Garden produce is now beginning to take over the kitchen table and it looks like more is to come! Every day involves watering, picking what’s ready and processing when the pile gets big enough! I’ve added a fourth activity…giving away what I can’t use to any neighbor that walks by! (smile)
Now that I’ve tried out quite a few recipes with shredded zucchini, I think the rest will be shredded or cut into cubes and frozen or dehydrated. They will be great additions to soup and baked goods all winter! Very soon, the large tomatoes will be cooked and canned into something I can use all winter. I should not have to buy cans of diced/cooked tomatoes for many months!
Here’s what the garden looks like today!
The latest planting of radishes is popping up. The lettuce is ready to harvest.
We’ve been using onions and soon will dig them all up (or dump them out)!
More “Raindrop” tomatoes are ripening every day! They are tasty!
The pumpkins are turning orange!
The lavender is still attracting bees, but it is sure having trouble standing up!
The Bodacious tomatoes are ripening first, while the SuperSauce are finally starting to turn color.
Bodacious
SuperSauce
The carrots are hanging in there!
The green and yellow beans are DONE and gone! Looks like the zucchini plants will spread out into the space.
The zucchini is producing at least 3-4 a day!
And of course, the Echinacea is nuts! The bees love them!
So that’s what is happening in our back yard (and kitchen). Enjoy! For questions or comments, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Tomato season is just getting started and most of the ones we’re eating are the small “Raindrop” tomatoes
We had 3 regular tomatoes from the garden turn red, but each had a blemish that would need to be cut out. Then, Bert came home from camp with 4 tomatoes each in a plastic shell. They looked great but I knew they weren’t local and fresh. While we were eating the small tomatoes, I knew we’d ignore the big ones until they spoiled on the counter!
I wondered how hard it would be to make a small batch of tomato soup…I had a memory in mind of a lovely bowl of tomato soup my mother had made…MANY years ago. Somehow, the cans of condensed tomato soup just didn’t taste like my memory!
First, I looked up the recipe for “Fresh Tomato Soup” in my Joy of Cooking cookbook.
Sounded like the same procedure when I cook tomatoes in preparation for canning. I even had a fresh onion from the garden. I took the 7 tomatoes I had on the kitchen table and weighed them…almost 3 pounds! Good Enough!
NOTE: You can skip all the instruction below about preparing the tomatoes and just use several cans of diced tomatoes. Keep reading!
Next, each tomato needed to be trimmed and blemishes cut out. I cut an X on the bottom of each one. I got a pan of water ready to boil so I could dip each tomato into the hot water. In one minute, the skins would loosen so they would be easy to peel.
I lined the tomatoes up by the stove and put 4 and then 3 in the boiling water. After a minute I moved them to ice water. The skins were beginning to come off.
Of course, the steam clouded my camera!
I noticed the recipe said to remove the seeds. It wasn’t hard to just get rid of the seed pocket in the commercial tomatoes. Our tomatoes had hardly any developed seeds!
NOTE: If you have no interest in starting with fresh tomatoes, I think you could easily begin with a few cans of diced tomatoes and jump down to the step below that has the diced tomatoes cooking with chopped onion and go from there!
I had the onion ready to put in the pot with the cut tomatoes and simmered them on the stove.
After about 45 minutes everything looked pretty soft. I poured the whole pile into the blender and in less than a minute there were no chunks! Of course, I poured the pureed tomatoes/onions from the blender into a container before I took a picture of the blender! I put this container in the refrigerator until lunch time.
When it was time for lunch, I put the cooked pureed tomatoes/onions into a saucepan and started warming them up.
I added about a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, a sprinkle of pepper and a teaspoon of Basil flakes. I let this simmer about 10 minutes. Finally, I added about 1/4 cup of coconut milk. Bert added additional regular milk to his bowl.
Very tasty!!
I know it seems like it was a lot of work, but if I’m cooking tomatoes anyway, why not make a good meal out of them while I’m cooking! Even if you start with plain canned diced tomatoes, it will end up tasting pretty good! Enjoy!
ps. Just for fun, I looked up the ingredients in Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup. The serving size was 1/2 cup and was 90 calories! Here’s the ingredient list for that can of soup: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Water, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Salt, Potassium Salt, Natural Flavoring, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Celery Extract, Garlic Oil. Contains: Wheat.
I think my soup tasted just fine without the wheat and “natural flavoring!”
