Wordless Wednesday – Calendula
Category: Wordless Wednesday
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Around the Urban Homestead
This week I cleared out most of the squash and cucumber bed to make way for a fall garden. I brought in 31 pounds from the spaghetti squash plants I had. I left 2 of the zucchini and 2 crookneck squash plants out there, as they’ve recovered from the awful case of powdery mildew that hit them earlier and are right back to producing.
School starts again on Thursday already. I’m also starting on a difficult project at work where they are giving us a small percentage of the time it’ll actually take to complete so I’m in for a lot of long hours at work this semester too. I’d had lots of plans for my 2 school free weeks…but I’m afraid catching up with necessary errands, banking (moved from 30 year mortgage to 15 year at 4%!!) and taking care of family obligations took up most of my time instead. They were important things, but I just feel like I’m running a million miles an hour these days and getting no where on my personal goals with the little homestead…and of course with work and school kicking into high gear there is no end in sight.
Category: Around the Urban Homestead, Squash
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Tomato and Zucchini Casserole
Yet another tomato and zucchini recipe. This one piqued my interest because it was such a wonderfully simple dish that used fresh tomatoes and zucchini from the garden, fresh basil, and some dill that I’d grown indoors over the winter and dehydrated.
Category: Recipe, Tomatoes, Zucchini
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Tomato and Zucchini Red Sauce over Pasta
I’ve never made sauce from scratch before, so I thought I’d try with a pasta recipe before I whip up a whole batch to can. This one turned out rather funky colored because I used water rather than the called for wine, but the taste was wonderful. My other changes were to use all fresh tomatoes with some extra water and leave out the olives….gross.
Category: Recipe, Tomatoes, Zucchini
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Around the Urban Homestead
I got to pick the first couple Golden Jenny melons this week. Actually, I could have picked one earlier but I forgot what a small variety of melons I had picked and never thought to check if they were ripe. I lost one like that but caught the next 2. This one was 6 inches across, 1.5 pounds, and oh so cute.
As far as preserving, I got the last of the zucchini dried and another batch of basil done. I made an attempt at tomato sauce that failed miserably. Some great feedback from my Facebook friends showed me the recipe was a little odd and I know to spend as much time as I need with the reduction next time around.
My harvests of melon, corn, crookneck squash, cucumber, and tomatoes this week brought my total to over 100 pounds from the garden. I’m actually a bit disappointed as I know I could be doing so much better if I would have had more time to devote to the garden and had gotten my fall starts going in time. Well, now I’ll have a baseline to try to beat next year.
Category: Around the Urban Homestead
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Tomato, onion, and zucchini salad
One of my chat friends threw out this idea for a way to use tomatoes and zucchini, which I have in serious abundance right now. It’s just a raw salad of thinly sliced zucchini, tomatoes, and onions. The dressing was oil and balsamic vinegar. While it wasn’t a 5 star recipe, it was a nice change of pace and hit the spot on a hot day.
Category: Recipe, Tomatoes, Zucchini
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Creamy Tomato and Rice Soup
The tomatoes have been rolling in so I’m ready to try new recipes. Surprisingly enough, I have never made my own tomato soup before. I used this recipe from Frugal Homesteads.
Mine just looks a little funny because I thought I’d make it with water instead of milk, but it just didn’t taste quite right. So I added powdered milk at the end.
3 cups tomatoes
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp pepper
3 TBSP flour
2 TBSP butter
1 quart milk
Blanch tomatoes for one minute. Remove from water and peel skins. Add tomatoes, onion, and garlic to blender and blend until smooth.
In soup pot, melt butter and mix in flour. Stir in one cup milk. Add remaining ingredients and tomato mixture. Heat through and serve. I added cooked rice to mine.
Category: Recipe, Tomatoes
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Around the Urban Homestead
Life is still very very busy and the lack of attention is starting to take it’s toll on the garden. We’ve been having outrageous amounts of rainfall here, which has set off a white covering of powdery mildew on all the varieties of squash. I wasn’t able to treat until the weekend, but by then it was too little to late. To be fair, I’m not sure I would have been able to fight this one back even if I had more time though.
I’m still getting some squash, but production has definitely slowed down and the plants have seen better days. What was a lush jungle of squash I had to fight to check for fruit is now frumpy clumps of vine I can easily trapse through. Thankfully they are the only casualties. Otherwise, the garden is continuing to impress me.
I picked 25.5 pounds of produce this week, including the first spaghetti squash and sugar baby watermelon. Harvests also included basil, zucchini, crookneck squash, patty pan squash, tomatoes, and cucumber. After noticing some of the pinto beans were already dry, I pulled a handful to admire my first harvest of dry beans.
Category: Around the Urban Homestead
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Nonstop Pickles
If you are on facebook, one good addition is the page for Mother Earth News. While I hate the slant of the magazine, they do have some great information. And their facebook page is a very easy way to keep up with them. They recently posted this article about Nonstop Pickles. I had 7 cucumbers piling up on the counter, so I thought it was worth a try if it used up some of these darn things. It took me a whole couple minutes to put the jar together last night and they tasted good already today.
Category: Cucumber
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Zucchini “Crab” Cakes
I tried another new zucchini recipes. This one is like that potato soup where the zucchini is “hidden”. I’ve never actually had real crab cakes, but I’m assuming it’s one of those dishes where it’s all in the spices. These were a bit more heavily seasoned than I’d normally like, but with a strong dish like spaghetti they stood out nicely from the sauce without being overpowering.
1/2 cup grated zucchini
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon butter, meted
2 teaspoons minced onions
3 tablespoons bread crumbs
1/4 teaspoon old bay seasoning
2 1/2 teaspoons flour
Combine first 6 ingredients and shape into patties. Dredge patties in flour and fry in oil on medium heat until golden brown.
Here’s the original recipe if you’d like to convert to a larger serving size.
Category: Recipe, Zucchini
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