Making Zucchini Pancakes...

Wow, two posts in one day! I almost included these photos in the last post, but then decided that it was overkill. So I am devoting a whole post to chronicling the making of zucchini pancakes. See, right now we have about 6 ripe zucchinis waiting to be used, and though I love grilled or sautéed zucchini as much as anyone, I figured it was time to try something new. Luckily a friend sent me this recipe (thanks, Braden!), and I finally got around to trying it. 

First, here is the link to zucchini bread pancakes, and the person who writes this blog surely takes much better photos than I! http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/07/zucchini-bread-pancakes/

Here are all of the ingredients but the zucchini... (p.s., many recipes call for mixing dry and wet ingredients separately, but I never do! Sometimes it makes me feel lazy, but also very green for saving the water. :))

There's the batter... it was pretty thin.

Then I added 2 cups of shredded zucchini (allowed me to use about 2/3 of one of my many zucchinis).

Tada! Definitely was a more normal consistency at this point.

There they are on the stove. I also followed the blog author's suggestion to stick them in the oven. However, when we make pancakes and stick them in the oven, we don't really time it... just use it as a holding spot while the rest of the pancakes are cooking.

And there they are! You are looking at three pancakes right there. Derek and I each had three, and we had four leftover. So, the recipe made 10 pancakes. I used about 1/4 to 1/3 cup for each one. Also, despite the thinner batter, the pancakes could have been a little more done. 

I had lined the loaf pan with foil in order to keep the pancakes in the oven as mentioned above. I let the four leftover pancakes cool completely on the foil, then used it to wrap them up and stick them in the freezer. I will probably make another batch or three with another zucchini and freeze more.

And that was zucchini pancakes!

A Garden Update!

Hey everyone,

Well, as it's been 4 weeks since my last blog, I figured I should update on everything we've been up to for the past few weeks. (Well, not EVERYTHING, just everything garden-related.)

We are currently hauling in quite a few tomatoes and zucchinis. We have also eaten quite a bit of sweet corn over the past few weeks, and let me just say, it is soooooo good when it comes right off the stalk. We have also begun to harvest RIPE melons, which is fabulous after having mistakenly harvested 2 melons before they were ready. The eggplants are almost done I think, but I have to say I'm not too excited about planting those again. They were difficult to use, and the skin-to-meat ratio was too high! A couple of things I am currently super excited about include finally having poblano peppers (for chile relleno of course!) and tomatillos for salsa.

So I figured it might be good to go through each of the plants and talk about our yield, its usefulness, and if we would plant it again.

Lettuce: we've already covered this I think... I would definitely do it again, but probably choose the types we plant more selectively. I think got the most use out of the red and green leaf lettuce.

Kale: I'd say we got a lot of use out of our kale, but we were never able to keep up with the amount we had. I think we could go from 3 plants to 1 or 2.

Eggplant: Ehhh... I think I already said that although we used these a bit, we didn't use them enough. In fact, I've got a pile of them right now that I'm not sure if I'll get around to using. There are some pictures of it below when I used it to make eggplant parmesan.

Melon: Our Jenny Lind melons have actually been quite delicious!! We were shocked at how long the vine got, and were startled at how many little baby melons we saw. After erroneously picking a couple of melons before they were ready, we have finally enjoyed a couple of ripe, sweet melons. Unfortunately, just when we started to harvest ripe melons, the vine started to die!! So, we'll probably get somewhere between 6 and 8 melons when all is said and done, but it makes me so sad to think of the possible 20 other melons that we are missing out on because the vine is now dying.

 (both the green and orange flesh were edible!)

Hot peppers: We honestly haven't done much with these either. We need to have a canning session! I am super excited about the poblanos, so more to come here.

(Here is a blurry poblano photo... just a little ways to go! Better start looking for chile relleno recipes!)

Sweet peppers: The yield wasn't spectacular, but I really liked having them. We planted the "Purple Beauty" variety... I would probably try something new next year.

Zucchini: Although not the most exciting, it is a garden staple and we will definitely plant another next year. We need to find a way to control it though so that it doesn't get in the way of all of the other plants. Our zucchini this year ended up being less a vine and more a ginormous beast of a bush, which exacerbated the problem.

Tomatoes: Obviously another garden staple, but so many varieties to choose from! We definitely had a couple that worked, and a couple that didn't.

- Glacier: Did very well, nearly all were usable. Also, for being determinate, we never had too many tomatoes at once and the ripening was spread out over a few weeks (it is slowing down, but still going... we had our first before the 4th of July).

- Nyagous: Would not do these again. They were supposed to be dark purple, but only the first few were. More importantly, we had an issue with the tomatoes splitting as they ripened. If anyone knows why this is, I'd love to know!!

- Striped German: Most are still green, but I don't think we'll get even 1 good tomato. They are too big, and we have never had luck with large tomatoes. They split before they even start ripening!! 

