Zucchini, Zucchini and More Zucchini

Last night I decided to tackle the countertop of zucchinis that had been accumulating all week. This time of year you just can’t give them away fast enough. Well,let’s face it. You can’t really give them away at all. My neighbor,Cathy said,“Sure I take some if you put them in zucchini bread”.

With that little nudge I decided to shred my 8 zucchinis and make some bread. Of course,one of the was about a foot and a half long by itself. By the time I shredded them all I had three large bowls of zucchini. I decided I would try a few different recipes rather than sticking with the tried and true. That usually doesn’t turn out the way I am planning. I started with a zucchini carrot bread from a cook book my cousin gave me. It was a little bit different due to the carrots and the recipe also included honey –a nice touch for a bee keeper. I started this batch around 7pm and quickly figured out it wasn’t going to use up much of my raw materials. It only required 1 cup of zucchini and I had at least 20 cups! So I popped two loaves in the oven and started on Paula Dean’s recipe which takes at least 3 cups of the stuff. Then I moved on from Paula Dean’s recipe to my friend’s recipe. This is the “go to”best recipe. She prints me a copy to keep every year and every year I lose it. My recipes are a little like my garden –chaotic! I have them in stacks,books,stuffed inside other cookbooks,you name it. Every once in a while I try to organize them but it doesn’t work very well. I keeping thinking I am just going to put together a cookbook of all my favorites and then get rid of all the papers. One of these days. At least if I put the zucchini bread recipe here,I will know where to find it the next time I can’t find it. Many thanks to my friend Kelly for sharing her recipe and helping me bake a loaf or two on ocassion:

3 cups flour ,1 tsp salt,1 tsp soda,3 tsp cinnamon,1/4 tsp baking powder

3 beaten eggs,2 cups sugar,3 tsp vanilla,1 cup vegetable oil,3 cups shredded zucchini,1 cup chopped walnuts

Sift dry ingredients together. Beat eggs and add sugar,vanilla and oil. Stir in zucchini. Add dry ingredients and blend. Stir in nuts. Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Sometimes I add chocolate chips.

I finally went to bed at 11:30 with loaves of varying sizes and about 3 dozen muffins. Its even hard to give away and extra large loaf so I try to make them smaller. But I still had one large bowl of shredded zucchini left. More for the morning.

I got up at 6 am,on a Saturday no less,and started cooking again. This time I decided to break up the monotony while baking the zucchini bread. Did I mention that I had 2 boxes of peaches delivered to my house last night from the high school fundraiser? I also promised Mary Mac I would make her something sweet for breakfast. I started out with the Chico Hot Springs Resort Carmel Rolls. These are yeast bread honey buns that are totally decadent. I made the dough and put it aside to rise while I started on a double batch of peach muffin/bread from a great recipe my neighbor Cathy gave me. While those were cooking I stared down the bowl of zucchini and tried to decide what to do. You can only give away so many loaves of the bread. I remembered a recipe I saw for curried zucchini soup. I dug around in my cookbooks and magazines until I found it. It is easy to make and tastes great.

1 T olive oil,1 medium onion –chopped,Coarse salt,2 garlic cloves –minced,2 tsp curry powder,1 1/2 lbs of zucchini –I used shredded or you can dice or slice,1 baking potato –peeled and diced,1/3 cup sliced almonds –toasted for garnish

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and 1 T of salt ( use less and add later,it was a bit salty);cook,stirring occasionally,until the onion is soft,4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and curry powder;cook,stirring constantly,until fragrant,about 1 minute.

Add the zucchini,potato,and 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil;reduce heat and simmer until veggies are tender,about 15 minutes.

Puree the soup in batches in a blender (do not fill more than halfway) until smooth;server immediately. Garnish with almonds.

