Sunday, July 18, 2010

Frog in the Pool

My brother, Frankie and his girlfriend, Alice, had dinner with us and then we jumped into the pool. After a couple hours we decided we needed some Sonic shakes and started cleaning all the toys out of the pool. We realized one toy was missing. Some of the toys have a new habit of drifting into the chamber where the filter basket is so that's where we assumed it was. Hubby reached into the chamber and had a mini-freak out moment because he felt something in the chamber and it wasn't a toy.

Nick expected some kind of dead creature because he found one in the pool about a week ago but thankfully didn't really let on. We popped open the top to the filter chamber and found this little guy swirling around in circles. It took a second to figure out what he was.Then came the yelps of, "It's a frog!"


So we scooped the frog up (and I dubbed him Kermit) and got ready to release him back into the wild.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Iron Chef New Jersey

Our garden has taken on mutant proportions. We have tons of green tomatoes, basil, and lettuce, but the one item that has been in great abundance is squash. We have zucchini and yellow squash galore!

Lately it's been like an episode of Iron Chef at our house with zucchini and yellow squash as the secret ingredient.

We've had it grilled (which is the go to) but I decided I needed to be a bit more creative with our meals.

So I became Mario Batali (but I have red Crocs) and made...

Squash with shell pasta, walnuts and raisins. The side was thinly sliced cucumber in a rice vinegar, sugar, salt mixture topped with sesame seeds. 
 My next challenge yielded stuffed squash for dinner. This was semi-homemade. Started by halving the squash and clearing the seeds out with a grapefruit spoon (those serrated edges are awesome). I had Nick grill the squash halves for a nice flavor and those lovely grill lines. I saved the seeds part and later sauteed them with some onion and garlic. Then on the side I ground pre-cooked sausage from Trader Joe's (the flavor was spinach and something) in the food processor then combined with seed saute adding pecorino romano cheese, garlic powder and mixing. Then stuff the squash with the mixture and throw into the oven on 375 for about 25 minutes to heat everything through really good.

Today I am making zucchini bread. I actually have it in the oven right now and need to kill an hour before it's ready.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

July 3rd Harvest

4 yellow squash, a curved cucumber and a stunted zucchini.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Today's Harvest

Zucchini, yellow squash, big ass Japanese cucumber and two bush pickles