- Mr. Stripey: We had an issue with dry rot at first (basically the tomato dying on the inside), but now this has passed. They are Derek's favorite... very flavorful!

(The start of some tomato sauce made from Glacier and Mr. Stripey tomatoes.)

(I made the sauce along with little mini eggplant parmesan slices.)

(Yum! Everything but the pasta, cheese, breadcrumbs, and oil came from the garden!)

Tomatillos: TBD... we are waiting on these. If most of the husks get filled up though, we will have a TON of salsa!

Sweet corn: Heck yes!! We love this stuff. With about 7 stalks, we probably had about 15 ears. I think we'll plant more next year, but maybe try to stagger it so the ears ripen at different times (??). 

Cauliflower: The cauliflower was great! We just harvested our second of four. However, I think the issue is space -- they take up SO MUCH space for what you get.

(We had roasted cauliflower with some of our corn and salad with some of our tomatoes. Again, a nearly completely home-grown meal!)

(A gratuitous photo of Layla. :))

Brownersen Garden: Day 65

Hello, everyone!

Here we are, over two months in to the grand gardening adventure of 2012. We are feeling pretty overgrown! We have been enjoying mostly tomatoes and eggplant this week, and today we pulled our first (of many) melons.

Um, yeah... overgrown might be an understatement!

Jenny Lind vines still taking over... Jenny Lind and sweet potato vines have both ventured out of the garden.

See? Out of the garden!

The cauliflower is getting bigger!

Here is a growing melon...

The corn is still looking good, and the ears are definitely growing! The silk on some of the ears is purple, which Derek's co-worker says probably means that the kernels will be purple. I hope it's edible!

Tomato and tomatillo plants are definitely growing wider... I was able to walk between them not long ago!

Beautiful striped tomatoes!

Peppers (you may need to click on it or squint to see them... still not quite sure which variety these are).

Here is our first zucchini and Purple Beauty pepper from earlier this week. We haven't used the zucchini yet, but the pepper was great!

Here is part of today's harvest: 2 zucchinis (which may be short-lived... Derek thinks he sees signs squash borers!), 3 mini eggplants, 2 bell peppers, and our first melon!

This zucchini sure got big quickly!

Almost 12" long (the tip broke off)!

Today's full harvest with the kale we cut (minus the banana... I got that at the store!). Lots of vegetables for dinner this week! :)

Below is what Derek did with our first round of mini eggplants. He also threw some of our green onions in there. It's basically eggplant curry!

Brownersen Garden: Day 58

Most of our plants continue to do quite well, even through the 100-degree temperatures we've been experiencing over the last week. It's looking like quite a jungle, and I can see that natural selection is starting to kick in as plants are starting to compete for scarce resources (primarily space). Our zucchini plant is leaning directly over one of our pepper plants, and although the pepper plant is shorter than most of the others, it does have some peppers on it. We haven't messed with it much yet! Our melon vine is still growing, and every day I find myself pulling it off of other plants, like the eggplant, pepper plants, the kale... it is very competitive!

I've been harvesting kale, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers this week. The zucchinis have not been growing! I believe I first posted photos of them a couple of weeks ago, and while baby zucchinis continue to pop up, they aren't transitioning into adolescent or adult zucchinis! Derek did some research and figured out that it probably has to do with a lack of pollination as a result of the heat! Apparently, we can hand-pollinate, but we can also just wait it out until the weather cools off. I'm thinking for now, we'll just wait it out... I have seen more bugs around since it's been back in the 80s!

Here are some photos... I decided to stop measuring and taking photos of each plant, and I will probably focus on documenting what we're picking and how it's developing!

These lovely white flowers are on our all-blue potato plant. Once these die, we should (theoretically) have new potatoes, and when the actual vine dies, then we should have larger potatoes.

This photo is my attempt to show how our Jenny Lind melon has taken over. At least 80% of the vines shown in this photo are Jenny Lind!

Can you spot the bell pepper in this photo?

After impatiently waiting and nearly declaring that we would never have homegrown cauliflower, I finally discovered little baby heads of cauliflower! Can you see it?

Here is the corn... it grows each day, and it is taller than I (as you can see)! The silk has come out in the space where the cob will soon be.

More tomatoes... still from the same Glacier plant. They are about 1-2" in diameter.

See the green lanterns in these photos? That is where our tomatillos will soon be... they will fill each lantern-shaped husk!

Here are the eggplants and tomatoes I picked yesterday... any thoughts on how I should use these eggplants?? They are pretty small...

(So you can see how small these eggplants are...)

I also picked some rhubarb, and I made rhubarb crisp! See below...

Since we didn't have any apple, I substituted blueberries. It was fine, although I think the apples are better for cutting the slightly bitter aftertaste. I also had to substitute brown sugar since we ran out of white sugar. I prefer brown anyway!

Finally, I grilled kale. I tossed the leaves in oil (a little goes a long way), and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and this stuff (which we love!).

Put it on the grill and turned it every couple of minutes or so. It got much smaller than this!