I made a trip batch of this yummy stuff. I gave two large jars away,saved one for myself and spilled about a half gallon all over the kitchen counter. Lucky for me my neighbor had come over to get a sticky bun and ran around the counter to help me clean up my disaster. By this time I was pretty much over my zucchini but I still had half of the largest one that I hadn’t shredded yet. I left it on the counter and headed out to pull weeds and water the garden –enough indoor chores. I even decided to take some honey from one of my hives –more on that another day.

As luck would have it my artistically talented Lindsay managed to come up with the grande finale for the large half a zucchini I had left on my counter. After we got home from the movie (The Help –more on that another day) she sat down at the table with me while I was typing this and started carving.

Zucchini as Art

SPRING CLEANING - Revisted after 4 years (Yikes - I'm not making progress)

I am in the process of moving my blog to a new URL www.marthacarlin.com. In doing so, I am going back through my old blog posts and moving some of them to this new location. It struck me as really funny that I wrote this blog entry on clutter in 2007 and now 4 years later (yesterday) I wrote a blog on having too much stuff. Clearly this is still an issue for me.

This Post was title - SPRING CLEANING

Clutter drives me nuts. If you came to my house you would not realize it. There is clutter everywhere. Piles of old mail waiting for something - I'm not sure what. Piles of the kids things on the stairs, waiting in vane to be carried up the stairs and put away. Piles of cookbooks I've had out and can't find room for in the cookbook self. Piles of old school papers, clothes in the closet, magazines that must be years old. Why do we hang on to all these things? Does it really only bother me? Nobody else seems to notice or care. I go to the neighbors and they don't have these piles. I go to friends houses and they don't have this clutter. So why us?


How can we solve this problem? I am looking for some help. From the experts, from my family, from anybody. I joined the freecycle yahoo group in my town. You can list things there that you want to give away. The kids are thinking about having a garage sale but they never do. So this week while I have a few days off I think I will try to work on just one room and remove some of the clutter. I started in the bathroom this afternoon and emptied out two drawers and the cabinet. I threw out old vitamins, prescriptions, lotions, broken hair clips and makeup samples that must be at least two years old. Why am I compelled to take these samples at the stores? I NEVER use them.

I bought a book on cleaning up the clutter. It is now cluttering up the floor of my bathroom. It says you should go one room at a time. This month's Real Simple has an article about lightening up. It says to start by throwing out the physical stuff. Go through drawers, wallet, purse, etc and toss anything that depresses or diminishes you. What does that mean? How can stuff in your purse diminish you? I am afraid I am not going to be able to figure that one out. I got on this purse kick last summer and now instead of one purse I have about 10. They are now adding to the clutter. I guess if I have to go through them all I can probably find some stuff to throw out. Oh yeah, and you are supposed to make a list of the things you are throwing away. That seems like extra work. Its hard enough to do the throwing out part without having to make a list.

Anyway, I am going to get up early tomorrow and unclutter something in my house. I am not sure what yet but something. I think it will make me feel better - at least temporarily. Until.........well you know. The clutter builds up again.

Remembering Africa - More than a Mountain - Book

It has been a little more than a month since we made our 7 day trek up and down Mount Kilimanjaro. Since returning we've all continued to share our passion for the trip but we've also been sharing the many personal insights we learned from the challenge.

Our group of 28 - 10 with Multiple Sclerosis, 4 with Parkinson's Disease and 14 companions has decided to put together a book about our experiences. We will be working over the next several months to compile each person's story in the hope that we can inspire others to go beyond their perceived limits in some way. When we publish the book all sales after costs of publication will go to charity. We will be working as a group to decide which MS and PD charities we'll be donating to. I hope when the time comes that you'll buy the book and read the stories of my amazing companions on the mountain. Each person has a truly inspiring story to tell.

