Z is for Zucchini

 I'm going for the obvious today-zucchini. 

I'm always surprised when I hear that someone has had no luck growing zucchini. We must have the right climate for it around here because in July and August it's shows up everywhere. We have had many bags secretly placed on our doorstep in the middle of the night. We were happy with these gifts, but I'm not sure that everyone felt the same way. The other thing about zucchini is how big it can grow. The perfect size is 8-10 inches but we have grown more than one zucchini over 2 feet long. They were seedy, but otherwise good. However, our big zucchini paled in comparison to the Guinness Book of World Records world record holder of 8 feet, 3.3 inches long. 

In case you have an abundance of zucchini this summer, below is a previous post about different ways to prepare it. 

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Our zucchini with tomato for comparison

A Week of Zucchini Dishes

or The Vegetable That Keeps Giving and Giving 

or Today's Equivalent of the Loaves and Fishes--Zucchini

Recently, Aunt Martha gave us a zucchini from her garden. It was one of those that somehow got hidden and grew to almost the size of a baseball bat before it was found and harvested. Our goal last week was to eat it until it was gone. We knew it was big, but didn't think that we would be able to cook it in five different dishes before we saw the last of it. But we did. Below are our results with links to the recipes we used.

 
Day One: Zucchini Patties
We were having salmon cakes this day so it seemed like a natural accompaniment.  The cakes were basically pan fried shredded zucchini and bread crumbs. Everyone liked the taste, but Theo and I weren't crazy about the texture. I thought they were a little gooey from too many bread crumbs, and Theo didn't like the stringiness of the shredded zucchini. I got a tip for this recipe from the Frugal Girl.  


Day Two: Zucchini and Cheese Casserole
This has been a favorite recipe in our family for many years and is a favorite of guests.  It is a baked casserole containing zucchini chunks, eggs, cottage and shredded cheese topped with bread crumbs. I usually add another vegetable like broccoli or asparagus to give it more flavor. This recipe comes from Jane Brody's Good Food Book.


Day Three: Hearty Tuna Casserole
This recipe was given to us a few years ago from a friend when were trying to find new ways to cook zucchini. We make other tuna casseroles, but this is my favorite. The dish contains the standards for a tuna casserole including noodles, tuna, sour cream, and shredded cheese. However, there are layers of zucchini slices in it as well as diced tomatoes on the top. We leave out the mustard and green onions as a favor to Ward and still find it very tasty. A word of warning: the zucchini and celery take far longer to cook than the 30 minutes allotted for the casserole. We cook them a little before we add them to the dish so it doesn't take forever to bake.


Day Four: Oatmeal Zucchini Bread
For years, I have been carrying around this recipe for zucchini bread that included cooked oatmeal. Last week, I finally made it. The bread was very good but was dense and gooey. This may have been because the recipe called for three eggs and I only had two. I read somewhere on the internet that you can substitute milk for an egg and you will never know the difference. Well, I think we knew the difference. However, the four loaves disappeared in less than 24 hours.


Day Five: Continental Zucchini
 As we were brain storming about what we were going to do with the last of the zucchini, Ward remembered a dish he had as a child-- continental zucchini. This dish is stir fried zucchini and garlic with corn and pimentos added. The whole thing is topped with melted mozzarella cheese. When we made it, we also added some yellow squash that we had. Everyone liked this dish. However, Ward thought it could use black pepper. Also, this dish would lend itself well to the addition of sweet or hot peppers We may try that next time.

Zucchini dishes from last week.

Y is for Yellow Fruits and Vegetables

 or What Pictures Do I Happen to Have of Yellow Fruits and Vegetables.

I've made almost to the end of this blogging challenge. Yay! But I must admit that I'm running low on energy and motivation, so here is an Instagram-type post. 😏

Gold potatoes for soup

Bananas. We eat these mostly with cereal.

Pears from our tree 

Yellow zucchini

Peaches from a tree at our old house. I guess the yellow was more on the inside.

Yellow watermelon from Uncle Billy's garden

Yellow squash blossom from last year.

Corn is, perhaps, my favorite summer vegetable along with tomatoes.

Crook neck squash (and potatoes and mushrooms)

Corn and Beans pattern on barn quilt

X is for Xeriscape Vegetable Gardening

Fig trees like dry feet, so would be good for xericaping.
(I know. Figs are fruit not vegetable.)

