Life is in the Details

Week in the Life - Monday

 

 

Early Summer Recap

Family, friends, crafting, gardening, and just enjoying the outdoors.  It's been great so far!

Homegrown pizza from the last of the tomatoes...

Over the past few months, since I've been home and have the time, I have been making a lot of homemade pizza, usually every few weeks. And since the tomatoes started to ripen I've been making homemade sauce as well! Since September is now here, and my tomatoes are dwindling, I thought I'd take a few of the remaining stragglers and make some pizza last night.  It was Friday night after all!

I make my pizza dough from this recipe at allrecipes.com. I make it in the bread machine since generally I keep my house at a subarctic temperature, even in Summer because of my super hairy, easily overheated, Eloise, which challenges the rising in "room temperature".

In the bread machine, the dough is kept perfect, so I don't have to worry about drafts or room temp. And I just place the ingredients into the machine like I would with a bread machine recipe. Basically putting the liquids on the bottom, the flour on the top, and the yeast on top of that.  I turn on the dough cycle and go back to knitting for a while.

Last night though I made the sauce right away and then assembled it later when I was ready to eat. I have used this recipe a few times now and my homegrown pizza sauce has come out wonderful.  In months where there are no tomatoes in my garden I use this one.

I cut up the five tomatoes that I had, two were fairly large and three smaller ones. I think that's about enough for one recipe of pizza. I did rinse out some of the seeds, but I'm not neurotic about it.  It would be fine to keep them in, but I prefer less seeds.  It ended up being about 5 cups of chopped tomatoes.

I added the garlic, I cheat and use the garlic in a jar. I'm sure that breaks some foodie rule, but it's so much easier, and my palette is not advanced enough to tell the difference.

I added the tomatoes and fresh oregano.  Unfortunately my basil is pretty much gone, so I had to use dried. With basil I can tell the difference, so it's definitely better with the real thing. I also add a squirt of honey, maybe about a teaspoon, I like a sweet sauce. And just simmer until most of the water is gone.  Then as the recipe says, use an immersion blender to chop up some of the sauce, and leave a little bit chunky.  That's it! It's very easy.

After my dough is finished in the bread machine, I just assemble: roll out the dough; add my sauce; some fresh mozzarella; and a few mushrooms that I had on hand.

YUM!

101 Ways to use Zucchini...

Okay, well maybe not 101 ways, but as I said the other day, I had two huge zucchinis that I had to cook with this week and here is the photographic evidence!

This is one of the zucchinis.   I forgot to take a picture until I had already started slicing this, but as you can see, this is not your average supermarket sized zucchini!

Wednesday night I started out making zucchini bread, not realizing just how much zucchini one of these monsters produce! So I made two loaves of zuccini bread and then made another batch of the bread and baked them in muffin tins.  This is the recipe that I used: Mom's Zucchini Bread.  The only change I made was to substitute 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour for 1 of the 3 c. of all purpose flour.  I like to include extra whole grains wherever I can.  In general you can substitute up to 1/2 of the flour for whole wheat in most recipes.  The whole grains tend to dry out the recipe, so you can't substitute 100% of the flour.  This zucchini recipe was a great choice to do this though because the zucchini adds a lot of extra moisture. 

Here are the results!

And I still have 1/2 of that zucchini shredded in the freezer! I think I may try this recipe with it soon: Chocolate zucchini bread!

Then last night, to use up the 2nd huge zucchini, I made zucchini parmesan. Again it made a lot of zucchini parm. But that's fine by me, since I will happily eat it for several days in a row.  I don't really use a recipe when I make this.  I just bread the zucchini (I make eggplant parm the same way), fry it in olive oil until it's browned on both sides. Then make a meat sauce with just browned ground beef, and store bought sauce.  I used Classico Tomato and Basil. Then I just layer the ingredients like lasagna! Start out with sauce on the bottom to ensure it won't stick, then a zucchini layer, then sauce on that, then shredded cheese (I used mozzarella, parmesan, and some provolone that I had to get rid of), then repeat those layers again.  Then the top layer, I did the same except I left off the provolone since the slices weren't as pretty as the shredded cheeses and decorated it with some of my parsley fresh from my garden!  This was just yummy!

So although I had planned to have Chinese food tonight, to celebrate the opening of the Olympics in China, instead I am going to have more zucchini parm! The Chinese food will have to wait for the Closing Ceremonies next week!

Beach trip tomorrow! My first of the year. I know, I live 5 miles from the ocean, it's crazy! I actually go more in the off-season than during the Summer.  But tomorrow should be a really fun day, I am going with a group of friends, and we plan to have dinner at a great restaurant on the bay after our day in the sun.  I hope to do some reading under my trusty umbrella and of course, I'll be bringing zucchini muffins and bread for snacking!

First tomatoes, First Blueberry

The first of my tomatoes and blueberries have arrived! The cherry tomatoes are always ready first before their bigger counterparts.  This year though, I also planted some yellow pear heirloom tomatoes, so those plants have a few that are almost there as well. 

And ironically, the first blueberry was ready the same day as the first tomato!

I split the first blueberry in half to share with Eloise. And I think it was actually a little early to pick, but Eloise did not seem to mind, and she waited expectantly next to the garden boxes to find out what other goodies I was going to give to her.

While we were out in the yard Ana came through with the lawn mower.  Eloise likes to play keep away with the lawn mower!

