Saturday, August 10, 2013

Weekend Cooking; Garden produce

We have a beautiful garden this summer.  My husband and I compost lots of kitchen scraps and we dump them into a large ball composter that looks a lot like this one.  This year when we rolled it from one end of the garden to the other (it IS heavy and it takes both of us to push it around, thus moving the scraps around) we had a really nice fertile (mucky) batch of compost.  My husband dug down about a foot and we layered in a batch of compost, which looks  like wet dirt, and then cover that layer back up with dirt.  It's a little like burying a treasure!

We have about 5 tomato plants, three robust basil plants, one acorn squash plant, one cucumber plant, and one zucchini plant and they are all producing for us this year.  I love it when I can go out and gather a small handful of tomatoes and fresh basil  and then turn it into a simple and delicious lunch.

From this:



to this:



Fresh roma tomatoes, snipped basil still warm, a little mozzarella cubed, sea salt and pepper, oil drizzled plus a scoop of homemade pesto there in the corner to add even more flavor.

I found this zucchini in the garden the other day and plan to shred it and make bread with it.  Anyone have a great zucchini bread recipe to share?  I have one I plan to use but I always like to find new ones.



Groovy Girl was so amazed by the  mammoth size of the zucchini she had to have a comparison photo.  Won't that be delicious in some bread!

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking.  Click her link for many other food-related posts.

6 comments:

Col (Col Reads) said...

What a beautiful garden. I think we may try the tumbler type of composter -- the box type we have works pretty slowly.

Beth F said...

Here's a yummy chocolate zucchini bread I make every once in a while. In fact, maybe I'll bake today: http://www.bethfishreads.com/2013/02/the-kitchen-journal-double-chocolate.html

caite said...

basil, fresh tomatoes...delicious!

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to eat more zucchini. It was always a vegetable I hated, but I've found that if I just slice it really thin, salt it to drain, and let it sit in some lemon juice I really like it.

My husband and I are buying a house, and I can't wait to start experimenting with a garden.

Lisa said...

I had plans to make zucchini bread today but I don't have any baking soda!

Anonymous said...

My kids love zucchini bread but this year for some reasons my plants didn't produce. They grew big and flowered but then just turned yellow and died and the flowers fell off. My tomato plants are loaded but it has not been sunny here and they are not ripening. Oh well, there is always the farm market.