 If someone had asked me if xeriscaping was compatible with vegetable gardening, I would have said no, at least not for the vegetables I'm familiar with. I would have been wrong. There are some vegetables that will do okay without lots of water. With a bit of poking around, I found information that will be useful to me while gardening here, even though on paper we have adequate rainfall. The problem is it's all an average and we usually have a long dry spell at some point in the summer. Here are a few tips I learned about growing vegetables without much water.

Miss Lander's oregano

--There are many herbs that do well in dry conditions. Oregano, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and lavender are some of them. Currently, I am not growing any herbs, but I have had good luck with oregano, rosemary, and lavender in the past. They thrived in the "plant and forget" environment I provided for them.

--Plant vegetables that mature quickly, so they will be ready before the long dry part of summer arrives. Good ones for this are radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, leaf lettuce, and beets. I have all of these growing now. I got them in earlier than last year, so maybe I will have a better yield before the warmer, drier weather sets in.

Miss Lander's sweet potatoes

--Okra, sweet potatoes, and muskmelon do well in drought. I won't be growing any of these since they're not my favorite.

 --Raised beds and/or well tilled soil allow roots to grow deeper, so the plant will be less effected by no rain. We put in raised beds last year and tilled the soil below them before we filled them. The soil in them is a big improvement to the native rocky soil.

 --Mulching is a good way to retain moisture. We mostly use straw for this and we have some leftover for last year.

 --Legumes do not need as much water as many vegetables. We're growing peas now, but not sure we will have room for any of the warmer weather ones. 

--Install a rain barrel to collect water to use later. Ward installed a rain barrel last year for my birthday. It has been very handy this spring for watering the new plants.

So how about that. I am already doing some of the things recommended for xeriscape gardening. I was just doing them to make things easier.

How much rainfall do you have where you live? What do you do about watering plants?

Sources:

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/special/xeriscape/integrating-vegetables-and-herbs-into-the-xeriscape-garden.htm

https://www.rainharvest.com/blog/?p=474

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping#:~:text=Xeriscaping%20is%20the%20process%20of,eliminates%20the%20need%20for%20irrigation.&text=In%20some%20areas%2C%20terms%20such,smart%20scaping%20are%20used%20instead.

W is for Winning Recipe

My mother was always trying something new. After she retired, she wrote a book and published poetry (she hadn't written anything before), learned and taught others on the computer, tutored people for GED's, and was an all-around helper for anyone in need. In addition, one of the things of note she did was enter a cooking contest.

My mother cooked a lot when I was growing up, just because it was necessary. She was a good basic "country" cook, but didn't particularly like cooking. In fact, my parents became regulars at the local restaurants in their later years because neither one of them liked to cook. So you wouldn't think that she would enter the annual cooking contest sponsored by the regional newspaper, but she did. It was a new challenge for her to try. 

Her entry was a tomato, dumpling soup, and with that she was chosen to be a finalist. That meant she made it to a cookoff where she cooked her soup in person to be tasted by the judges.  She didn't win the final round, but she did get her name and picture in the newspaper as a winner along with her recipe.

Here's her winning recipe (which includes some vegetables thus keeping with the theme.)  

Tomato Treat-Spencer Style

Cook in skillet until soft: 

1 Tbs chopped green pepper

2 Tbs chopped onion

1 Tbs chopped celery

2 Tbs olive oil

Transfer to 3 quart pan.

Add and cook to just below boiling:

2 cups diced fresh tomatoes

1/4 tsp salt.

Blend and add to hot tomato mixture:

2 Tbs unbleached flour

1 Tbs whole wheat flour

1/2 cup skim milk

Cook for five minutes. Stir occasionally.

In a separate bowl, blend:

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup unbleached flour

2 tsp. baking powder

Cut into flour mixture;

2 Tbs shortening

Add and mix until everything is wet:

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

1/2 cup skim milk

Drop by tablespoons into hot tomatoes. Cover tightly and move the tomato pot to a larger pan to cook in a water bath (iron skillet works well). Cook for 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

V is for Vegetable Soup

Potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, peas

Your mother says you have to eat a lot of these

Mararoni, ... ?... You put into a soup

Pour it in a bowl and call it Campbells soup.

Does anyone remember this jump rope jingle from a Campbell soup ad?  My memory is a bit fuzzy on the exact words, but I do know that it was about vegetable soup. And speaking of soup, it was a cold and rainy day yesterday--perfect for soup.  I didn't have any Campbell's, so I made my own.

I used what I could find in the fridge and pantry. 

