Groundhogs & Bananas

 Did you know that groundhogs like bananas?  I didn’t.

Last week, Nick and I checked the produce clearance section (buying produce for all of the groundhogs isn’t cheap!) at the grocery store.  The only produce on clearance was the bags of very ripe bananas.

I wasn’t sure how the groundhogs would feel about bananas.  I hate bananas, so I tend to think that everyone else does, too.

Nick loves bananas, so he tends to think that everyone else loves bananas.  As a banana lover, Nick advocated buying them and seeing if the groundhogs would like them.  He predicted that they’d like them. 

Nick was right.  The groundhogs love bananas! 

I took this plate out, with three bananas broken into chunks.

And this is what the plate looked like a few hours later.

Here’s a video of one of the groundhogs enjoying the bananas.

Would you have guessed that groundhogs like bananas?  And does your guess have anything to do with your opinion of bananas?  

This Was Our Menu For The Week 04/12/20 - 4/18/20

No pizza order last week!  We did get takeout twice, though.  My goal for this week is no takeout or delivery.  We’ll see how it goes.  We picked up a fairly large grocery order from Wal-Mart on Friday evening, so I  have no excuse not to cook, and I definitely want to make sure the produce doesn’t go bad.

Sunday: It was pretty chilly here, and very rainy and stormy, so soup seemed like a good choice.  I made my version of Olive Garden’s Pasta e Fagioli soup, and it was delicious.  I also made a loaf of Italian Herb bread in the bread machine.

I made a buttermilk pie for dessert on Sunday that we enjoyed through most of the week.  I know it’s not pretty, but it’s so good.

Monday: Cheese Enchiladas.  I used this recipe, but halved it.  We also had refried beans with our enchiladas.

Tuesday: This was when the takeout started.  I had Thai food, which I love, but Nick is less crazy about.  Nick had Arby’s, which I refuse to eat.

Wednesday: We had burgers and milkshakes from the McDonald’s drive-thru.

Thursday: Cheese Tetrazzini.  It’s not the prettiest dish, but it was so good.

Friday: Taco salad.  We were actually able to get lettuce on the grocery order, which was a nice change from the last few.

Saturday: Nick made pancakes for breakfast.  I love pancakes, but mine are absolutely terrible.  Nick’s are really good, and these were even better than usual.  There is no picture of the pancakes because I was too busy devouring them.  We had leftovers (taco salad and cheese tetrazzini) for lunch and dinner.

Breakfast was mostly cereal, with one day of egg sandwiches, and one day of this Dutch Apple Pancake, which I did an experiment on.  I read recently that oat milk works the best in baking if you’re not using regular dairy milk.  I wanted to test it out, but I wanted to do it on something fairly low stakes.   We were out of milk by Friday morning, so I gave the oat milk a try in the Dutch Apple Pancake.  We’d had it before, so knew how it was supposed to taste, and it wouldn’t waste a lot of ingredients if it was bad.  It was fine.  Neither one of us could tell any difference.  I feel fairly confident now in using oat milk in baked goods if we’re out of regular dairy milk.  That should help limit our grocery trips/orders a little more.

I think I may have finally figured out a system for getting produce right now.  I’m trying to only do grocery orders every two weeks, or even a little longer if we can manage it.  That makes it a little tricky with things like fresh produce and milk.  The oat milk experiment mostly solved the milk problem, so that just leaves the produce problem.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern with what’s available as far as produce, so I’m learning to be a little more flexible.  I put a variety of produce on the grocery order, knowing we wouldn’t get all of it.  We were able to get lettuce, spinach, yellow squash, zucchini, onions, strawberries, asparagus, a couple of tomatoes, cilantro, cauliflower, carrots, celery, and a very tiny head of broccoli.  We weren’t able to get cucumbers, parsley,  butternut squash, raspberries, green beans, or any shredded broccoli or coleslaw mixes.

