Monday, June 22, 2009

Menu Plan Monday: Abundant harvest!


Look at all this fabulous produce from our CSA! And that's not showing the lettuce, a huge bunch of green beans, half a dozen artichokes, another bowl of plums, and several pounds of zucchini (from the CSA and our garden). My fridge runneth over!

And check out all the garlic I pulled up this week!!! Forty heads!! (If you don't like to cook or garden, you might not find this quite as thrilling as I do.)


Obviously, my challenge is to make the most of it all. Last week I made another batch of strawberry jam, baked a peach/blueberry cobbler, four loaves of zucchini bread, used up all the heels in the freezer for bread pudding, and made two double batches of zucchini fritters.


YUM-O. My mouth is still watering, but my pants are not thanking me. I made myself squeeze into my bathing suit Saturday night, so I could join the kids in the pool at my friend's going-away BBQ -- and avoid further gluttony.

I've been pouring through some delicious cookbooks I picked up at the library last week, looking for some fresh inspiration.

I'd love to try Jamie's Gennaro Grande Cappella Rossa Calzone -- which seems to be a fancy name for ratatouille pizza pockets -- and his Savory Zucchini Bread (since I really don't need any more sugar at the moment).

I might try making Sarah Raven's recipe for French apricot jam, since we seem to have plenty, and more are ripening on my parents' tree. It calls for vanilla bean, which sounds lovely.

She also has a recipe for risotto with zucchini and flowers -- fun! And on the lighter side... zucchini and lemon salad.

I was starting to wonder why I planted so much summer squash until I found these recipes!

Also on the menu:

Panini w/grilled onions and zucchini (of course) and roasted red peppers

Fried tilapia w/ sauteed green beans and roasted Yukon gold potatoes

Baked salmon and pan-baked artichokes w/almonds, bread crumbs and herbs (Happy Days with the Naked Chef, p. 219)

Pasta salad w/baked chicken and lots o' veggies

Apricot oatmeal squares

Next week, I'm expecting to have some of our own green beans... and ripe tomatoes! We found our very first red one the other day....

Unfortunately, as cute as it looks, the bottom was rotted out. I don't see that problem on any of the others though, so hopefully it was a fluke.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a lot of garlic!

Toni said...

I have been wanting to try growing garlic, I love to cook with it and growing it would be worthwhile. Yours looks really nice.Did you find it difficult to grow?

I love all those veggies an fruits you have grown , zucchini is yummo, fried is so good, my mouth is watering. I do zucchini bread to and freeze it for the fall.

I really love apricots the jam sounds heavenly.

Lift Up Your Hearts said...

YUM!! Summer HAS arrived!!

Denise said...

Hi, I'm just blog hopping. This place looks real interesting! God bless!

Anonymous said...

Found you via Hayley's blog (commenter above). I'm an unschooling mama to 5 kiddos, and I am enjoying your blog! And wow, the garlic!

mandi said...

oh my goodness! where to begin!???! first off- all that fruit! i am and always will be in amazement of what you guys get in your csa harvest. here it is all southern foods-squash, melons, bean, maters, okra (lots of okra). your garlic! i can't believe you harvested it all! are you going to braid it up, little house style?
your menu sounds amazing this week! i'm coming over for panini! and please share the lemon zuc recipe. i have both coming out my ears!

oh- one more thing. i have the same problem with my tomatoes! only one bush for now. but i'm a little freaked. what if it spreads? is it a fungus or a bug? any thoughts?

mandi said...

ok- i googled it. and google don't lie! the rotting on the bottom of the tomato is blossom end rot. most likely caused by a calcium deficiency through uneven watering. that really makes sense in our case. john is a thorough waterer. i get bored and move on!

Melissa said...

Wow! You are my menu planning role model. Sounds fantastic.

Anonymous said...

Haha - we're at the too many apricots and zucchini stage as well, although, Praise the LORD, our green beans starting coming off this last weekend, so we have some variety! :) We're still waiting on our tomatoes as well - it just hasn't been hot enough to turn them red yet! (Although the low 100's at the end of the week should do it... ugh) Oh, and we put our drip line on a timer ;) best thing we ever did!

That French apricot jam recipe looks really quite tasty... I'm going to start drying most of our now, as well as making some fruit leather, but I might save a bucket and make that jam!

Amy said...

My goodness! Beautiful harvest! Nothing like fresh veggies from your garden! Gorgeous job!

Related Posts with Thumbnails