Dinner straight from the garden!

 I'm harvesting a lot of fresh veggies from the garden this week. It's the best feeling to eat food that I picked an hour before! This year, I'm growing beans for the first time, thanks to my father in law building me an awesome trellis! I've eaten several but um... they usually don't make it inside! I have been letting up and picked these bad boys for dinner.

Because of how the trellis is, some grow inside of it and are hard to see, so grow HUGE!

Yes, you're reading that right. If I stretched it out it would be a foot long!!

The other thing that I have A LOT of is zucchini. They get big fast so I had a couple huge ones to use. I have bookmarked several zucchini recipes, but one that I've wanted to try for awhile is zucchini pancakes. This was the day. I love potato pancakes and zucchini ones sound a lot healthier! Now, to shred zucchini you can either do it by hand, or you can have a cool gadget to do it for you. I chose option B. I have the best attachment ever for my Kitchenaid mixer, the slicer/shredder. All you do it cut the zucchini into smaller pieces, get rid of the seeds, and put it in the slot and it shreds it for you!

Viola!

Then I mixed in some panko breadcrumbs- these ones were "Italian" style, and very tasty. I also mixed in garlic, dried oregano, shallot, parmesan cheese and 2 egg whites to keep it together.

I made the patties and put them in a little olive oil - not too much, didn't want to deep fry them! I tried them in the oven too but they didn't get the crispy edges and were more like burgers - fell apart.

Dinner is ready!

Experiments in Cooking

In cooking new things, one of the first foods I experimented with was zucchini. I read another blog post about all of the different things you can do with it plus had some excellently prepared zukes at Casa Schwartz and was inspired to try some myself. It all started with the zucchini boat. I brushed zucchini with some olive oil and topped it with Italian seasonings and feta cheese then baked it for 20-30 minutes.

Since then, I've used zucchini in a variety of ways. Cooking it in soup, zucchini flatbread pizza, zucchini chips, and tonight, zucchini fries. To make the fries, cut them up, sprinkle seasonings over them, and then bake them at a high temp (500 degrees is what I did). I used a combination of garlic salt, onion powder, cumin, chili powder and oregano. This is how they came out:

They were a little overcooked - and I have learned after two times of having sticky zucchini to the very NOT non-stick pan- that I need to use a different pan or some cooking spray first. They were pretty tasty nonetheless.

I also made another dish tonight that I tried before, but this one was better: curried chick pea casserole. I'm trying to eat more protein since I don't get any from meat, so beans are one way. The casserole has chick peas, curry powder, onions, garlic and some tomato paste. Top with some feta cheese and bake.


I served it with naan and over jasmine rice. Delicious! This is what our plates looked like.