To zucchini...and beyond!

It's funny how sometimes life throws these head-shaking curve balls at you that don't really make any kind of lasting impact, but can be annoying as all get out.

Last year, we spent a lot of time prepping an overgrown area to become a 50' x 100' vegetable garden. We overturned ground, pulled weeds, added bagged compost, and struggled to maintain water distribution (with a well) and proper harvesting. 

We successfully grew sugar snap peas, tomatoes, potatoes, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, pumpkins, and butternut squash. We were less than successful growing peppers and corn - so it became a mission to address the sandy soil which we thought was a corn-growing hindrance.

We hedged our corny bets for this year by creating our own kitchen/yard waste compost area, so that we could reuse our own organic material as fertilizer for the garden and then meticulously maintained and turned that material so that it became rich black gold for the soil. (The addition of chicken poop from the barn also assisted with the compost's nutrient capabilities!) Last Fall we purchased bags of cow shit from a local farmer in our town to enrich our soil even more as we turned over the ground one last time at the end of the growing season. The soil looked (and smelled) like real farm dirt - not sand, or clay which really does have a different aroma. 

We planted with one notation...DO NOT PLANT TOO MANY ZUCCHINI AND SQUASH. Even by only planting a few seeds, we still over-planted.

Every home gardener I know jokes about the productivity of zucchini and summer squash in their gardens on good years, without disease or bugs ravaging your plants. I'm not the first to use "Zucchini Apocalypse" by any means, but I do enjoy conjuring up the images of zombie zucchini, en masse, marching their way into our kitchens, multiplying as they slink along.

I imagine it looks kind of like this:

Fuck. And you should see what is *still* waiting for us in the garden. We just started harvesting, and there are still flowers budding.

I was NOT happy when my husband (yes, husband - as of 7/16/22!) came in loaded to the gills, with vegetables twice the size of my forearms! I knew right there that I was going to have to get creative with the cooking, so that none of this produce goes to waste. Zucchini Bread, which I think is gross, was NOT going to be the end-all to use all of this up. In fact, two cups of grated zucchini was a 1/3 of one of these monsters, and that was after seeding it.

I've been scouring the internets searching for recipes to rid us of the onslaught of zucchini and summer squash. 

Last year I discovered the beauty of Zucchini Relish - it's a simple substitution from your regular cucumber/pickle relish, but with more color. I can pints and half pints using a water bath, and it is delicious. Better yet, no one knows it's not traditional pickled relish until we tell them. Same crunch and bite.

I also make Zucchini and Summer Squash pickles, which are amazing on grilled chicken and burgers. Freezing cubes, rounds, and grated veg is also a go-to, but honestly we are still trying to knock off last year's harvest, so I don't want to go too far in that direction. 

So, as we delve further into the Zucchini Apocalypse, I'll be testing more zucchini and squash recipes and sharing them here. Starting....now.

Cheesy Zucchini Smash Cakes 

Baked zucchini pancakes.

Ingredients:

2 cups grated zucchini

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 eggs

1 small shallot, minced

1 clove of garlic, minced

Salt and pepper, to taste

Additions: Substitute summer squash for zucchini; add fresh herbs of your choosing; add crumbled bacon; substitute shallot/garlic for onion and/or garlic powder.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

Grate zucchini, and place in the center of a clean kitchen towel. Gather up the towel, and squeeze out the liquid from the zucchini. (I use this technique with frozen spinach dishes, as well as some jam preparations that I want to reduce liquid for before cooking.) 

 You want a semi-dry ball of zucchini to add to your bowl. In the same bowl, add all ingredients and mix with your hands to incorporate thoroughly.

Once fully incorporated, take 1/4 cup of the mixture and shape it into a mini pancake, pressing hard. Gently place on a silpat-lined baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

 

 

Serve any way you'd like, but I used them as the English Muffin base for an eggs benedict'like dish that blew us away. (And yes, that is indeed a broken Hollandaise! I froze the last batch I made to see if it would stand up...it doesn't, but it still had all the flavor.) The Zucchini Smash Cakes can also be used as an appetizer with a little sour cream and chive, or crème fraîche and smoked salmon if you want to be fancy. I'm sure a topping of caviar would be lovely for people who like that.

This is most definitely a recipe I am keeping in my zucchini arsenal for the rest of the summer! 

Now I am off to find a zucchini ice cream recipe because if I have to eat the stuff, I might as well find interesting ways to incorporate it.

An update on the Homefront

First of all, I guess it's only prudent to acknowledge that yes, it's been over 4 years since my last post -  which also started off with an apology and an admittance that it had been 6 years since the update before that. So, 3 updates in 10 years...that's some solid blogging work. 

Transgressions aside, I actually have been cooking all throughout this time. 

We bought an old dairy farm in 2020, and have been slowly rehabbing the property to become more sustainable for life. Tending to soil conditions, naturally fertilizing, testing and growing crops, transplanting wild black raspberries, adding livestock, and building out flowering areas for pollinators. (We even have a milk weed patch to help maintain the migratory path of monarch butterflies.) We compost all of our kitchen waste, lawn clippings, and chicken poop. We also tap our maple trees and sugar homemade maple syrup. 

A print of the property when it was a dairy farm in 1960 hangs in our kitchen. 

Our main vegetable garden is about 20 feet x 70 feet. We grow all of the usual things: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, and beans, but because of the space have, we added items like potatoes, carrots, squash, and corn as well. In a small supplemental area we have rhubarb, strawberries, and asparagus. This past fall we added another garden area for pumpkins and gourds. 

We introduced a flock of chickens last September, and they started producing daily eggs in February. Raising chickens has a ton of advantages (compost nourishment, tick maintenance, and food), but they also provide an element of fun. Two weeks ago, we decided to add more babies into that mix, and while they are not big enough to introduce them to the rest of the girls yet, they grow so fast that they will all together in no time. (And then we will start to think about a Rooster to govern over the flock and keep the peace.)   

Those who are not busy laying are in their outdoor chicken run, scratching away.

Every day brings hours worth of chores, more as we get into nicer weather. 

I never thought I'd say this, but I am loving every minute of it - even in the deepest, darkest days of winter. In fact, I think all of this daily maintenance has actually helped with that depressed trapped feeling I experience in December, January, and February. 

I have also found a need, appreciation, and love for food preservation. In that exact order. Our first year in this house made us quickly learn that if we are going to grow it, we would have to learn ways to preserve it, so that we could enjoy our spoils throughout the year. The easier methods of water bath preserving gave us jars and jars of strawberry rhubarb jam, black raspberry jam, rhubarb dessert sauce, traditional cucumber pickles, zucchini pickles, relish, pickled green beans, applesauce, apple butter, salsa, and of course, tomato sauce.

We prepped and froze gallons of vegetables. (Note to self: Do not freeze in actual gallon bags, separate vegetables into smaller units, because the whole thing will freeze into one big block. It might be fun watching me attack bags like JasonVoorhees, but it's not good for my knives, or people's perception of me.)

We needed a pressure cooker, so that I could can goods, outside of pickling and making jam. I talked about wanting one so often that Santa Claus even got the hint and gifted me one!

That beauty has been a game changer in the short time that I've had it. I've canned chicken stock and fully preserved a mountain of homegrown butternut squash. It takes a ton of time, science, and mental energy, but the results are beautiful and delicious - most of the time. The baked beans I attempted to make were a huge fail, but it won't step me from trying the process one of more time.

There is a more layered aspect of homestead farm-to-table cooking that I am excited to share on this blog, as I continue to learn and grow.