If you have comments or questions, please contact me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Just as I was babying along the first precious zucchini…surprise! We are now picking zucchini every day, with more on the way! Of course! Since I didn’t want to keep baking every day using only one to two cups of shredded zucchini in a recipe, it was time to start dehydrating the shreds.
First, I got the dehydrator uncovered and ready to use. It sits right outside the kitchen door, covered in a cloth cover with a board sitting on top. That lets us stack things on top…like the mail or stuff that needs to be put away in the garage. When I need it, I just uncover it and it’s ready to go. When it’s running, the noise, heat and any food smells are not in the house!
There is a set of plastic sheets to keep small items from falling through the grid.
Next, I set up the shredder and starting shredding!
I spread the shreds on the dehydrator trays covered with plastic sheets. I set the dehydrator for 125 degrees (Vegetables) and left it alone for about 6 hours.
One cup of shredded zucchini makes about 1/4 cup of dehydrated shreds.
I ended up with 1/2 of a gallon ziplock bag of zucchini shreds. Much easier to store! We’ll see how they work when I soak them in water and use them in zucchini bread or cookies! I picked another 6 zucchini this morning…and so it continues! Enjoy! If you have questions or comments, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
A few days ago, I experimented with a recipe for zucchini cookies. The recipe came from allrecipes.com. They didn’t taste too bad, but they were basically undercooked. I didn’t know how to trust my oven temperature and couldn’t tell by looking if they were done. I kept thinking they needed more flour and since I don’t really care for raisins, maybe chocolate chips would be better. I even wondered if I could add a little coconut to the mix! Here is the original recipe:
The cookies that followed the original recipe came out looking like these…kind of flat and undercooked.
So today, I tried again. First, shredding the zucchini:
Two zucchini made 2 cups of shredded zucchini…enough for two batches of cookies. The second cup of shreds I put in a zip bag with a paper towel to soak up moisture and stored it in the refrigerator.
Here are my notes as I modified the recipe as I went along:
The flour mixture has all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of coconut (like for macaroons), baking soda, ground cinnamon and salt (I left out ground cloves because we don’t care for that taste).
Then, I melted a stick of butter and beat it with the sugar. I added 2 eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla. Next came the shredded zucchini, the flour mixture and the cup of chocolate chips.
At this point the mixture was really sticky, so I put it in the refrigerator for an hour. I tried making dough balls but it was still too sticky so I just scooped up dough with a teaspoon and put them on the cookie sheets. Timing was different from the original recipe…at 375 degrees, I gave them 6 minutes. Then I rotated the trays and gave them another 6 minutes. They were browning nicely so I took them out of the oven. They turned out great! They are more “cakey” but tasty and used up a zucchini!
Finally, here is my revised recipe. Enjoy! If you have questions or comments, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Garden season has begun spilling over into the kitchen…at least with zucchini! The last month or so has been all about keeping plants watered and watching them grow. Now it’s time to make room on the kitchen counter for assorted tiny tomatoes and zucchini. Finally, all those recipes for zucchini that I’ve been collecting over the last year will be useful.
If you’ve been following along with each update, you should be able to see that the plants are starting to really produce! The second planting of lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson and Little Gem) have finally popped up. I’ll plant the next section later today.
The radishes grow quickly and taste delicious! I’ll pull them today and replant for the next batch.
The onions are bursting out of the planters…we are using them one at a time, but it might be time to dump them out!
The small tomatoes (called Raindrops) are finally starting to ripen. From a distance, they look like of strings of pearls hanging on the plants.
The pumpkins are going nuts! Bert made a little stand for one pumpkin that was hanging over the fence. So cute! There are more hiding under the leaves.
Up in the garden on the hill, everything is going strong. The lavender has been beaten down by the rain, but the bees don’t care. I’ll try to cut some and avoid the bees.
The tomatoes are producing well. When they start to ripen my days will be filled with cooked tomatoes…and BLT’s!
The carrots are finally looking healthy!
I’ve picked beans twice now…they are yummy when fresh.
The zucchini explosion has begun! I will need to check them every day!
The echinacea are covered with bees and butterflies. Makes me happy!
So that’s the garden today! I hope you are enjoying your summer!
If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
I now have a folder full of zucchini recipes to try…and we finally have some zucchini! I just couldn’t make myself buy zucchini when I saw the plants in the garden a few days ago. In three days since I took this picture, I picked two that were about 8″ long.
Of course, I forgot to take a picture of them before I put them through the shredder! This little hand-operated shredder worked just great for two zucchini.
