More zucchini!

I found a zucchini recipe that the kids like! Can I say that again? I found a zucchini recipe the kids like! We call it "green soup" and the boys couldn't get enough of it, plus the oldest has been asking for all week. Whoa. 

So here's the recipe in case you want to try it out on your kids. Unfortunately I have no idea where the recipe comes from - I copied it from my mother-in-law several years ago, and I don't know where she got it from. So to whoever invented this goodness, THANK YOU!

ZUCCHINI SOUP:

2 lbs sliced zucchini

1 medium sliced onion

1 minced garlic clove

1 tbsp butter

Combine in a frying pan, steam-frying slowly while covered, until soft, about 10 minutes. 

Add either 2 cups hot water plus 2 tbsp chicken/vegetable stock powder or 2 cups real chicken stock, plus 1/2 tsp lemon juice and 1 tsp salt. 

Run through a blender. Return to saucepan and heat. We like to add some crumbled bacon, or you could be fancy and add chives or other herbs. 

This soup can also be canned in a pressure canner if you'd like to store it. The stuff we ate the other night was canned 3 years ago and still tasted good. I guess we should probably should finish that stuff off - it's probably overstayed its welcome on the shelf. But now that we know the boys go gaa-gaa for green soup, that shouldn't be difficult!

On another note, I also found this zucchini recipe that I'm pretty confident my boys will eat. Going to try it tonight along with chicken soup from the first of my in-laws' chickens and homemade noodles! Feeling pretty domestic right about now.

Urban Agriculture

Here's something neat - the City of Edmonton is finally starting to listen to those who are talking about Urban and Local Agriculture! Nifty.

And here's an update on the front yard. Looks a lot different than last year at this time!

zucchiniphone!

I'm gonna call you on my zucchini-phone!!

Ahoy people with toddlers and preschoolers! What do you do with your zucchini (aside from baking it into cake) to get your kids to eat the stuff? I've tried breading it, baking it, BBQing it, stuffing it, frying it, and even giving it to the kids raw with dip, with little luck. I even have an entire freaking cookbook on how to cook zucchini and none of them are a go. But frankly, I can't really blame the little guys. My taste buds have died back a little bit since I was a kid, but I distinctly remember them tasting like garbage. Literally. And the texture of cooked zucchini still reminds me of cross between an inner tube and baby food.

So, the other day I used the finest holes on my cheese grater and tossed some into my taco meat. It took a little extra cooking to get the liquid off, but no one was the wiser! I also put it, grated, into soups and spaghetti sauce. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

rhubarb blubarb

One of the interesting things about growing a garden is figuring out how to use it all. I discovered that I planted WAY too many broccoli plants this year. Yeah, 15 was too many. Maybe I'll cut back to 8 next year. I still have broccoli in my fridge that I picked two weeks ago. We've been eating raw broccoli like crazy, but I think the family is getting a little tired of it. Now we're onto snap peas!

But I said I was going to talk about rhubarb, didn't I? Rhubarb is one of those weird "heritage plants" - everyone has one, and no one knows what to do with it. Unless you like eating endless rhubarb cobblers (which are tasty, but we don't eat much dessert around here) or use a lot of strawberry-rhubarb jam, what do you DO with that ubiquitous plant? Here's one option:

But unless for those of us with tastebuds, that's not a particularly welcome option for wholesale consumption. I've made rhubarb relish a few times, which has become my favorite summer condiment. And this year, I discovered...rhubarb juice! 

RHUBARB JUICE:

25 cups chopped rhubarb (the really red ones make the best juice)

25 cups water

7 cups white sugar

This is essentially a 3:3:1 ratio so if you don't have 25 cups of rhubarb, just follow the ratio.

1. Boil the dickens out of it. 

2. Strain, add one frozen can each of orange and apple juice. 

3. Freeze. 

4. When you want a tasty drink, mix this juice half and half with carbonated water. (NOT tonic water or Club Soda!! Been there, done that, gagged mightily.)

Isn't it a pretty colour?

Since we have a tiny freezer and are expecting 10 large birds to be inhabiting it shortly, I canned mine instead. I left out the concentrated juice too, mostly because we don't have juice on-hand and I didn't feel like buying any. It's pretty delicious either way. If you want to can your juice to make it shelf-worthy, you can use a hot water bath. 5 minutes at a full boil will seal your jars up nicely. 

If you have other rhubarb recipes that aren't a dessert, I'd love to hear them!

Strawberries

Short post - I'm so excited to report that I have picked about 10 lbs of strawberries this year from my yard! And they're still coming! Not as many and they're not as big, but they're there. Sweeeeeeet.