Resisting IKEA aka Thinking about a New Economy

I met my daughter, Lindsay, at IKEA today to get her the kitchen table she wanted for her birthday. This was my first trip to the massive retail store. IKEA is a Swedish based company. This strikes me as really being out of whack since the Swedish are not mass consumers. I think I wrote about the Swedish concept of "lagom" meaning "enough" or "just the right amount". The store is huge and full of furniture and household goods as well as a restaurant and daycare so you can shop longer. This seems to me to be a totally un-Swedish concept. Its a totally American type shopping experience designed to keep you shopping as long as possible, complete with impulse buying stations along the way.

My daughter was surprised when I seemed nonplussed by the store. She couldn't understand why. I told her that I was past the accumulation of stuff phase in a my life so I wasn't as drawn to all the stuff. She and her friend, Sydney, who had come along, were still in their accumulation of stuff phase. Early in the phase I might add since they both just graduated from college.

This got me thinking about when a person crosses over from the accumulation of stuff to wanting to lighten up? I don't think there is any magic line in the sand. Some people never come to the realization that they have enough or maybe even too much and they just keep on buying. Others, like me, may have been jolted in to the realization by this economic cycle. So I wondered if a larger number of people had decided they have enough in this economic downturn and will never return to their previous consumption levels. What will this do to the economic recovery? Will we have to reinvent our economy in to something completely different that doesn't rely on massive consumerism?

I have been moving along the line toward thinking I have too much stuff ever since my husband's and my mother both died in early 2006. We each brought home a truck load of things on top of all the stuff we already have of our own. Just 15 years ago we lived in a tiny 900 square foot house and all our stuff fit just fine. Now we have multiples of that space and we have boxes and stacks of stuff all over the place. Over the past five years I have gradually gotten to a state where I can begin to let go of the things that were my mothers. Do I really need her 3 sets of dishes and 25 cake pans? How about 8 different colored napkins and matching placemats? Do I need 5 vegetable peelers? 30 framed prints that I will never hang on my walls because they don't fit my taste? What about all the tools in the garage that were my Dads. Wouldn't I be just fine with two screw drivers and one hammer and a hand drill? I think so. As I move along this spectrum I am starting to set aside items for my MEGA garage sale that I am going to have in September. It should be interesting. I've had garage sales before but its been a while. I used to find myself taking things back in to the house during the sale when I felt a pang of attachment. I have vowed not to do that this time. I am really going to down size. I've got about 4 weeks to go room by room and really whittle things down.

The trick after that will be not to reacquire more goods. I wonder if I can be successful at this. Today at IKEA I bought a tray, some boxes and some tupperware type containers. Did I really need them?

Where will the economy go if we all suddenly realize we are a lot happier without having all this stuff we have to move around, dust, watch over and care about? Can we have an economic engine driven by something else? If so what would that be? I read the book "The Great Reset - How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity" a few months back. It goes in depth in to how the economy is being shaken up by this. It talks about how the economy is changing now like it did during the industrial revolution and this is going to create great upheaval in the demographics of our cities and how we all live. I am not sure I agree with it all but I did find it interesting.

What do you think?

Peaches, nectar of the Gods

I love peaches. Not the one's you get in the grocery store. The peaches you buy at a roadside farm stand or at the farmer's market. If you leave in Colorado, its a Western slope/Palisade peach that's the one I am talking about. If you leave in Georgia or South Carolina, I imagine they are similar. I was riding home the other night when this story came on the radio on NPR. This guy has the best job in the world tasting peaches! Just listen to him talk about it. He rolls on the ground in joy over some of these peaches. Links are working but paste this in your browser and see how much this guy loves peaches!

www.npr.org/2011/08/18/139755064/sweet-lessons-from-a-south-carolina-peach-professor

Well that's pretty much the way I feel when its peach season in Colorado. We go through about a box a week. The kids will eat a half dozen or more a day. This season they are perfect, juicy, sweet and just ripe with no tartness from being picked to soon. I think the weather was better this year and I haven't seen many split pits. Most of the peaches that arrive at the grocery store have been picked green. As a result they don't develop that wonderful peach scent, the juicy texture or the sweet flavor. Apparently its pretty difficult to get a peach to market without picking it to soon.