The recipe came from https://allrecipes.com and I didn’t retype it yet. I’m starting to like the way allrecipes.com formats their recipes.
When I looked at the ingredients, I saw I needed a dry cornbread mix, 8.5 ounces. Interesting. I thought that must be a small mix. Sure enough, it was a Jiffy cornbread mix!
I started by shredding the zucchini and chopping an onion.
Then I added two eggs and mixed in the 4 oz of cheese.
Then I added the cornbread mix.
I put this mixture in a casserole sprayed with oil, and sprinkled the rest of the cheese on top.
I put the casserole in a 350-degree oven timed for 55 minutes instead of 60 minutes as called for in the recipe, just in case my oven temperature was still unpredictable. After 45 minute the cheese on top was very brown. I took the casserole out of the oven, worried that the top layer of cheese was baked too hard even though the inside could probably bake another 10 minutes.
The casserole tasted fine, but next time I’ll wait until the last 15 minutes to put the cheese on top. Here’s what it looked like after we’ve eaten most of it. It really was pretty tasty!
I will count this recipe a success and will make it again! If you have a question or comment please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
What a difference the sun makes! Here’s the latest from my cruise around the garden. On the patio, the onions have exploded! They are so tightly packed we’ll have to cut them out of the planter…or maybe we’ll just dump them on the ground and pull them apart. Obviously, they were planted too close together! I shouldn’t have to buy onions the rest of the summer!
The next round of radishes has sprouted. Last week I pulled them all out. Bert refilled the planter with fresh dirt so I could plant again.
The new lettuce seed has sprouted:
The small ‘Raindrop’ tomatoes are doing well…I’m hoping they start to turn red soon!
The pumpkins are reaching out and up!
Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender is finally turning purple and boy does it smell good when I brush my hand over the flowers!
The tomatoes are looking good…I’ll have a lot to work with in August!
The carrots have finally decided to grow!
The green and yellow beans are now flowering…the yellow beans seem to be about a week ahead of the green ones.
One of the zucchini plants is actually making zucchini!
And of course, the Echinacea is going nuts. Most seem to be pink, but in the far corner I can still see some of the other colors I planted.
It’s amazing what a little sunshine will do to get things growing. If you have comments or questions for me, please drop me an email at maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Last weekend was busy! We went to our daughter’s home outside Pittsburgh to attend our grandson’s high school graduation party. Quite a party! I think our daughter could start a business of party planning…if she should ever decide to leave Pharmacy! Haha! I managed to get some pictures before 70+ people showed up…and then I totally forgot to take any once I started visiting!
First of all, my grandson is still much taller than me! And he got his hair all shaved off! Quite a surprise! Since he’ll be here this fall at Penn State main campus, I’m looking forward to seeing him now and then.
The party decorations were wonderful…and yummy!
So many snapshots of him growing up!
We drove down and back in one day so we could be ready for their whole family to come visit us the next day! Ben and parents were to attend orientation meetings for new freshmen. Ben got to spend the night in the dorm and the parents (and sister!) slept at our house. The next day while Ben and parents were attending meetings, Anna and I had a chance to do some shopping and visit the greyhound kennel. My friend Toni let us check out a few dogs and give them some treats.
When the dust settled and everyone went home, I was able to check out the garden. The radishes were ready to pull! Yum!
And the Echinacea was looking good!
Busy weekend. I’m grateful we had a few dry days without rain! Enjoy!
I’ve spent the last year looking forward to the Art in the Orchard festival. This year it will be held July 10-12, 2025 in the big field next to Way’s Fruit Farm on Rt. 550, just past Stormstown, PA. This is the same weekend as the Central PA Festival of the Arts in State College and the People’s Choice Festival at the Grange Fairgrounds in Centre Hall. Busy weekend for all.
Last year was quite a learning experience for me. Being a vendor is so different than just visiting an arts festival. I discovered how complicated it was to set up a booth, display my stuff and interact with the public for several days. Thank goodness I was with my friend Toni, who had done this before. She had the tent, the tables and the know-how to set everything up. Here was my display last year:
This whole year, my focus was on building my inventory of bracelets to sell. With just two weeks to go, I’ve had to stop making bracelets and figure out how to display things. I also knew I needed new business cards, some kind of sign and my own table with a cover. I would be providing the 10×10 tent and we just ordered the side walls. Next, we need to figure out how to assemble it ourselves.