This was lunch and dinner yesterday. I thought there was enough for freezing, but there was only enough left for someone's lunch today. 

U is for Unfrosted Pop Tarts

 When thinking about what to write about for the letter U, the only thing that came to mind was ugli fruit. That was something I might actually be able to find at the grocery store, but I wasn't sure I had time to go. So I did a little googling to see what else I could come up with. In a Quora forum, I found this list from N.M. to the question, "What is a fruit or vegetable that starts with the letter U?"

1. Unfrosted Pop-Tarts

2. Ultimate Brownies

3. Utah Scones

4. Umpqua Oats

5. Upside-down cakes

I'm not sure if N.M. understood the question the same way I did, but who am I to judge? Let's go down the list and see what we can figure out.

kelloggs.com

1. There are three kinds of unfrosted Pop-Tarts: strawberry, blueberry, and brown sugar cinnamon. Well, two of these contain fruit, even if it's in a small amount, so I guess that Unfrosted Pop-Tarts could count for the question. Now I want a Pop-Tart. I haven't had one in a long time and the unfrosted ones are my favorites.

2. I think brownies are stretch, but I guess they could be made with applesauce or pumpkin to replace some of the fat or with cherries. So I generously give N. M. this one. Now I want brownies, too.

3. I didn't know what a Utah scone was, so I had to educate myself. They are deep fried dough served with honey, butter, and powdered sugar. Sounds like a doughnut or beignet to me and could be served with jam or jelly or maybe some strawberries on the side, I guess. The jury is still out as to whether this one fits the criteria for a fruit or vegetable beginning with U, but now I have a sudden urge to go to Utah.

4. I didn't know what Umpqua oats were, either. Umpqua is a brand name for oats sold either in cups or packets. Many of the flavors contain fruit, so I'm going to let N.M. have this one. I wonder if Umpqua oats are better than Quaker. Now, I want to do a taste test.

5. Upside down cake: This one is definitely a winner. Upside down cake can be made with many different kinds of fruit with pineapple being my favorite. However, the last time I made a pineapple, upside down cake, I forgot the salt and it wasn't very good. Who knew that leaving the salt out could make such a difference, but it did. N.M. has gotten me thinking. I need to bake another pineapple upside down cake to make up for the last one I made.  

It's a good thing that N.M.'s list wasn't longer. Who knows what else I'd be craving?

T is for Turnip

 I talked about turnips very recently, but I like them so much, I'm going to post about them again. But it wasn't always like this.

Turnips from last fall's garden.

When I was younger, I did not like turnips at all. They were too bitter for my taste. Same went for turnip greens. My parents occasionally cooked them and I would take my mandatory spoonful which I would choke down with a glass a milk. This was a consistent theme until one time when I was visiting my parents when I was an adult. During that visit, I had turnips from a friend's garden. And they were good! They were sweet with a bit of a peppery taste. Delicious especially with butter. Where had these turnips been all of my life? Those turnips changed everything. Now I eat turnips even when they are bitter. I am willing to do that to find a sweet one just like the one that changed my turnip dislike. Luckily, last fall I grew turnips that were tasty. I know that the flavor has something to do with the temperature and turnips are supposedly sweeter if they have gone through a frost. I got lucky with the weather. 

Turnips are a cruciferous vegetable and in the same family as cabbage, broccoli, and arugla. They are a low calorie food with one cup of cubes having only 36 calories along with 2 grams of fiber. The root is not as nutritious as the top leaves which are high in Vitamins A, C, and K, but still contains them. 

Our favorite way to eat turnips is either boiled with a little butter and salt, or roasted. Both are delicious.

Do you like turnips? Or are you still waiting to find the perfect one like I did?

Oh, BTW, I am still waiting for the magical turnip greens to change me into a turnip green lover.

 

S is for Spinach

 Another blast from the past today. 

Popeye's Spinach

The other day Ward was reading something and called out, "Hey, listen to this. You know how Popeye eats spinach and gets really strong because of the iron in it? Well that portrayal happened because of a simple mistake." He proceeded to tell me that when the nutritional value for spinach was first published in the 1870's, there was a problem with a decimal point. That ended up with the belief that spinach had 10 times more iron in it than it really had. The mistake wasn't figured out until much later.

I thought that was pretty interesting and I would share it with you here on my blog. And that's where the problems began. I did a little googling and found the same story in many places. In fact, it's such a great story that it has been repeated for decades. But no one seems to have ever seen the original paper where this mistake was made. Mike Sutton published extensive research he did on the story in Best Thinking Science. After a lot of investigation, he could find no evidence that the misplaced decimal ever happened.

