pan, fry veggies in a tiny bit of oil, add the meat back in, and season with more ginger, garlic and soy sauce if desired. Serve over rice. Before I started watching my calories and weight, I could easily eat 3 Corelle plate fulls of this stuff. Sooo good :drool Tonight I’ll eat a normal portion with more veggies then rice or meat :lol

Almost baseball bats

by Amy on August 3, 2008 in Harvesting & Preserving

I couldn’t stand it any longer, I had to pick the 3 big zucchini :lol Going to make some zucchini bread and maybe a treat for the kids and shred and freeze the rest.