Summer Squash/Winter Squash recipes!

Well, the summer squash is going mad in the garden, zucchini anyone?? LOL! I know it's one of those love/hate relationships in the garden. For me, if I can keep the squash bugs at bay, I celebrate. This year has been one of my best years yet. I think the landscape fabric covering the garden and just the plant poking through has helped repel the squash bugs...although they are still out there, and I try to get to them early in the morning or late in the evening and squish them! Next year I may use my buckets for growing them, as the tomatoes will most likely go in the ground next year (just wanted to try to break the cycle of blight...but it's the rain that brings it on, so I'll go back to planting them in the ground next year and just try really hard to stay on top of the signs of blight.

Anyway, here are a couple of recipes I've discovered. The first I plan on making tonight, it's a Rachel Ray recipe. The second is more for winter squash, although I'm sure summer squash would still probably work, I found it on-line a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it, it's more "savory", and the last is a Martha Stewart recipe that arrived in my email in-box sometime this morning. Enjoy!

Baked Eggplant and Zucchini
Ingredients
• 2 cups tomato sauce
• 1 small eggplant, cut into long slabs
• 2 small zucchini, cut into long slabs
• 1 cup each shredded fontina and parmesan
• 1/3 cup torn basil
Directions
Spread 1/2 cup sauce in 9-by-13-inch baking dish; top with eggplant, zucchini, 3/4 cup sauce and half of each cheese and basil; repeat. Bake for 25 minutes at 400 degrees .
Rachel Ray


Baked Squash Casserole Recipe
6 cups squash, cut in small pieces
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
1 (8oz.) package herb stuffing mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1(10 3/4 oz.) can cream of chicken soup
Cook salt and onion in salted water for five minutes. Drain. Combine soup and sour cream. Stir in carrots, squash and onion. Mix together stuffing mix and butter. Spread half of this mixture on bottom of casserole. Spoon vegetable mixture over it.
Spread remaining stuffing mixture over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
*You may sub cream of celery or cream of onion soup for the cream of chicken.

Spicy Zucchini Frittata
Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
1 cup fresh corn kernels
Coarse salt
8 large eggs

Directions
Heat broiler. In a medium ovenproof (preferably cast-iron) skillet, heat oil over medium heat and cook onion and jalapeno, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and corn and cook until tender, about 7 minutes more. Season with salt.

In a bowl, whisk eggs with 1/2 teaspoon salt and pour into skillet with vegetables. Cook until sides are just beginning to set, 2 to 3 minutes.

Transfer skillet to oven and broil until just set in the middle and lightly golden and puffed on top, 2 to 3 minutes.
Martha Stewart

BLUEBERRIES ARE IN SEASON!!!!

My favorite time of year at Farmers Market...BLUEBERRY SEASON! If I had the time I'd go to one of those "you pick" places...then again, if I had the time, maybe my berry bushes wouldn't be looking so lousy and I'd be getting lovely blueberries in my own back yard?

Fresh blueberries & blackberries bring me back to my childhood when my sister would pick my mom and I up and we'd go pick berries for the morning. As a kid, the morning seemed like it was FOREVER and the weather was always HOT, but EATING all those berries was so WONDERFUL! My favorite ways to have blueberries, now that I'm all grown up, is a blueberry pie. Second would have to be in yogurt with granola. Then there are blueberry muffins, blueberry buckle (like a coffee cake), and the list goes on and on. While blackberries still hold a place in my heart (right up there with blackberry jelly!), blueberries are the best (in my humble opinion).

Here's a picture of the gallon of blueberries I picked up at Farmers Market last night, the quick run through, just to say hi to some of my vendor friends and see what might be cooking. We had other plans for the 4th of July, as we do every year...MAGic 4th picnic and fireworks! Our local church (the one we attended for 10 years) always hosts a wonderful picnic and fireworks display, and for at least 10 years my husband and family have been the ones in charge of fireworks. He's a licensed pyrotechnic, along with all the other wonderful things he does. :) This is our last year shooting fireworks for the MAGic 4th, so the night was bitter-sweet.

So back to blueberries:

and a lovely recipe to go with it:

Blueberry Buckle

For the buckle:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

For the Crumble:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons butter

To make buckle:
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into bowl; set aside. In another mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg to butter mixture and whip until light and fluffy. Add flour mixture, milk, and juice to the creamed mixture. Use your hands to gently fold in blueberries. Place in greased 9x9 pan.

To make crumble:
In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, and cinnamon together. Cut in butter with hands until crumbly. Sprinkle over batter. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minute.

All the hard work...finally paying off...

Here are pictures of some lovely produce from our garden, and some recipes to enjoy. :)

Basil Eggplant Recipe
4 Servings, Prep Time: 10 Minutes, Total Time: 15 Minutes

2 chili peppers
2 eggplants
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tablespoon sugar
1 bunch leaves picked from the stem Thai basil
1 tablespoon cooking oil

Slice the eggplants into irregular shapes for easy turning in the pan.
Chop garlic and slice chili peppers. Pick the leaves from the stem of the Thai basil.
Heat a pan or wok over high or medium high. Add oil, chili peppers and garlic. Stir until the garlic turns golden brown. Add eggplant and stir. Add a cup of water and cover the pan or wok with a lid. Keep the lid closed until the eggplant is cooked. It should take about 5-7 minutes before the eggplant is done. The eggplant turns from white to translucent when it is done. Almost all of the water should have been evaporated at this point. If the eggplant is still not cooked, add a little bit more water and keep lid closed until the eggplant is ready.
Add fish sauce and sugar and stir. Add Thai basil and quickly stir to heat the basil, so that it retains its color. Turn off heat immediately.
Serve hot with rice.

* I didn't have fish sauce in the house when I was making this, but I had oyster sauce, and subbed it, it tasted just fine. :)

Baked Squash Casserole Recipe

6 cups squash, cut in small pieces
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
1 (8oz.) package herb stuffing mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1(10 3/4 oz.) can cream of chicken soup

Cook squash and onion in salted water for five minutes. Drain. Combine soup and sour cream. Stir in carrots, squash and onion. Mix together stuffing mix and butter. Spread half of this mixture on bottom of casserole. Spoon vegetable mixture over it.
Spread remaining stuffing mixture over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Easy Salsa
Serves 2-3

Ingredients:
3-4 tomatoes
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno, sliced
or a pinch chili powder or chili flakes (not nearly as good...use a fresh pepper if you have it)
1/2 bunch of cilantro
1/4 cup fresh lime or lemon juice
Sea salt to taste
1/2 white onion, peeled.

Put everything into the food processor and pulse until the desired consistency is reached.

I like to heat everything over the stove for a few minutes, just to blend the flavors really well, plus the salsa lasts in the fridge several days longer when you do so. I add the cilantro and citrus juice AFTER the cooking process if I'm going to do that.