My plan is to use the things with the shortest shelf life first, then move on to the things that will last a little longer, and then to probably use some frozen veggies the last few days before our next grocery order.

So what about you?  Have you changed the way you shop for groceries?  What produce have you been able to get, or not been able to get?   Have you tried any successful substitutions?

We Signed Up For A Produce Box

I’ve been slowly learning to like vegetables as an adult.  Fresh vegetables just didn’t feature much on the menu when I was growing up, so there were some I didn’t even try until the past few years. 

It’s also pretty easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to buying vegetables.  I love squash, zucchini, peppers, and onions.  It takes little effort and virtually no thought to use them, so I tend to automatically buy those.  I don’t always think about adding different vegetables to the mix, or trying new ones.

A few years ago we signed up for a CSA, and discovered a whole new world of vegetables.  For the first time in my life, I was planning meals around fresh produce, and trying lots of new vegetables.  We liked the CSA so much we signed up for it every year, and from May through October we picked up a box of fresh produce every week.  Our diet was definitely healthier during those months.  That’s also when I discovered that I love beets.

Unfortunately, the farm we bought our CSA from switched over to just wholesale, and we had a hard time finding another farm that was a good fit for us.  A lot of farms only offered full shares (which is too much for just two people), or didn’t have a pickup location that worked for us.  We decided we would just buy our produce from the grocery store and farmer’s markets, but vary what we bought.  That didn’t last very long, Before long, we were back to sticking with our old standbys.

Then I started reading about produce delivery services.  They seem to be becoming fairly popular.  The concept varies a little from company to company; some seem to be focused more on preventing food waste, some seem to be focused a little more on organic produce, and some seem to be very similar to a regular CSA, but with delivery.  It took some time, but I found one with fairly reasonable prices that delivers to us. 

Their focus seems to be organically grown, and sourcing produce as close to home as possible.  Obviously during some months there’s not much (anything?) being grown here, but they source the produce from farms as close to us as possible.  We signed up in February, and have been very happy with it so far.  I set up an account with a default delivery option, which for us is a small bin of mixed (fruit and vegetables) produce. 

We have the option to skip a week, which is nice for when we go out of town.  We also have the option to customize our bin.  There’s a small increase in price if we choose to customize, but it’s worth it to spend a few dollars more on a week we would otherwise be getting something that we just wouldn’t eat.  I’ve been trying not to customize much, unless there’s something we just truly do not like.  After all, a big part of why we’re doing this is to increase the variety of vegetables we eat.  I’m very happy to know that we’ll be able to customize our bin during the summer, though, when we’re usually inundated with certain things from our garden. 

The orders go in a week ahead of time, so that makes it easier to plan meals around what we’re getting.  It also helps me to know that there’s another bin coming every Sunday; it gives me more incentive to use up what’s on hand to make room for the new produce we have coming.  We’re definitely eating more fresh vegetables than we do when we don’t have some sort of subscription service, so I think it’s working out for us. 

What about you?  Do you enjoy a variety of vegetables?  Do you belong to a CSA, or have a produce delivery service?  Do you have to force or trick yourself into eating different vegetables?

Invasion of the Giant Squash

The giants, with the little Roma.

The garden is coming along nicely. It still surprises me a little bit every year. I plant seeds, and things grow. Usually much more abundantly than I dared to hope.

The squash and zucchini are growing like crazy. I suspect the tomatoes will be in another week or so. The peppers are lagging behind, but they do that every year.

One thing I’ve noticed about the squash and zucchini is that they seem to go from being tiny, not quite ready to pick little darlings to absolute giants almost overnight. I try to pick them when they’re medium size, but that doesn’t always work out. 

The normal size!

It’s a little hard to tell how huge these were from the picture, so I took a picture of more "normal" sized squash and zucchini in the same basket to give you some perspective. Also, the little tomato on the left? It’s this year’s first Roma. It’s a little on the small side, but that should give you a little more perspective as to the size of the giants surrounding it.

