Once upon a time

There were three squash plants.

I pulled them all out the other day. They were nasty. All covered in powdery mildew which, if you haven't experienced it, is quite powdery indeed. As I cut off squash tentacles in order to make yanking the whole plant less unwieldy, a white miasma engulfed me. Knowing that it is some fungus that kills plants,  I felt I should not inhale. So I would take a big breath on the lawn, and then run over to the raised bed and pull on the plants. 

I decided that three plants is just about right for getting to do a variety of dishes; I had two zucchini and one yellow squash. I know my father just kicked himself back from the computer desk screaming, "What?! You hate zucchini!" (I may have exaggerated the scene for dramatic effect.) And this is partly true. Really, though, I hate steamed zucchini, as I believe all steamed vegetables are punishment for some dastardly deed committed in another life. 

 Other cooking methods, however, transform squash into something not horribly bitter - which is the problem with summer squash, in my estimation. I have two go-to preparations, both from Italian cooks. Lidia Bastianich does a pan-roasted zucchini with anchovies and garlic. I let them caramelize and sometimes throw some basil and parsley on. It's fantastic as a side dish or on top of pasta or even pizza. I guess it would also be good on a piece of toasted bread that had some ricotta on it.

I used to watch Molto Mario on the Food Network, back when the cooking shows were much better and every other one was not about cupcakes. Mario was great because he would pull down a map of Italy and talk about the region that his dishes came from, and then he would cook right there for his guests, usually three somewhat famous people. He once did a shallow-fried zucchini on pasta. It was quite fun to toss little squash rounds into hot olive oil, but it was also messy and a pain, so I take mine to the oven and blast them at 425 or 450 for 15 minutes or so. It can be had simply in a bowl or on top of pasta with some Pecorino and herbs of choice.

Speaking of herbs, I discovered that savory goes very well with zukes. I made a couple different patties and put savory in both to rave reviews. Well, Teddy refused the try them and Sam only grudgingly did so because I wouldn't make him a grilled cheese and he knows that low blood sugar makes him vomit. I got both patty recipes from magazines and they both go smashingly well with green goddess dressing - man, is that stuff good when homemade. Which reminds me of the time I poisoned Josh with some very old store-bought dressing. Good story: I plated our salads and put the old dressing on his and opened a new bottle for me. I do recall feeling like the smell was off, but I also recall thinking, eh! what could happen? Vomit and diarrhea, that's what.

Why is is called green goddess? I figured it was a 1960s thing created on some commune, but it actually originated in the 1920s when a chef at San Francisco's Palace Hotel made it for an actor and named it in honor of the play he was in. I don't make mine with mayonnaise because I don't like it (!). I prefer using buttermilk, yogurt, or a combination thereof.

I also pickled some zukes. I made a bread and butter zucchini pickle, which came out tasty, but mushy. There is no way around the mush if you are going to make your cans shelf-stable. The pickle on the right is a fridge pickle, i.e. crispy, and has sugar, cloves, and allspice. It's "supposed" to be a marinade for beets, but the mix reminded me a lot of the zuke pickles that Vios puts on their lamb burger. I'm irritated with Vios, though, so we shouldn't talk about them. I won't even link to their homepage. 

And I finally stuffed blossoms. You might notice that your plant has several blossoms that never fruit. These are male and usually the first flowers. We all know that males can't make babies, i.e. fruit, by themselves, so pluck those males and stuff them! I made blossom pasta sauce last year, but found they have little flavor on their own. Stuffed blossoms, naturally, are quite different and delightful. I did two versions: stuffed with Spanish cheese and pan-fried; and stuffed with ricotta, poached, and served in a chicken broth.

There were but two zuke dishes on the docket that I didn't get to: zucchini soup and zucchini puree (as pasta sauce). They both sound too bitter for my palate. I find unadulterated zucchini taste bland and, somehow, squeaky.

I am excited to move on to the winter squash. Now those are my favorite. I really want to stuff a pumpkin with soup, bread, and cheese this year! What do you do with squash?

