I suggest carefully picking the zucchini ... bagging it ... taking it to church on Sunday morning, arrive a little late and put the bags in the back seat of every unlocked car.
Tomatoes may be harvested and processed in similar fashion.
Zucchini is fairly useless but good fried or for bread and cake
Another couple of weeks and I’ll be swimming in peppers. Just starting to ripen now.
Italian-style.........
Roast a bit with evo and Parm. Then into a casserole dish, cover with marinara, then mozzarella, more Parm. Bake bubbly.
I got three varieties. The burpee butter stick is the most prolific. a green finally fruited and a green and white as well. Also started the winter squash now are about 8 inches high. WIll plant them and another batch of peas for the fall. I have about 26 tomato plants that i put 16 in late as i was trying to sell them. I did sell some but could just throw out good plants. plenty of marketmore cukes. They are excellent. small seeds and lots of meat.
I used Calibre Library, an ebook library organization program that can also convert many file types to convert files into an epub file for our Kobo e-reader. https://calibre-ebook.com/ Available for all major operating systems and has smartphone apps though I doubt those have editing capabalities. Here's all the file types it can convert but not all file type combos will work right. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert.html All the conversions I've done were just a matter of a few clicks and a little waiting time for the conversion to process, minutes.
The kids are grown up now but I found another purpose for the e-reader, recipes or recipe cards as they were called and kept quite often a few decades ago. It's small and thin. Ours is not slippery. There's not many buttons and they're hard to accidently activate. There's no glare. Some will accept many different file types like PDF files, though those tend to be big. Since a recipe is way smaller than a book, you could fit many thousands of recipes on one. The lousy image above shows our Yellow Rice recipe. The reader is turned off but many types of "electronic paper", the tech that displays text, will hold the text/image even when powered off. The Yellow Rice is something we make on a regular basis and our son makes it in the Instant Pot so all he has to do is grab the reader and read it. No need to even power up.
If you're a prepper, you will want them printed out but until the shtf, you could keep the printed ones fresh and use an e-reader in the meantime. It's way easier the deal with on a counter top than a book or sheet of paper. Likewise of you're cooking outdoors since a little wind won't be a problem nor will sunlight glare. Calibre will connect to most any e-reader and then you can sync your library. Kindle files can be converted by Calibre so if you bought a cook book on amazon, you could convert and load it to most any e-reader. Likewise with a pdf file.(like the ones I posted last week)
In the case of recipes, you'll want to organize them. The most standard way Calibre organizes and groups books is by Author so you could simply name the author Main Courses or Breakfast. If you want a hierarchy, you can add custom columns with them being tag based as explained here; https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html
To give you an idea of file size; I converted a pdf recipe to epub. The pdf was 84.5kb and the epub 30.8kb. I converted the King James Bible from MOBI(kindle) to epub. Mobi 6.3mb and epub 1.5mb.(that's a lot of recipes:)
So if you have an old e-reader or someone offers you one or you want to buy a cheap used one online, strictly for recipes, they are handy for that or any other info you want. You can create a book right in Calibre or create a text file and convert it to epub or MOBI or whatever format works for your e-reader. Looking at new and used ones on ebay and they're a little more expensive than I thought. $25-60 generally.
I was walking out of the auto parts store once and some guy asked me if I wanted some zucchini so I said sure. He handed me this 6-8 inch diameter by nearly 2 foot long monster. Didn’t have a clue what to do with it so I did a web search and came up with zucchini pickles. None of us really like them so I still have several canning jars full.
My dogs love raw zucchini!! I slice them a few pieces to give them while we eat so they get in on the meal too! About the only veggie they’ll eat!
Using a box grater's largest holes, shred a couple of good-sized zucchini, including peel, onto a freshly clean, plain cotton kitchen towel (not terry cloth). (I've also used a brand new Handi-Wipe for this step.)Wrap the towel around the contents lengthwise like a Tootsie-Roll wrapper, with excess fabric at both ends.
