Zuchs & Summer Squash

When I lived in Texas, I had glorious gardens filled with hot peppers, okra, snakes, and tomatoes. After moving to Vancouver, I dabbled in gardening for the first few years, but gave up when other interests took over. Well, this year I asked Bill to make me some raised beds as I wanted to try my hand at vegetable and herb gardening again. I planted green beans, basil, oregano, tomatoes (all shapes and sizes), zucchini, yellow summer squash, Walla Walla onions, dill, thyme, sage, parsley, bell peppers, hot peppers, carrots, radishes, blueberries, cilantro. The carrots developed into lovely feathery leaves, but nothing to eat so far. Radishes were pretty good. In fact everything turned out well except for the cilantro. It bolts too quickly and turns into bee food.

I didn't think the zuchs or squash would do well, but oh my they did. After harvesting some 10 lb beauties (they seemed that large) I figured I should get a special cookbook. I ordered The Classic Zucchini Cookbook from B&N. It contains 225 recipes for all kinds of squash, and it's amazing.

So far I've fixed: Baked Penne with Summer Squash and Mushrooms, Black Bean and Summer Squash Stew, Fettuccine Alfredo with Summer Vegetables, Summer Vegetable Saute with Sausage, and Zucchini Tomato Gratinee. Wow....!

I also fixed a couple of soups but froze them for later use.....Curried Summer Squash Soup and Creamy Yellow Summer Squash Soup. I'll let you know how they defrost and reheat up!

Today I decided to make bread too. I had purchased a great artisan bread book some time ago after reading Merilee's blog about bread making. It's been months since I made any. Fortunately I still had plenty of wheat flour, yeast, lukewarm water, and organic salt. The bread dough is happily rising as we speak. Once it self-deflates, it'll go into the fridge for up to two weeks. This is bread making at its simplest! Maybe I'll defrost some of that frozen squash soup to have with homemade bread one night this week. Is the weather looking frosty by any chance?