I’ve been trying to make own business cards, but it’s been hard to design what I want with a Word program and card template. (I sure do miss PageMaker!). My original idea was this:
I couldn’t get the “beads” to center properly and I wanted a line to be the “string” holding them together. I could not get the circles to travel together!
I finally went to the printer and ordered cards…and tried to explain my issues with the program. This is what I ended up with:
Not quite what I had in mind…but I had 200 printed. I’ll revise for next year!
Of course, the vinyl sign I ordered matches the new card:
So now it’s time to assemble my display. (First, Bert had to show me how to open up the folding table!) The cover obviously needs to be ironed!
Last year I used baskets to hold each size bracelet:
This year that won’t work…I have too many bracelets!
I also need to figure out how to hang the sign…it kept falling off! The regular bracelets are on the right, and they will the closest to the visitors passing by. We’ll see how long they stay neat and organized! They will be $10 each and come in three sizes: 7″, 7 1/2″ and 8″.
On the left side of the table will be my specialty bracelets. They will be more expensive ($20) and also come in three sizes. There aren’t as many bracelets… 15 different topics from “Ease Arthritis Symptoms” to “Headaches and Migraines” to “Supporting Weight Loss.” They have become very popular but they use several beads together and have a print out of what each stone contributes to the Intention.
On the back of my card, that is included with each bracelet, is this disclaimer:
When it says “Bracelet with Intention” it means when I make the bracelet I’m thinking about how it might help you, and the beads themselves hold meaning. It is not a medical device but it can help you focus your mind to help with the intention.
Finally, I’m trying to get better at taking some pictures that look a little more interesting. I’d like to make a booklet of the various specialty bracelets I’ve made. Luckily, when I first started learning about the stones themselves I collected a variety that I can now use in setting up some pictures. I’m not sure I need to have more stones. I’ll have to worry about this project after the festival!
Most of my bracelets are made with 6mm beads. I’m now getting more requests from guys (my grandson Ben, age 18, is often asking for a bracelet to help with a specific thing, like clarity and focus when he starts Penn State this fall.) So, I’ve started adding larger beads (8mm) to my supplies. Geez…it’s starting to add up! Not a cheap hobby, but so rewarding.
I did have a question from a friend…did I make necklaces? So far…no. But I thought I’d give it a try to see if my elastic was strong enough to handle a necklace of 6mm beads. I made a necklace of a repeating pattern of chakra stones and then made a matching bracelet:
It looked pretty, but was it comfortable?
It was more comfortable that I expected but I had to use over 75 beads…enough for 4 bracelets! Maybe if I had enough of the 4mm beads it would be worth it, but for now I think I’ll skip necklaces! If you’d like to see more of my bracelets, come find me at the Art in Orchard festival July 10-12, 2025! If you have questions or comments about this post, please just email me directly: maryjkisner@gmail.com.
Enough rain already!! We certainly have not had to water the garden for several weeks. Unfortunately, the plants also need sunshine! Bert has been keeping an eye on the plants and the focus has been more on fungicides and slugs. Today, the sun actually came out for a few minutes, so I put my old sneakers and slogged out to take some pictures. The grass is so tall my ankles were soaked in minutes!
I’ve pulled the first round of radishes and replanted. The first batch were yummy, but a few were a little spicy. The second planting is doing well.
I cut the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce a few days ago and we’re enjoying it in salads. The other lettuce is ready to eat. When I replant, I’ll stagger the plantings so it isn’t all ready at once!
The onions are crazy. We’re pulling them as we need them.
The small tomatoes…called Raindrops…are doing very well. They will be great in salads!
On my way up the hill to the other garden, I stopped to check out the pumpkins Bert planted by the wood pile. The fence seems to keep the rabbits away.
Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender stems are filling out.
The tomatoes are making flowers so there’s hope tomatoes will follow!
We can finally see the carrot tops! I was sure they had drowned!
Yay! We have bean plants!
Bert had to buy more zucchini seeds, but finally we have plants.
My beloved Echinacea have spread to fill up the space! Lots of potential flowers…and one daring to open all alone…for now!
I was outside for about 20 minutes…and then it rained AGAIN! And then the sun came out about an hour later…for a few minutes and it rained again. Geez!
If you have any comments or questions about our garden, please just email me. Every day I get about 100 spam comments in foreign languages. I don’t want to miss anything from a REAL person and I’d love to hear from you so use my email! maryjkisner@gmail.com