Green Goddess Dressing
1 cup plain yogurt or creme fraiche (maybe 3/4 yogurt and 1/4 buttermilk)
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives or green onions
2T chopped fresh tarragon
2T chopped fresh parsley
1T white wine vinegar
1T anchovy paste

Blend and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Goes great on lots of things.

Zucchini Fritters
1 1/2 lb. summer squash of choice
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup + 3T AP flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2T grated Parmesan
2T minced shallot or green onion
1T minced summer savory
a couple grinds black pepper
1/4 beer - pretty much any kind, but probably not a stout or porter

Grate the squash and place in a large colander. Massage 1tsp. of salt into the shreds and let sit to exude liquid for 30 minutes. Place the mass in a clean dish towel and squeeze like crazy to get as much liquid out as possible. Whisk the flour, baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, and pepper together in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the beer. Then fold in the shallot, herb, cheese and zucchini.

Coat the bottom of a nonstick pan in olive oil and heat over medium. Drop 1/4-cupful sized patties in and flatten. Brown for 4-5 minutes per side.

These are nice served on a salad with a generous spoonful of green goddess dressing. Smoked trout and rice are lovely alongside. And don't forget to polish off that beer you opened to make the fritters.

Dinner Fever

This is what my dining room table looks like right now - covered with books and binders and recipes and sticky notes. I am organizing my recipe binders, my cookbooks. There is chaos before there is order. 

I have taken great pleasure in busting out the glue sticks, construction paper, and three-hole-punch. Sam has even helped me with my "art project" by doing some gluing and snipping with me. I come from a long line of project-doers. Okay, maybe not long, but my dad has always created projects for himself, so I guess that is where I get it, and Sam will get it from me. Or something like that. 

I also take great pleasure in organizing and preparing for trips where I will cook and in preparing and organizing for house guests. I previously mentioned that my in-laws were here last month, and, boy, did I plan the heck out of that. Well, the meals anyway. I even laid away doughs and breads in the freezer. Not too long after that, we traveled (by car!) to Lake Tahoe and met up with my family for a week in the sun. The dinner routine was that Dad grilled the protein while I made the side dishes. And I make a mean side dish. From Seattle, I brought foodstuffs, pans, bowls, and notes so that I didn't forget all the ideas I had before we left. I also labeled all my supplies with masking tape and a Sharpie! Cooking like that, with Dad, was sheer pleasure. My timing has never been so good, and I drank up praise for my food as if compliments were wine and I was at a bacchanal. 

So it may come as no surprise that I take dinnertime at my house seriously. And that, when my carefully planned and prepared food is rejected and labeled yucky or gross, I hit the ceiling. I am well aware of the probable fact that I did this to myself. The kids have their own special dinnertime for years before integrating into the grownups' table and timing; they are fed bland food for those years and then expected to munch on Thai or Middle Eastern flavors all of a sudden; they are constantly given crackers and cookies and then expected to eschew all snacking and save room for dinner. I get it. Really.

Because dinner looks like this,

Teddy begs for goldfish

I get that they have sensitive taste buds. I get that new foods are frightening. I get it that crackers are ridiculously good. But I want them to get that I am making things that are really good and not objectionable to little palates. Am I making sweetbreads with verjus? No. Escargots with a nice garlic-herb butter? No. I saute bacon and then throw couscous in it. I make a bajillion pancakes out of all sorts of things. I make tempura, for God's sake! I make good, kid-friendly stuff.

I am therefore led to conclude that they do it on purpose. As a matter of principle, they reject what Mommy makes. I believe their thinking goes something like this:

Sam: Hmmm, Mommy has been in a pretty good mood today. I'm going to see if I can get pasta with butter for dinner.
Teddy: What did Sam ask for? What is Mommy making? I want something else. But I won't eat it. I just want to look at it.
Sam: No dice with the pasta. Perhaps, if I refuse just so, I can get a bowl of Os instead.
Teddy: Os? I'll have a few.
Sam: Hm. Now she is raging and drinking her grape juice. I can totally hold out until breakfast tomorrow. I'll just ask for milk tonight and pray she doesn't make me try the zucchini pancake and black rice. I mean, really. Black rice!
Teddy: Milk, please.
Sam: Look at Mommy squirm. Wow, I did that. I feel so ... powerful! Hahahahahahahahaha.

