I love the seven week break! It gives me a chance to focus on the things that I have wanted to do all semester, but did not have the time to do. Its a great time to kick back and relax. Andrew and I have spent time going to the library, gardening, cooking great meals and visiting family. I thought I would share some highlights of what has been happening here.
First off, we have a ton of zucchini! As a first time gardener I planted 1o zucchini plants and 9 of them came up! I was really happy to see how well they were growing, but now they have started producing fruits. Lets just say that I did not know how well zucchini plants produce fruit...or how quickly. I thought we would get three or four a week......oh boy was I wrong.
The zucchinis have been growing like weeds! They are growing faster than I can use/store them. Thus far I have cooked 3-4, given away 7, de-seeded 4 and stored another 4 gallons! And we still have three more hanging out in our living room, all a foot long and 4 inches wide. It's a zucchini mad house here in our little apartment.
Yesterday I went and picked off all of the fruits on the plants so I could store them. Thank you Carissa for letting me borrow your food saver!!
The next thing that I tried was okra! You would think that being from the south I would have already tried and fell in love with it, but last night was my first run in with it. I had decided to make a gumbo from scratch for dinner and okra was in the recipe. It smells a little funky, but in that dish it was fantastic. Thank you to Idaho stores for having it!
And last but not least I made homemade jam! It is something that I have wanted to do for a while but never had the time. As of this break I have been working on adding to our food storage and I thought that jam would be a great addition. The best part about this jam is that no gelatin was required. Yum!.
The standard Lava Salsa picture.
Oh and I almost forgot, we made sugar cookies. Britt and Andrew decided that we should have a shark carving contest (thank you Carrie and Aaron for the idea). This was shark was the end product of Britt's carving skills. And yes we cooked it! Thus far it has been a great break. We head off on our next road trip on Monday so be looking for updates!
Either you have a really small kitchen sink or those are really huge zucchini's! I like the strawberry jam pic and the shark cookie too!
ReplyDeleteha ha ha I laughed my head off when I read about all your zuchinni. We had such a miserable spring here that our plants are just kind of starting to grow. My friends zuchinni plant has just started to grow little wee baby zuchinnis. Also I just tried cooking okra last week and I could barely swallow the stuff. It turned out totally slimy. so since I know that a ton of people love it, it is my opinion that I cooked it all wrong. I pan fried it with onions and seasoning. if you have any good ideas let me know.
ReplyDeleteWow so much goodness!!!! I hope you have fun now that you are in california!!
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous! I heard that you had a fabulous garden from Mom. We have a fabulous fried zuchinni recipe with a lemon aioli dip. Dad and Jenna LOVED it. I'll pass it along if you want. Plus you could make zuchinni bread too. :)
ReplyDeleteHaha, your in the next room but I'll still comment ;) You are such an inspiration for trying new stuff on break. I usually just veg or do old stuff. Anyway, love the shark cookie and I'm glad that we could inspire the fun. Maybe we should have you all come out for shark week next year to make cookies! Thanks for making Aaron and I a stop on your vacation and we hope that you've enjoyed it despite the nasty bug that's been going around.
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