Frugal Babe

For months now, readers have been asking for a picture of our garden.  Sorry it has taken me so long, but better late than never.  Across the front, the beds are filled with greens, beets, beans, peas, peppers, watermelons (we ate the first one yesterday – it was awesome!), and herbs.  The back row of framed beds has greens, onions, carrots and more greens.  You can see the patch of corn at the back left, and the beds with tomatoes are on the far left and the back middle, with wire fencing in them to support the vines.  Our potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts are on the far right towards the back (behind the scarecrow).  There is a giant volunteer sunflower in the middle bed in the front row.  It didn’t start to get huge until the beans were mostly gone, and it’s pretty, so we let it stay.  In all, there are 27 veggie beds, all dug by hand to a depth of about 18 – 24 inches and augmented with lots of compost.  The orchard is off to the left and the berry patch is off to the right.  You can see a bit of the orchard in the picture, but not the berry patch.  In the bottom right corner is a blueberry bush, planted in a giant planter that we sunk into the ground.  Blueberries need very acidic soil, and our soil is alkaline.  So we filled the planter with peat moss and compost and buried it, to give the blueberry bush it’s own little acidic oasis.

When we moved in, the backyard was nothing but weeds.  My husband planted the grass from seed, and has tended to it ever since (no chemicals – everything in our yard is organic).  With the lawn in the foreground of the picture, it looks much bigger than it is.  In reality, we have a relatively small patch of grass and the majority of the yard is devoted to the orchard, berry patch, and veggie beds.  But when I tried to get closer to the garden with the camera, I couldn’t fit the whole thing in the picture.

Last weekend, my husband picked enough corn from our garden to fill our wheelbarrow.  He and our son sat on the back porch husking the ears while I blanched the cobs and then froze the kernels on trays.  We now have about 20 quarts of corn in our freezer.

That part was easy.  I wasn’t nervous about freezing corn.  But I was nervous about canning. 

I knew that we were going to have to can tomatoes.  We have 60 tomato plants, and there’s no way I was going to be able to fit all that sauce in the freezer.  Canning made sense, but I had an irrational fear of it.  What if I screwed it up?  What if I poisoned my family?  What if something exploded in the kitchen while I was toiling away?

Turns out, it was a pretty easy process once I got started.  Getting started is usually the hardest part of any new adventure, and this was no exception.

We ended up getting a pressure canner last weekend, because it gives me more options than a water bath canner would (and I can use it as a water bath if I ever choose to).  We had a whole bunch of jars that my mother in law gave us last month, and they all have rings so the only other thing I had to buy was some new lids (actually, a lot of the jars she gave me had never been used, and still had their lids with them.  But the lids were 30+ years old, and I wasn’t sure if the rubber seals would still be good) and a little set of canning gadgets (funnel, jar lifter, and a little gizmo for picking up the lids out of the hot water that they sit in before they go on the jars).

First, we harvested tomatoes.  We filled two huge saucepans, although you can’t even tell that we took anything, as the tomato plants are still a sea of tomatoes.  I washed them and dumped them straight into my VitaMix (love that thing), skins, seeds, and all.  The VitaMix liquefies everything I put in it, and made quick work of the tomatoes.  I ended up with about two gallons of fresh pink sauce.  I simmered the sauce down for a few hours until it had reduced to about a gallon, gotten nice and thick, and turned a beautiful bright red color.

Then it was time to can.  I had read the instructions that came with our canner about 700 times.  I also had a book I was referencing and a web browser with an embarrassing number of canning tabs open.  I double and triple checked everything.  And then I got started.  And it was one of the easiest things I’ve done in a long time.  I ended up with four quarts of organic tomato sauce that all sealed perfectly and are ready for the pantry. 

Now that I did it once, I am excited to get the rest of the tomatoes harvested and canned.  I’m planning to make most of them into sauce as it takes up less room that way, and we go through a lot of tomato sauce around here.  I’m not adding anything extra to the sauce right now, but it will be easy to add whatever seasonings and veggies we want throughout the winter as we use each jar.

I have no idea how many jars of sauce we’ll end up with, but I imagine that we will not need to buy spaghetti sauce anytime soon.  And I am thrilled that I got past my fear of canning and learned something new. 

