I tried to improvise tonight and it didn’t go so well. I had been looking at recipes for zucchini and the ones that I’d come across that involved parmesan cheese looked intriguing. I didn’t have bread crumbs so I decided on the old standby of drizzling it with olive oil and melting some of the cheese on top. Too much oil and too long baking I think. They were limp and squishy and didn’t taste all that great. Lesson learned. I’ll try again with bread crumbs and parmesean and no oil. I can bake them like french fries that way. Maybe that will turn out better.

One thing that gardening has taught me is not to be afraid to experiment. The veggies are coming fast and furious and I need to find ways to use them up. I am trying out all sorts of new recipes and even making up some of my own. Usually that starts with someone else’s recipe and gets tweaked because I don’t have key ingredients. 😀

Given the delivered dirt and freshly built garden box, these are some of the most expensive vegetables we’ve ever eaten. However, it has been worth every penny in satisfaction. I have spent far more money on far stupider things.  Now all I have to do is add compost to the dirt every season and it should be good to go. We started off with incredible dirt, we’ll see if I can keep it that way.

My darling husband has ideas about how to redo the back deck that would give me about four times the garden space I have now. I am all for those adjustments! I might actually have the room that the cucumbers seem to need if I had that much space. I’d have to plant them in the box farthest away and let them creep. So far they and the butternut squash have taken over the garden box and about four feet on either side. My poor man can’t mow a big chunk of the lawn because he’d kill my plants. Herioc of him to give up that lawn space to my obsession, isn’t it? I am ever so grateful!

The next experiment is going to be handmade pasta. My wonderful mother bought me a hand crank pasta machine. I have semolina flour and quinoa flour. I think I’ll start with half and half and see how that goes. Quiona is a complete protein and it’d be nice to sneak some of that in. With my latest haul of tomatoes and what’s almost ripe, I’ll have enough for pasta sauce soon. That’ll use up a little of the zucchini. And basil. And garlic. And anything else I can stuff in there. Carrots? Onions, certainly. Add a touch of brown sugar to sweeten it all up, and I should have one heck of a sauce!

So, while I did have a very squishy zucchini fail, it has not yet dampened my enthusiasm.