From the Garden to the Table

by Kathy Freeze, Guest Blogger

My husband and I have been gardening for a few years, but as we age, the ability to crawl around on  our knees and keep it weeded and keep pests from taking more than their share has become quite challenging.

So this year we decided to try “raised bed gardening”. With the plants just below waist height, the weeding and harvesting of the zucchini, green beans and cucumbers has proven to be less work this year! It is not only easier to see the vegetables on the plants, but you can have a more focused watering plan that does not waste as much water as if you were watering a larger garden area.


Zucchini is one of those vegetables that will grow prolifically in your garden and in the last couple of weeks, it has really started producing. I’m trying to find many different recipes in which I can use it.

This is my typical daily bounty from just three plants. I’m beginning to understand why they wrote in the local newspaper, “this is the time of year when it is unsafe to leave your car unlocked as someone will fill it with their excess zucchini”.

Since my husband and I cut out a lot of the simple carbs in our diet, we have found many uses for lots of vegetables, but zucchini has been one of the more flexible. For the meal I had planned, I was going to add it to a tasty spaghetti sauce. During the summer I prefer using my own fresh-grown herbs as well. So, I picked the thyme, oregano and basil from my containers that I keep on my deck.

Oregano

Basil

Thyme

After combining my fresh herbs with onions, garlic, tomato sauce, hamburger and Italian sausage, I allowed it to cook down for an hour. I then added 4 sliced zucchini.

And cheese, of course. The cheese helps bind the ingredients together into a nice casserole-style dish.

After stirring the cheese thoroughly into the mix, I poured the mix into my favorite glass casserole dish that my father-in-law gave me a few years ago. I have no idea how old it is, but it is so easy to clean after cooking a cheesy, saucy dish that I use it frequently.

The final dish looks so pretty, and Bob confirmed that it was very tasty by eating half of it. Now I need to start on my other recipes as my refrigerator is filling up with more zucchini!

Zucchini in the Salad

I have been spending a lot of time at Orchard House every chance I get. I am trying to prepare the property for either a sale or a rental, and it looks as if we may have found a good tenant. Meanwhile, as I spend time there, I notice all the beautiful flowers.

Some of the flowers are the result of meticulous and effective landscaping by the owners who preceded me. Although nobody is tending them, the flowers come out every year, each at its appointed time and station. Some were placed there by design.

Others are wild and spring up unbidden in the woods.

First I spot them as a flash of color from afar.

Then I come in closer for a better look.

If you look very closely at some flowers, you can actually see the pollen spilling out.

Pollen is a feast for insects. Eating alone at Orchard House, as it was my day off, I spread out my own  feast.

Lunch consisted of a peach, some cherry tomatoes, blackberries and fried chicken.

With it, I had club soda in a can. The food was good and better out in the open than it would have been inside.

The blackberries were fresh picked from the Orchard House grounds.

Later in the day I went to visit musician and piano and voice teacher Jill Dabney. She is helping me with the music for the Debt Collector. Before I left, she gave me some zucchini from her garden. This pretty much determined what sort of salad Bow and I would have with our supper.

First I sliced the zucchini. Then I added tomatoes, sugar snap peas and cauliflower.

Then I generously sprinkled on sesame seed oil.

When the salad was ready, I presented it to Bow.

Bow enjoyed the salad, though the zucchini was not necessarily his favorite vegetable of the bunch.