TOMATOES

TOMATOES!!!These are the tomatoes we picked Sunday afternoon. 11 bags!

I weighed 1 bag & it was 15 pounds. :)

Last Tuesday we had 5 bags & canned 25 quarts of tomato juice.

Sunday we picked these bags. We gave 1 bag away & canned the rest.

46 quarts! WOOT!

Here's some canning pics from Tuesday:

Steamed Baby Corn

This is so good & so easy.
I'm not sure about availability though. I've never seen baby corn in the store. (except in cans)

I bet they have it at farmers markets.

We get ours right off the stalk. There's always a bunch of baby corn when the regular corn is ready. This baby corn does not have time to grow into a full cob. So I pick it & shuck it all. We had a good crop actually, lol, I had 3 quart bags full.
I just steam them until tender, add lots of butter, & salt.

I laughed at the plate below & called it a garden plate, because everything was from the garden: baby corn, tomatoes, cucumber, & green beans. The picture didn't turn out that well though.

But the food did. :)

One more zucchini casserole

I took the picture like this so you could see the outside as well as the inside. This should be the last zucchini recipe for a while.....lol

3 c. zucchini (peeled & sliced thin) (I used 4c.)

1/2 c. oil

1/2 cup parmesan cheese (I used cheddar...about a cup)

1/2 finely chopped onion

4 beaten eggs

1 c. bisquick

Mix everything together in a bowl & pour into an 8x8 pan or large pie dish. Cook at 350 for about an hour or until the top is golden brown and you can test it like a cake and it coumes out dry.

ZUCCHINI CRISP

YES, ZUCCHINI CRISP!

LOL

I've had this recipe for years, but I made it for the 1st time tonight. The note at the top of this recipe says, "Everyone swears this is made from apples!" I have to agree. You could probably trick someone into thinking it is apple crisp. Not that I'd ever do that.....

Crust:

4 c. flour

2 c. sugar

1/2 t. salt

3/4 pound of butter or margarine

Filling:

6-8 cups seeded, peeled, sliced zucchini (about size of chunk pineapple)

2/3 c. lemon juice

1 c. sugar

1/4 t. nutmeg

1- 1/2 t. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375. Prepare the pastry by combining the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the butter or margarine until crumbly. Press half the mixture in the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan. Save the other half of the mixture for later. Bake for about 10 minutes, then remove from oven and set aside.

In a sauce pan, cook the zucchini in lemon juice until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Add the sugar, nutmeg, & only 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon. Simmer for a minute or two. Now add a half cup of the saved pastry mixture. Simmer until this thickens, stirring constantly. Let cool, (I didn't) & pour the zucchini mixture over the crust. Mix 1/2 t. cinnamon with the rest of the pastry mixture in a bowl then sprinkle it over the zucchini. Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until lightly browned.

This smelled SO good while cooking. Like apple crisp. :)

We couldn't wait to get a taste, even though it was after midnight when it came out of the oven!

We let it set for about 10 minutes & then we dug in. Here it is fresh out of the oven:

And here it is with ice cream. mmmmmmm.......Because it was still very, very warm, the ice cream got all melty creamy. mmmmmm

My dd, who is very tired of zucchini (I can't understand why!) LOVED this. Dh & Ds had fallen asleep. So it was just us girls having a zucchini crisp & ice cream party at almost 1am! I know what I'm having for breakfast in the morning!

Edited on 8-12-09 to add this recipe to Tammy's Recipe Swap.
You can see more squash/zucchini recipes at her site.

I also wanted to add that I took this too the ice cream social at our chuch a few weeks ago. I called it "Apple Crisp Surprise" , & no one knew any different. The next day at church I told them what the surprise was....& they could NOT believe it!
If you have lots of zucchini, you really should try this at least once. You'll be glad you did. :)

Zucchini Nut Bread

3 Cups flour

1 1/2 t. cinnamon

1 t. baking soda

1/4 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

3 eggs

2 c. sugar

1 c. oil

1 t. vanilla

2 c. grated zucchini

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

1 t. flour

Beat eggs, add sugar and oil. Add vanilla and dry ingredients. Blend well.

Stir in zucchini. Combine walnuts with 1 t. flour; stir into batter. Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Cool in pans for 10 minutes and remove to wire rack.

This bread really is easy to make. So when you have a ton of zucchini (ahem) it's just as easy to make two batches. We ate a loaf & wrapped & froze the rest. Our kids like to have this for breakfast. That's always a plus....compared to what you buy in the store for breakfast, zucchini bread is pretty cheap. :) And yummy.

Norma's Pimiento Cheese

3 c. (12 ounces) shredded mild cheddar cheese

1 c. mayo

2 T. grated onion

2-3 t. Worcestershire sauce

1/4 - 1/2 red pepper (I used white pepper)

2 4 ounce jars diced pimiento, drained

Combine 1st 5 ingredients in a food processor; pulse until blended & cheese is processed as fine as you want it. Add pimiento; pulse just to blend. Store in covered container in the fefrigerator. Yeild: about 3 cups.

This is really good. I got the recipe out of the back of Fannie Flagg's book, Can't Wait to get to Heaven. The book wasn't as good as I'd hoped. But this recipe is good!

Tomato Sandwich

This is probably my favorite sandwich. It's a must have in the summer.

And easy.

2 slices of bread, mayo, garden tomato (NOT store bought), & salt.

I can probably eat this for lunch for the rest of the summer & never get tired of it.

I like veggie sandwiches. I also like to eat radish sandwiches & sweet onion sandwiches. Although I use butter on those. My dad got me started on these sandwiches when I was just a youngin'.

This was my first tomato sandwich of the summer. It was so delicious. It was like a treat, like a reward after all of yesterday's hard work on the corn.

And yes, I did eat my lunch off the tonka truck plate today. LOL

MORE CORN

I am so thankful for this crop!
It's waiting for me on my kitchen counter right now. Here's the veiw from the front. There's about half as much behind it!

Here's a side view, you can see the corn behind the front row. And in the very back is the baby corn we always find. It is delicious steamed & covered in butter & salt.

Here's Louie checking out the corn & zucchini.

I better go get busy! LOL

CORN!

I'm so happy to have sweet corn again! On Sunday afternoon we picked, shucked, blanched on the cob, cut the corn off the cob, put 3 cups in each freezer bag, & froze the corn.

We got 21 bags. :)

And it was less than half of the corn.

The rest wasn't quite ready to pick.

But it is now:

So we will be doing this all again on Thursday.