Zucchini for sale...or free

Zucchini is a weird plant. One day it is a little plant, the next day you are drowning in some serious squash! We love to eat zucchini and yellow squash, but it gets old fast when you are trying to eat bucketfuls a day. I think that our neighbors are avoiding driving by our house because we flag them down with bags of zucchini. They are so kind that they have made zucchini bread out of some and have SENT IT BACK TO US! Yikes.

PLEASE SEND ME SOME ZUCCHINI OR SQUASH RECIPIES! Because already this week I pureed it and put it into a mac n cheese casserole, I steamed it, I stuffed it, I fried it, and Matt BBQed it. I came across this Barefoot Contessa recipe for Zucchini Cakes (think crab cakes...not chocolate cakes) and it was really good...oh yeah, so I also "caked" it. In the hopes that if I share, you will share... here it is!

Zucchini Cakes

Grate 2 large zucchini

Mix in 2 Tbsp grated red onion

2 beaten eggs

8-10 Tbsps flour (depending on how wet the zucchini is)

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Mix well

Coat frying pan with olive oil or butter

Heaping tablespoons of batter onto griddle (like pancakes)

About 2 min on each side

Eat warm!

The Reading Continues

Book #11 of 2010 is...

The Persian Pickle Club

by Sandra Dallas

 This is a book that I re-read a lot. I LOVE the place that this book takes me to. It is set in a Kansas farming community in the 1930's and it is about a group of women who get together once a week for quilting time together. Friendships are so important to women, and so vital to keeping them strong when the crops are burning up and there are no jobs to be found for their husbands. The story revolves around a murder mystery, and it reveals the ties that unite women, through good times and bad.
I of course love the female friendship message, and the quilting/sewing that is such an intricate part of the story, but it really makes me long for a time when days were spent sitting around a quilting hoop with your neighbors and sharing the burdens of chores as well as the burdens of life. This is a book that I have read at least half a dozen times...it is full of good friends.

Harvesting Carrots!

Our Rainbow Carrots are here! Yellow, red, and orange, they all still taste like a carrot.

We ate the first of them this week. They taste even better than they look, which is good because like most things in our garden, there will soon be more carrots to eat then I will know what to do with. Any ideas?

The Garden

What we have been spending every waking moment on...in pictures.

Growing a garden is such a labor of love. We are excited to see what each new day of sunshine brings. The most amazing thing is watching the seeds slowly push the dirt away and GROW. As we walk the rows, we celebrate every new leaf. But the best part of working the garden is the HOURS of quiet togetherness that Matt and I get. This is the season of the garden when it is just waking and you can keep track of each new leaf, each little bud. Soon it will be too busy to take note of...the full bloom of production. But now the work is plentiful, the hands are again sore and calloused, and the garden (unique every year) starts to take shape. How blessed we are to have room to plant and grow!

"To forget how to dig the earth

and to tend the soil

is to forget ourselves."

-Mahatma Gandi

You win some, you lose some

WE HAVE WATER! Alleluia. They have put in a pretty intense sand pump (again, I'm not the person to talk to about the technical aspect of this whole thing...I THINK it's a sand pump, but that probably isn't the technical term) until they can drill us a new well, so we have sand in the water...BUT WE HAVE WATER! The sand sort of freaked me out at first (I wasn't sure if I should be boiling it...until Matt reminded me that boiling water doesn't remove the sand) but it has decreased and I am also getting use to it. We are just grateful for the precious WATER. I am still blown away when I turn on a faucet and it WORKS and it is HOT! What a blessing! But like most things in life, the good comes with the bad.

On the same day that we got water, our beautiful, 30 year old elm tree was GONE WITH THE WINDstorm. I was so sad that I cried for this beautiful old tree. I know that it could have fallen on the house. I know I should be grateful that it didn't, but I was too busy being horrified that the BEST tree at our house was suddenly GONE. If I could have traded water for the tree I would have...and that is saying something. But life doesn't work like that. It gives and it takes. What a bittersweet day.