Eggplant

I planted a couple of eggplants about a month ago. Today I harvested my first mini-eggplant. I suppose I should have let it get a little bigger but I wanted to get it before something else did! There are several more blooms on the plants so hopefully I'll get some more.

I also got a couple small zucchinis -- they definitely aren't growing as fast now that the weather has turned cooler. I only got a handful of beans -- some of them are plain old bush beans and some are scarlet runner beans. I keep finding little onions that I missed when digging up earlier, and I even found some potatoes that I missed when harvesting several weeks ago. This should make a nice little stir fry.

Here are blooms from the scarlet runner bean (along with little beanlets!) and my bush beans.

Zucchini recipes

I spent about 3 hours cooking last night: two types of zucchini bread, and stuffed zucchini rounds. Everything was experimental, and not everything turned out the way I had hoped (the low-fat raspberry-zucchini bread was particularly disappointing so I won't post a recipe for it). The garlic cheese zucchini bread, however, was excellent! I messed around with a recipe I found here, and it was so easy I didn't even need a mixer.

Garlic Cheese Zucchini Bread

2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup grated zucchini
1 tablespoon grated onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

Beat together the eggs, buttermilk, sugar, and butter. Mix in the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix in the flour until it's moist (don't over-mix).

Stir the garlic and onion into the zucchini, then fold the zucchini mixture into the batter. Stir in the cheese.

Pour into two 4 x 8 loaf pans, and bake at 350 for ~45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. The top will still be pale, or just slightly golden.

Stuffed zucchini rounds

My next experiment was another stuffed zucchini. I usually make a loose stuffing, browning some meat & onions, then adding to a grain of some sort (brown rice, bulgar, couscous, quinoa or whatever's on hand). This time I decided to go for more of a solid, meatloaf-type filling, and to cut the zucchini into rounds instead of lengthwise to make serving easier.

Consider this more of an idea than a recipe; I can't remember what all I used to spice it. As an afterthought, I added a garlic spice mix that I received in my last Fair Share, and I didn't catch that the mix's top ingredient was salt. Because I had already done some seasoning, the result was way too salty.

1/2 to a whole large zucchini (depending on size)
1 pound ground buffalo (or ground beef)
1 medium onion
1 green pepper
olive oil
chicken broth
1-2 cups cups cooked quinoa, rice, or bulgar
1 egg
1 packet unflavored gelatin
seasoning to taste (use what you would for a meatloaf)
shredded cheddar

From a large zucchini, cut several ~2 inch rounds. Scoop out the center (save what you scoop out), place in a pan with a little chicken broth in the bottom, and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until the flesh is soft (not soggy).



Prepare the gelatin per package directions just prior to mixing the stuffing. If you prepare it too far in advance it'll be set up already, but you want it to be liquid.

Sautee the onion and pepper in a little olive oil. Dice the zucchini that was scooped from the rounds, along with any leftover zucchini that wasn't cut into rounds. Sautee with the onion/pepper mix. When stuffing a zucchini, I go ahead and sautee any squash that I have left. If it looks like too much, add to any leftover grain with a little cheese and some seasonings and cook it along with the stuffed zucchini.

Mix the raw ground meat, grains, seasoning, and sauteed vegetables in a large bowl. Add the egg, and add about 3 tablespoons of the prepared gelatin, which will keep the stuffing from drying out while cooking. Stuff the hollowed-out parts of the squash rounds, and form into a semi-circle on top.

Bake at 375 until a meat thermometer inserted into the stuffing reads 155. Start checking temperature after about 40 minutes. If the tops start to look dry, then cover loosely with foil.

Summer Zucchini

I've had zero success with tomatoes this year. I only planted 4 plants, and they must have been a variety not well-suited to my area; I had a much easier time of it last year. However, with just two zucchini plants -- one in a pot and one in the ground -- I've already had plenty of zucchini. It seems the only way to find the ones big enough for stuffing is to befriend a gardener, or to grow them yourself. The last one I stuffed (I forgot to take pictures!) was so big that I had to cut off the ends to fit it on the cookie sheet!

Here's the plant that makes the giant squash:

Fool-proof Produce

If you are a beginning gardener and you want to grow vegetables, I recommend trying lettuce and zucchini. Both are easy to grow here in the St. Louis area, and neither one requires a huge investment in time or energy.

It's too late in the season to plant any more lettuce: I just harvested the last of the crop I planted last winter. Although technically I think you're supposed to wait until later in the winter, I planted leaf lettuce seeds in February and they did just fine, even though we had plenty of cold and snow. Once the seedlings came up, I fed them every couple of weeks with alfalfa meal and tried to keep the clover out of the bed. Other than that, not much maintenance is required. If you plant from seed, don't worry about neat little rows: when it's time to thin the lettuce you can eat the little plants you pull up.

Last year my first zucchinis ended up rotting on the vine (has to do with uneven watering and weird weather conditions), but the second round was pretty prolific. However, the continuous moisture this year means that the first round of flowers on my plants are actually producing fruit. I have two plants I got from a nursery and put in the ground two weeks ago, and each one already has a small zucchini. Several other flowers are blooming right now, so the females should turn into fruit this week as well.

I have been feeding my zucchini with alfalfa meal for the nitrogen, and Jamaican bat guano (available at Worm's Way) for the phosphorus. Phosphorus is necessary for good flower and fruit production. I don't feed on a particular schedule: just whenever I think about it, every other weekend or so. They are extremely prolific, and two plants should end up providing plenty of zucchini for two people for the whole summer.

Bad Brassicas

Earlier this spring I planted broccoli, along with a bunch of other brassicas (stuff related to cabbage). Although little heads started to form, they got leggy and tall and went to seed before ever really developing.

Along with my skinny, flowering broccoli I planted cauliflower -- which hasn't formed any heads yet -- and cabbage, which is still a collection of loose leaves. My Brussels sprouts have also yet to show anything more than a few loose leaves, although I'm pretty sure that my husband has been beaming bad thoughts to the Brussels sprouts every time he's outside, so maybe it's working. ;)

I haven't grown most of these plants before so I thought it was something I did wrong, but I was at a gardening class yesterday and found others who are in the same boat. We speculate that the weather this spring may be the culprit. I don't know if the amount of water was a problem, or maybe it was the lack of sunshine. Other than the lack of vegetables, the plants seem to be pretty happy so I guess I'll just wait and see if they do anything before the weather turns too hot.