We have a lot of zucchini right now.  I think that’s the case for most people who grow it, and like most, I’m always looking for ways to use it in interesting and tasty recipes.  I’ve made several dozen zucchini muffins over the last week or so, and frozen them.  This is the recipe I used, although I altered it a bit.  I cut the sugar in half (and they are officially approved by my two-year-old) and used ground flax seed instead of the Ener-G egg replacer (don’t know what that is, and I typically use ground flax + water in baking recipes that call for an egg).  I also used maple syrup instead of agave nectar, and skipped the crumb topping.  I’ve made them with pecans and walnuts, and both are fantastic.  I love the fact that I have about 50 whole wheat, zucchini-filled muffins in the freezer right now.

Today, I decided to see what I could do with this recipe for zucchini cakes.  I know, a Paula Deen recipe seems like the last thing on Earth that I’d cook, but this worked amazingly well with the adaptations I made, and it used up a ton of zucchini.  My guys both loved it, so I thought I’d share.  I only had one yellow squash on hand, so I used that and five zucchini.  I used a mixture of dry oats and bread crumbs instead of just bread crumbs.  I also used Daiya vegan cheese (mozzarella – I buy it in bulk at the food co-op) instead of the Parmesan cheese.  And instead of an egg, I used a tablespoon of ground flax seed (I didn’t add any extra water at this step, because the zucchini was still pretty moist even after I pressed most of the liquid out of it).  I was out of Italian seasoning, so I used Old Bay instead.  And I added half of a bell pepper to the food processor when I was chopping the onion, simply because it was taking up space in the fridge.  If you eat eggs and dairy, by all means use the ingredients called for in the recipe.  But this recipe worked great with the substitutions I made, so it’s pretty flexible, and can easily be adapted for people who are sensitive to those ingredients or choose to not eat them.

There was no way that I was going to fry anything in half a cup of butter, so I decided to bake my creation instead.  Instead of making cakes, I turned it into a casserole and just baked it for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees.   We devoured two thirds of it at lunch today, along with some fresh ears of corn from our backyard.

Right now, I’m loving recipes that use up lots of zucchini.  And a recipe that has zucchini as it’s primary ingredient is likely to be pretty inexpensive at this time of year… if you aren’t growing your own, chances are someone you know is, and will be more than happy to share!

Did I mention we have nine zucchini plants?  And that they are all thriving?   We’re trying to stay on top of them and pick them when they’re small, but every once in a while we miss one and find it when it’s the size of a small dog (I think they go from small to small dog in about two days).

We usually add one to a green smoothie each day, and we’ve been adding them to salads and stir fries and soups.  Zucchini can be used for all sorts of dishes, and it adds a great moist texture.  It can even be made into “noodles” and used like pasta with whatever sauce you like.  There are fancy gadgets designed just for the purpose of making noodles from zucchini.  They’re called spiralizers, and they do make a neat looking plate of zucchini pasta.  But they are pretty much uni-purpose implements, and I try to avoid products like that in my kitchen.  I only have so much space, and I want it to be taken up with appliances and tools that I use everyday, for multiple things.

I had been using a knife to cut thin strips of zucchini, but last week I thought about using my food processor.  I use my food processor several times a week, for lots of different tasks.  It definitely deserves its spot in the kitchen.  And it has a shredder blade that works amazingly well at making short noodles out of a zucchini.

So for the last few days, our lunch has been a huge salad made on a base of shredded zucchini.  Looks a little odd if you haven’t tried it, but it makes an awesome salad.  Just shred a zucchini or two, and then top with whatever you like on salads.  We’ve been harvesting cherry tomatoes every day, so those get added, plus some olives, hemp-esan, fresh green beans and sugar snap peas (both from our garden).  Add some seeds and whatever homemade dressing you like, and you end up with a great lunch that only takes a few minutes to put together.

Zucchini has a reputation for being quite prolific, and for ending up on neighbors’ doorsteps because gardeners just can’t use as much of it as they grow.  So if you’ve got zucchini coming out your ears, hopefully my shredded zucchini salad idea will help you use up today’s harvest.

Eating from our garden has made a huge dent in our grocery bill.  Last week I bought only fruit at the grocery store, and not a single veggie (we have fruit trees, but it will be next year at the earliest before they produce anything).  My shopping cart used to be half filled with fruit and half with veggies, but these days I go out in the backyard a couple times a day with a huge bowl and fill it with greens, beets, carrots, peas, beans, onions, basil, tomatoes… definitely worth all the hours we spent digging garden beds in the spring!