Photos of our garden are brought to you by Cate- aren't they wonderful? She gave me permission to share them here.
The crazy amount of growth in our garden this week is brought to you by an abundance of rain- a huge amount for Colorado's dry climate. That's fine by me- it has been the nicest summer I can remember, with only a few of those "it's so hot I can't stand it" days, and lots and lots of those cooling afternoon rains. I love it- so this is what Seattle's like! Maybe. I'm expecting well dry out here again pretty quickly, and get back to the normal summer activities of swimming, getting wet, wading in creeks, putting feet in kiddie pools, and everything else one does to stay cool on those hot, dry days: namely, get wet.
But this is a garden post so I'll give you a little update. We harvested the first of the basil last week- I didn't get a picture, unfortunately, but I made a huge- HUGE batch of pesto with it. Despite the huge batch, and my fears of, "What are we going to do with all the pesto I'll have to make this year?" I forgot how much my family loves pesto. Add a couple of friends over for dinner who also love pesto, and we made short work of that huge batch. Of course, I wasn't trying to conserve it this time, the way I usually do when I have to buy the expensive basil at the stoe, so I didn't dilute it with as much olive oil as I normally do, and I let the kids have pretty much as much as they wanted. They loved that. I am thrilled that there should be many more batches of pesto in the future.
I made fried zucchini from our garden as well, coating it with panko and parmesan cheese and then frying it in olive oil. This wasn't as big of a hit. The kids were rather ambivalent about it, despite dipping it in ranch dressing, and I must admit I wasn't all that crazy about it either. Maybe I just need to do the simple sauteing in olive oil with a little salt, or garlic salt, and eat a healthy side dish and not get too elaborate with it. Come to think of it, I'm not exactly crazy about zucchini (though I don't dislike it) so I am going to have to get creative using it all up. Why again did we plant so much? Well, there's always that old stand by, zucchini bread, which also happens to freeze great.
Judging by the photos, I better get to those snap peas before the are overripe. Fortunately, I will have no shortage of helpers getting those all eaten up. All of us love them.
Are my garden updates soon going to transition to "How I used up the vegetables this week" updates? I'm starting to think so. That's okay. The eating is what the gardening's all about.