What about Popeye? Did the misplaced decimal story mislead him into eating spinach for strength? Well, it turns out that when he first ate it, he touted its Vitamin A properties instead of iron content.




Nevertheless, his love of spinach made it the third favorite food among children at one point and consumption of spinach went up in the 1940's when Popeye was in his heyday.

So how much iron does spinach actually have in it and is it any better than other foods as a source of iron? One cup of raw spinach (30 grams) contains 5% of the RDA for iron (which by the way is the same amount of iron in Peppermint Pattie.)  Of course, if you are eating it cooked you are likely to eat more. However, spinach also contains oxalates which bind to the iron and make it hard for the body to absorb. So generally, animal sources of iron are easier for the body to use. However like all leafy greens, spinach good for you for a lot of reasons.

So what conclusion can we draw from all of this? Once again, you can't believe everything you read.

Note: I did reading on this about a week before I wrote it. When I tried to relocate sources for some of the things I had written down, I couldn't find them all again. Therefore, I tried to summarize the topic without too many specifics when I couldn't find the sources. Come to think of it, this might be how some internet rumors get started :)

R is for Rutabaga

I am moving slower than normal because of side effects from my second COVID vaccination, so I'm going to be using posts I've done in the past for the next couple of days. Today' post, about rutabagas, I featured not too long ago. To add new content, here's a rutabaga joke from Jokes 4 Us

Q: What kind of socks do you need to plant rutabaga?

A: Garden hose. (You can groan now.)

Rutabagas

I've always been curious about rutabagas. Well, actually, I've never been curious about rutabagas and have never given them much thought until recently when Miss Landers brought some over from her garden for us to try. This was her first time growing them and she was curious about how they compared with turnips, so she also brought turnips that she had grown.

A bit of research revealed that rutabagas are a natural cross between turnips and wild cabbage. They are a relatively new plant in that the first time they are mentioned in literature is in the early 1600's. They go by many names including yellow turnips and swedes because Sweden is a top producer. (Can you guess they like to grow in colder weather?) The name “rutabaga” is derived from an old Swedish word meaning “root bag.”

Notice the multiple roots and yellow tint of the rutabaga.

How about our turnip vs. rutabaga comparison? This is what we observed. Miss Landers said that as she was pulling them (both root vegetables) that the rutabagas seemed to have more roots and root hairs. Both were pungent when raw and smelled like a cross between cabbage and radishes. The rutabaga had a yellow tint to it that intensified when cooked while the turnip remained white.

We were able to convince Ward and Theodore to participate in a taste test after the vegetables were cooked--which was pretty remarkable considering neither one of them like turnips.They weren't too sure that they wanted to sample anything called yellow turnips. However, they did sample them right along with Miss Landers and me.

We all agreed that the rutabaga had a definite potato taste. Theodore said that the rutabaga tasted as if it were a cross between potatoes and brussel sprouts. A fairly apt description. Theodore and I liked the turnips better with their more peppery taste while Ward and Miss Landers liked the rutabagas better with their milder taste and creamier texture.

In conclusion, will I start adding rutabagas to my grocery list on a regular basis? No. But will I now have something new to talk about when there is a lull in the conversation? Yes. :)

Notice they white color of the cooked turnips and the yellow color of the rutabaga.

 More sources:

• Rutabaga overview--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga
• Rutabaga recipes--http://allrecipes.com/recipes/everyday-cooking/seasonal/winter/rutabaga/top.aspx
• Rutabaga nutrition--http://www.produceoasis.com/Items_folder/Vegetables/Rutabaga.html
• How to grow rutabagas  http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-26.html
• A serious and not so serious blog about rutabagas--http://rutablogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/breakthrough-photosnynthesis-stimulate.html

Q is for Quaraibea

 I struggled a bit to come up with something for Q. I like to have a personal connection to the topic and use my own pictures if possible. Q just wasn't working for me this way. After letting go of those criteria, I decided that I would educate myself on some of the new-to-me fruits that begin with Q. So here it goes.

Quaraibea cordoto

Quaraibea Cordoto or Chupa Chupa - This is a soft, yellow fruit that grows mostly in the Amazon Rain Forest. The taste has been described as a cross between a pumpkin and mango, and nutritionally it is high in carotene. Outside of South American, I couldn't find anywhere to buy quaraibea codoto fruit. However, I did see several sources to buy seeds to grow the tree. The tree is very fast growing and can reach 140 high. However, if will only grow that high if it is in its native tropical rainforest. William Whitman brought it to Florida in 1964 and it has  been successfully grown there, although it needs protection from the cold. 