So we're well on our way to be overrun with tomatoes.  There aren't too many blueberries.  I planted one high crop blueberry and two Jersey blueberry bushes, and only the high crop bush had buds this year.  I've read that most of these berry bushes don't produce berries until the second year, so maybe I just got lucky with the high crop.  So between the birds and Eloise I think I may get about a 1/2 pint this year.  But the tomatoes are another story.  There will be plenty! Time to brush up on my tomato recipes! I think I'm going to make homemade ketchup this year!   

Green beans.

For the past couple weeks, I have been sneaking green beans off the stalks in the garden as the beans have been reaching their full size.  Eloise has taken to going out the back door and sitting next to the garden box in the vicinity of the beans waiting for her treat.  About a week ago I realized I finally had enough for a meal.  Yes, only one meal, this is a little garden.  My green bean crop produced two servings plus about 10 extra beans that Eloise and I have been munching on one at a time when we're outside.  I wanted to share my bounty with my blog readers!

These are the green bean plants in the garden.  I think there are approximately 6 plants in there.  They're falling over a bit, they really could use some sort of cage to hold them up.

I grabbed a couple handfulls of full size beans off the stalks and brought them in to be washed. My beans are organic, but they still have bugs and dirt on them. Then I trimmed off the ends.

I pulled out some almonds since green beans naturally go with almonds!

And here they are, the final product!

They were good. Ana said they were the best green beans she ever had, but I think the good part was the olive oil and salt and pepper on the almonds! YUM! So now I have to wait another year for more beans.  Maybe I'll try for 12 plants next year!!

But don't worry, soon I'll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with! I planted tons of them this year, and unlike the beans, each plant grows tons of tomatoes! I predict I'll be overdosing on lycopene come August! Anybody want some tomatoes??? Place your orders in the comment section! lol

Hydrangeas and green beans

My garden that I planted on Memorial Day weekend is coming along very well.  The tomatoes are getting tall and I've already been able to use the herbs, they're growing like crazy!  The snap peas are having a bit of a hard time, but I learned that they really need to be planted earlier and don't take well to the heat, so I may not be able to salvage them. But I noticed today that my green beans are starting to grow. Last year I planted beans also, but I didn't pay much attention to them thinking that they probably take as long as the tomatoes, and I didn't even notice the beans until they were almost full grown, well this year I am paying more attention and the beans are still very small.

And my hydrangeas are starting to blossom! I absolutely LOVE hydrangeas! My dream in my life is to have a cottage on Nantucket with just tons of hydrangeas surrounding the house.  But until I win the lottery since the average price of a house on that island is probably in the $3-4 million dollar range, I will enjoy my own hydrangeas! And I was surprised to see that one of them has blue flowers, apparently you have to add something to the soil to get blue flowers, but they turned blue on their own!

And the other one is partially blue and partially pink.

Maybe I should plant a few more!

Memorial Day

On this day, more than 5 years into the war in Iraq and even longer in Afghanistan, there are many soldiers to thank today, to think about today.  And many families who have lived without loved ones for many months and years as their family members serve our country.  I just looked at the number of casualties in Iraq, 4080 US casualties confirmed, more if you include the allied forces. Just yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning they said that 4079 had died. I know I should think about all of them, but right now I'm thinking about that one. The one between yesterday and today. Thinking about 4080 people is just so hard to wrap your head around, but I can really grasp that one since yesterday.  I can mourn the one since yesterday and pray for their family.

Regardless of everyone's views on these wars, I hope that we can all take a moment today to think about these soldiers who have passed away, the thousands of soldiers who have been wounded and changed forever. I'm thinking about my friend Tony who is in Baghdad right now, no longer serving in the army, but decided to go back to Iraq for the second time, now with the state department.  He amazes me, he could be home safe but instead is helping to keep the rest of us safe. Sending lots of prayers to him today so far away and his wife and 2 little kids back home.

My day today was pretty low key. I finished up planting my vegetable garden, and spreading some mulch.  Ana ripped out some old bulbs that were on their last legs.  I put out the birdbath that I bought and decided to put it on the shady side of the yard to keep it cool for the birds. A house wren has moved into the bird house in the backyard and is tormenting all the other birds that go near the house.  It's hard to see inside, so I'm not sure if there are eggs in there or not. But unfortunately it's also right next to the feeder, so there haven't been many birds hanging out back there. Hopefully the wrens will become a little more accepting of the other birds soon.

Here are some pictures of the garden and the yard...

Last year I had one planter with herbs and vegetables, and quite a few of them came back this year. Most of the herbs came back as shown in the photo. The catnip came back with a vengeance, the stuff is out of control! The thyme and oregano came back also, and I think those are peppers coming in again. Then last weekend I planted the tomatoes and green beans. It should be pretty jam packed when they all come in. 

This year a bought another planter, and in there there are some more tomatoes, dill, parsley and some snap peas.

Here's a picture along the fence where I planted some blueberry plants, the blackberry plant came back from last year, and I planted a strawberry pot. I've always wanted one of those! There are also some regular plants in between.

Here is a picture of my new birdbath! Isn't it cute?

And I had to add a picture of my baby Eloise. She observed the yard work from where she planted herself on the deck.

I really had a wonderful weekend, my yard looks tremendous! I've taken lots of pictures and I think the practice might be helping! Back to work tomorrow, I want to hang on to the relaxed feeling I have right now, I wonder how long it will last?