One of my favorite books is "Four Seasons in Five Senses" by David Mas Masumoto. He's a peach farmer in California. Its a wonderful book about the magnificent peach and all that goes in to growing them. In reading his descriptions of the farm, the trees, the peaches, the scents, the flavors I can immediately feel, smell and taste what he is writing about. He has several books including "Wisdom of the Last Farmer" and "Epitaph for a Peach". If you love peaches and beautiful words that can make your mouth water pick up one of his books and read it.

Last year I made peach chutney from the food network and tried to make peach jam. Well I guess jam is a little bit harder to get right than I thought. If you over cook it, which I did, it will basically turn to rock in your jelly jars. Its not very spreadable in that consistency. I am going to try again this weekend. I have 2 boxes of peaches arriving on Friday from the high school fund raiser. I think I should invite someone who knows what they are doing to come teach me.

You know the best things in life aren't learned from a book. They are experienced. Its much easier to learn how to make something if you are cooking with a friend who has done it before. Same goes for learning how to grow things, fix things, run things etc. Find somebody who knows and ask them to share their knowledge. And maybe a nice juicy peach or two while they are at it.

Food Network - Peach Chutney Recipe:

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
2 shallots finely diced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and diced
1 1/2 pounds fresh peaches, blanched and diced
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brandy
1/2 cup cider vinegar
Salt and pepper

Directions

Melt butter, add garlic, shallot and jalapeno and sweat for 1 to 2 minutes, add diced peaches. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, add sugar, deglaze with brandy and vinegar and allow to cook on low heat until peaches are soft. Season with salt and pepper.
* Restaurant Recipe

This recipe was provided by professional chefs and has been scaled down from a bulk recipe provided by a restaurant. Food Network Kitchens have not tested this recipe in the proportions indicated and therefore cannot make representation as to the results.

In the Company of Women

When I was growing up people used to stop by the house just to visit. They might stop by in the evening and end up staying for a hour or they might stop on a weekend afternoon and stay for several hours. They might bring something from their garden or just themselves to say hello.

In our hustle and bustle world today this really doesn't happen much. Impromptu get togethers are almost unheard of. Maybe it happens and I just haven't been a part of it but I see now what I have been missing. Maybe its what we are all missing. I used to think I didn't have time for this sort of thing. Too many projects to get done around the house. Too much work to do. What a mistake it is to cut off the sweetest part of life, connecting with friends and family if you've got them close by, in favor of mowing the lawn or organizing your pantry.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful day of visiting and impromptu get togethers that reminded of these good old days when life was slower. When we took time to just relax and be together without a purpose or an event involved.

I had "planned" to have lunch with my friend, Yvonne and her sister, Inika, who was visiting from Holland. She sent a text to say it wasn't going to work because she had too many boys coming over to the house for an air soft battle at the same time. I was dropping off my son at the battle so we decided to just eat lunch there and hang out. I invited my daughter, Lindsay to join us and bring her dog Emily who loves to play with Yvonne's dog, Cody.

I stopped at the farmer's market on the way there to pick up my weekly box of fresh Western slope peaches and a big bunch of basil and some onions for later in the week. When Jack and I arrived, Yvonne and her sister had just gotten home from a morning at urgent care for a broken toe! She hadn't had time to pick up anything for lunch. No worries. I grabbed an arm load of peaches from the car and the basil and onion. Yvonne searched the fridge and found tomatoes and mushrooms. We would toss them all in with some pasta! I peeled and sliced a huge bowl of peaches. We compared the smell of my peaches to those of the California peaches Yvonne just got from Costo - no comparison. I told them about one of my favorite books "Four Seasons in Five Senses" by David Mas Masimota. He's an organic peach farmer in California and he really knows how to make your mouth water with his words (more about peaches in another blog post). Inika brought me one of the candles she had just made that was scented with basil. We talked of how scents bring back memories much faster than any of your other senses.