Sam eating only what is required

Berry Wonderful

That's the name suggested for the dessert I concocted the first night my in-laws were here. I say concocted because I threw it together with no recipe. *gasp* It was blackberries covered in streusel and roasted at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or so. A scoop of that went over vanilla ice cream. A revelation.

The next night I made my raspberry tart. But I couldn't find those darned cookies that you are supposed to use for the crust. They are always up, tippy-toe high on the shelves in the store because they are expensive and esoteric; you must have your nose in the air to see them. So I made my own chocolate crust. Naturally, I felt quite cool and competent making my own, but it didn't taste the same. It was far from the same, in fact. Not chocolaty enough, not crumbly enough. Not enough. The filling was divine, of course, but I like a tart to be the complete package.

Berry season is booming. The strawberries were fantastic in June, and the blackberries and marionberries have been great in July. That reminds me of marionberry season a couple of years ago: a travesty. The local berry stand, Spooner's, had people queueing up before they even opened at 9:30am. Customers were limited to one flat, if they even wanted that much. And we all know what happens when there is a shortage: hoarding. The rest of us, who showed up at 10:30 with a toddler in tow, got nary a 1/2-pint to enjoy. This year, thankfully, berries are plentiful.

So I went a little bit nuts with the jamming. I speak in the past tense, but I guess there are still fruits to exploit. Figs sound nice. And, naturally, I will get the jars out for apple and pear butters. Alas, alack, no plums from my neighbor this year! She said she got no fruit! Horrible. Plum butter is delicious and there is but a teaspoonful left in my fridge.

Not only did I jam, but I also found other ways to enjoy the berry wonderful bounty. I like a plain ol' bowlful of berries, myself, but Sam had a fantastic idea: (homemade) toasted brioche with creme fraiche and berries.



This is my third jamming year. I jam with purchased fruit, which feels like a cheat. You are supposed to put up the glut of your fields, right? I do pickle my glut. But the fruit preserves are sometime in the future, I'm afraid. The squirrels ate all my strawberries and the birds ate all my blueberries. There aren't enough raspberries, but I don't like to jam those anyway. Raspberries are for picking and eating, bugs and all. I could visit a U-pick, but that involves, ug, planning and dragging the kids along. And I am looking for poundage, not an activity where I can joyously snap photos of the kids picking berries while I walk away with a wee 1/2-pint.



This year, I realized that I like jam, not preserves. I like a smooth texture, rather than chunky. I won't take it so far as to remove the seeds from berries - that would be insane; that would be franken-jam. Oh, hang on; I do like cherry preserves. I made those last year and they came out delicious - fabulous on oatmeal. Oh, now that I think of it, spiced peaches too. But berries look awful. All my jams are bright and lovely this year. My (step?) mother-in-law noted that preserved strawberries look like little organs - all gray-purple, floating in a thick, sanguineous liquid. So true. So disturbingly true.

Speaking of color change, I just hate what happens to my pickles. I had beautiful, multi-colored beans that all look greenish after canning. Ah well. Chemical reactions, right? What is there to do?



I delivered jam to my neighbors. That was fun. The man next door, who is about 83, smiles like a schoolboy when I bring him goodies. Kills me. I hope he lives forever. And it is always best to take Sam along while delivering because he asks to go inside people's houses - which I won't do, but I would like to do. I have been inside several houses I don't think I would have made it into without him. I like to look at the pictures on the wall and the magazines piled on the coffee table. Who doesn't? I usually get a couple of good stories out of a visit, at least. This time I got that plus frozen rhubarb! And a promise of home-roasted coffee beans!

The moral of the story: Share with your neighbors.