Quenepa or Spanish lime - This lime-looking fruit is about the size of an olive, has a hard shell, and a jelly inside. Despite it's name, this is not a citrus fruit. It has a sweet, tart taste and is a good source of Vitamin C. Quenepa is native to the tropics of Central and South America. In the US, it is grown in Florida, California, and Hawaii. I have never seen quenepa in the grocery store, but I did find it for sale on Amazon when it is in season.

Quandong or Desert Peach - Quandong grows in the deserts of Australia. It has been described to taste like a tart peach and has more Vitamin C than an orange. Indigenous people have used them for medicine and fuel (from seeds) as well as food. Some quandong are grown commercially, but much of the fruit is harvested in the wild. I could not find it mentioned that they are grown outside of Australia.

Those were very brief descriptions that I think I got mostly right. I would love to hear if anyone has had experience with any of these fruit. All of them grow in warmer or drier climates than I have ever lived, which may be why I was unfamiliar with them.

P is for Peas

 

Picture it. It's 2 am, and peas are flying all over the kitchen. Let me set the stage for this scene.

When I was growing up, my father raised huge vegetable gardens--an acre or more. We lived in Town without a very big yard, so friends would let him use land on their farms for his plantings. Every evening after work, he would go tend the garden, and sometimes, my sister and I would join him to work on our jobs - weeding and/or picking. But our main job was when we got home - processing the produce.

When we were younger, we helped our mother and learned the ins and outs of proper canning and freezing. When we were older, we did all of the canning and freezing since our mother worked long hours at her nursing job. We knew that when freshly picked peas or corn came into the house, they had to be frozen (this was preferred over canning because of taste) as quickly as possible because the natural sugars in them started to change into starch as soon as they were picked, degrading the quality. 

So it would go something like this. After an evening in the garden, we would start washing and shelling peas around 9 pm. When we got enough peas shelled, one of us would start blanching them while the other kept shelling. After the blanching, we would cool them in a big dishpan using ice we had frozen in orange juice cans. Then, they went into containers and into the freezer. This would go on until we finished, usually until the middle of the night sometimes.

If you would like to try one,
 I found this on eBay.

We'd then go to bed and get up the next day to handle whatever else there was that hadn't needed to be processed immediately. And so it went. That was until one day when my mother bought a gadget that she thought would help - The Magic Fingers Sheller.  It was a yellow plastic box that hooked up to a hand mixer.  The mixer ran two electric rollers that you fed peas through. The rollers would squeeze out the peas in one direction and the shells in another. And it worked, except when it didn't. Sometimes, the peas would get stuck, and you would have to retrieve them and restart the process. Other times, the peas would fly out of the rollers and land who knows where. 

At first, my sister and I found the stuck and bouncing peas very aggravating, but as the night wore on, we found it funnier and funnier. As those peas ricocheted around the kitchen, sometimes we laughed until we cried. I guess you had to be there to really get it, but those late nights with my sister and the pea-sheller are among my favorite memories of growing up.

O is for Orange

 Not only is it Blogging A-Z month, it is also National Poetry Month. So what better to share today than a poem about orange which has no rhyming words.*

*Technically there is one word that rhymes with orange: sporange which is a botanical term for part of a fern.

N is for Nutrition

Today's offering is a nutrition quiz about vegetables. Below will be pictures of nutrition labels of various vegetables. See if you can guess what the vegetable is from reading the label. There will be a word bank below the labels of possible choices if you want help. Most of these labels are on cans, so the photos are skewed, but I think you can read the information you need to.

I figured out an interesting thing as I was putting this together. Interesting to me, anyway. Nutrition label requirements changed a few years ago. Of note is that the amounts of Vitamin A and Vitamin C are no longer required but can be added if the manufacturer wants to. However, Vitamin D is now required. Some of these vegetables are clearly good sources of Vitamin A and C, but that doesn't show up on the label. That may make guessing a bit more difficult, but go ahead and give it the old college try.  

Number 1

Number 2

 

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

Answer choices: beets, green beans, peas, tomatoes, white kidney beans, spinach, yams

Answers:

1. tomatoes

2. yams

3. beet

4. white kidney beans

5. green beans

6. peas

7. spinach

So, how did you do?