The aroma of the fresh peaches was heavenly, pure sweet peachiness and their taste even more sweet. We nibble on succulent peaches while Inika and Yvonne started chopping and I started cooking. I sauteed the onion and mushroom with some minced garlic while Yvonne cooked the pasta. The smell of the chopped basil filled the room. I tossed the sauteed ingredients in a big bowl with the fresh basil, some salt and pepper and shredded mozzarella. Yum! We threw together a fabulous unplanned lunch. It was quite divine if I say so myself. Something about it made me feel a little Italian. I imagine that's the way they cook over there - just grabbing whatever they have that's fresh and see what comes up! And now whenever I smell fresh peaches and basil I will be reminded of this afternoon.

All the while we were cooking we were catching up with each other and talking about everything from making candles - one of Inika's talents - to following your dreams - Lindsay's sculpture talents. Inika has a very special way about her that makes you feel special, like you can be or do whatever you want. It was a lovely afternoon - one of the best and it wasn't even over yet. I still had to run get eggs from my friend Lisa.

Lindsay and I left Yvonne's to drive out to the country to get some beautiful farm fresh eggs from my friend, Lisa's daughter Emma. Emma got chickens last year for her 4H project and she sells them for $2 dozen. They are the best eggs you will ever eat. Her chickens roam around eating bugs and grass and seeds. Because of what they eat they have these bright orangish, yellow yolks that look a lot more like the eggs you get in Europe. I can't even eat a store bought egg anymore unless I am desperate. She even has hens that lay pale blue and green eggs. I think most people have no idea that there are chickens that lay colored eggs. We are much too far removed from our food anymore. We visited with Lisa for a few minutes but she was still busy getting things ready for school. She's a 3rd grade teacher and last week was the first week of school. Lindsay wanted to see the hens so Emma took us out to the coup. She has named a couple of the chickens. One is named Elizabeth but I didn't catch the other name. I think she has about 10 hens. They slow down their egg laying in the summer when it gets hot. Who knew?

After our tour of the coup we headed back to Yvonne's to pick up Jack. She wanted to try some of the farm fresh eggs so I gave her a couple to try for breakfast.

Throughout the day another group of women I used to meet with every month was trying to plan another last minute get together. We had't seen each other all summer and wanted to catch up but our first plan to catch jazz at City Park was out because it was end of summer. The series was over. We decided to meet at Donna's house and sit out on the patio with a glass of wine and whatever tidbit each of us found at home to bring and nibble on.

I zipped home, popped something in the oven for John and the kids and headed to Donna's with a bottle of wine and a bowl of tomatoes from my garden with the rest of the farmer's market basil and some balsamic vinegar.

The perfect evening to punctuate an already perfect day spent in the company of women. We sat out on the patio in the cool evening breeze with a glass of wine and our stories of the summer. Sharlene telling us of the travels with her new job and the chapter she is writing for a book she is working on. Marilyn catching us up on all her new clients and the goings on of some of her old clients (she markets artists). Jennifer catching us up on her busy summer of politics with her husband running for Congress. And Donna telling us about the writing workshop she did in Paris over the summer and reading us one of her fabulous "flash fiction" short stories. And the bring what you have food was to die for! Sharlene made ceviche with halibut she caught on a fishing trip in Alaska and fresh peaches. Donna had the most fabulous brie I have ever tasted. I thought I might have an orgasm with every bite - Delice de Bourgogne (I think) - like butter it melts in your mouth. Marilyn brought a crisp chardonnay and some marinated feta. This was one of the nicest evenings I've spent this summer. Just lovely.

On the way home I stopped at my daughter Lindsay's apartment to see her new coffee table from Ikea. She had cleaned and rearranged furniture and it just looked great. I was so proud her in her neat little apartment.

What a perfect day - in the company of women.

But nice to go home and find my favorite man waiting for me too.