Over a large, wide bowl, twist the towel, keeping the shreds inside. Wring and squeeze to remove excess water. (You could discard the vitamin-rich green water, but why not freeze it to use it in soup, sauces, stews or smoothies!)
Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat.
When pretty much melted, turn up the heat to high, but working quickly to avoid browning the butter, dump the shreds from the towel into the skillet.
Sauté rapidly, pushing the shreds around until they are all warmed through and thinly coated with butter, but not mushy—only about a minute. They should still have a little texture and crunch.
Remove from burner. Quickly stir in salt and pepper, or herbs such as basil, tarragon or dill, and/or a dash of lemon juice, to your taste.
Immediately remove from skillet to a serving dish or your plates and eat up!
(This dish is not meant to be prepared ahead, sit and get cold, or be reheated.)
I tried fresh zucchini from a nearby farm for the first time in decades last year. I just couldn’t get myself to like it. So I’ve gone zucchini-less since.
(I really liked it at first as a child, though.)
I NEED ZUCCHINI !!! I will not have a harvest this year. In a way, it’s not a total bummer that I didn’t get my fence done in time, and didn’t get things planted in time because I-didn’t-get-my-fence-done in time - because the rain has been brutal! But I will not have any zucchini, and that means no Mr. LF zucchini bread. He makes a fantastic zuc bread. Sigh
We had a few days without rain here in Central Missouri last week, then came another 3” Thursday and Friday.
I got into the victory garden with the weed whacker and shredded all of the tall stuff, along with the rows of radish and green salad. Gave it a day for the shreds to dry, and raked up most of the mess. Got over the spot where the garlic was planted with the tiller, in preparation for sowing okra. Then the deluge came and shut me down.
It’s supposed to be dry this week, so I should be able to get the okra and a row or two of collards seeded.
I’m starting to get a few tomatoes, in spite of most of the plants being near dead.
Squash and cucumbers are doing well. Pole beans have started blooming. Peppers are suffering, but hanging in there.
Don’t throw out the pickle juice! Slice zucchini, plop in jar, next day...wonderful, flavorful zuc pickles!
Also, love the zook pasta. Copper River restaurants has them on the menu for low carb folks. I had never had them before...very tasty and made them with my first zuc 2 weeks ago.
Anyone have any idea on what is causing these symptoms in 1 of my Boston pickling cure plants?
Symptom droopy sad looking/limp leaves, not turning yellow, plant is still.lobingnand producing flowers....far ends of new growth look great and are not droopy/limp.
Planting bed is a 14ftx4 foot North to South long ways positioned. All pickling cake plants are doing great except for 2 slow flowers facing west, and the extreme southern most plant which is the droopy/limp culprit.
The problematic plant get more sun but not a ton more sun.
I tried watering it 50%less than the others....both less often and less water per watering.
No change.
I put up a shade cloth facing South to keep the first few hrs of sun from bearing down on the plant...nada.
All other conditiions/feeding/fertilizing are the same.
Kinda out of ideas here.
JAPANESE ZUCCHINI
Great side dish for Asian meal or grilled seafood, chix,
or steak. Amp flavor with hot sauce and chili garlic sauce.
INGREDIENTS
3 medium zucchini,
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium sweet onion, coarse chopped
2 tablespoons teriyaki sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tsps toasted sesame seeds.
Heat veg oil ......and pat of butter for richness. Add zucchini batons and chp onion;cook 2 minutes.
teriyaki, soy sauce, red pepper flakes and black pepper. Cook 4 to 5 minutes til soft enough for your liking. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.
My onions are doing GREAT!
The garlic is starting to ripen.
The potatoes look fantastic. No hornworms yet this year.
The tomatoes are hanging on.
We bought the place too late to do a garden.
Deer topped my Cherokee Purple tomato plant
Patio tomato plant is doing well
Massive volunteer Cherry tomato collapsed. We are just going to leave it there.
Basil looks great
Weed update: Two female plants, not sure about the others yet. I have an adviser helping me. Feeding organically, soon adding 0-30-10 to the feedings to encourage budding. Next learning process: creating clones