So what about you? Did you plant a vegetable garden? Are you being invaded by giant squash?

Summer Vegetable Pizza

This pizza is quick, easy, delicious, and a great way to make use of the summer produce.  You can play with the measurements and ingredients to make use of whatever cheese and vegetables you happen to have on hand.  We seem to use a slightly different combination of vegetables (depending on what we have on hand) each time, but it’s always really good.

1 refrigerated pre-made pizza crust

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 – 4 garlic cloves, pressed or chopped (we use 4 because we love garlic)

Italian Seasoning

Parsley

Salt & Pepper

1 onion, thinly sliced

Squash and/or Zucchini, sliced

Tomatoes, sliced

Shredded Cheese

Roll the crust out on a bar pan or cookie sheet.  If you’re using a well seasoned pan you don’t need to oil the bottom, if not you’ll want to oil the bottom of your pan.  Mix garlic cloves into olive oil and spread over crust.  Sprinkle with Italian Seasoning and Parsley.  

Bake at 350 for 8 – 11 minutes.

Sprinkle cheese over the crust.  It’s really good if you use a mix of cheddar and mozzarella.  Then layer on your vegetables.  Sprinkle the veggies with Italian Seasoning, parsley, salt and pepper to taste.  Layer on some more cheese. 

Bake at 350 for 15 – 18 minutes.

Enjoy! 

We’re In!

I heard about CSAs a few years ago from a co-worker.  You can read more about them here, but basically CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are a way for farmers and people local to them to work together.  The benefits for the farmer include receiving money up front and sharing some of the risk.  The benefits for the consumer include weekly (sometimes bi-weekly) fresh, local, seasonal produce, and knowing exactly where the food is coming from.  It seems like a largely win-win arrangement.

We have wanted to join a CSA since I first heard about it from my co-worker.  We liked the idea of buying local food and knowing where it comes from.  We also think (hope) that having already paid for and receiving a weekly box of fresh produce will encourage us to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.  We also found this wonderful cookbook, The New Southern Garden Cookbook, by Sheri Castle, which got me even more interested in joining a CSA.  The cookbook is organized by ingredient and focuses on using what you have an abundance of, usually what’s in season.  The recipes are amazing; they seem to be an excellent mix of somewhat traditional preparations and different ways of using the same old produce.  All of the sections begin with some information on traditional use, growing methods, etc for that particular food, which makes for interesting reading.  Having this cookbook removed that last little bit of doubt about what we would end up doing with produce that we weren’t as familiar with. 

But it just didn’t work out for us to join a CSA for a few years.  It seemed that we couldn’t find a place with a convenient pick-up location, that offered half shares (a full share just seems like way too much for only two people), that was within our budget, that wasn’t already full.

This year, though, I put joining a CSA on the calendar for January because we didn’t want to be too late and miss out.  We finally found one that offers half-shares and a pick-up location about 15 minutes from both of our office buildings with hours that will easily allow one of us to pick up our box every week.  This CSA offers a payment plan of one third down and the rest paid over the next two months, which definitely makes it easier on the budget.  It also seems like this farm will be a good fit for us as their shares focus more on fruits and vegetables and less on herbs (which we plan to grow ourselves again this year) and fresh flowers (which are lovely, but not safe with our quirky quartet of cats).

We sent our application and down payment in at the beginning of the month and yesterday we received our confirmation email.  We’re officially in!  The pick-ups should start sometime in late May and they will be in touch with us closer to that time.  Now we just have to pay the remaining balance and wait, and of course decide which recipes we want to try.

Blueberry Almond Pound Cake

During my travels over the holiday weekend I noticed that the local (and not so local) produce stands seem to be in full swing; they were all bustling with activity.  It also seems that most of the local grocery stores are having sales on berries.

I must admit I prefer to buy them from the side of road produce stands.  I think the produce is better, and there's just something about the experience of buying from the tiny little produce stands found up and down the highway.  Growing up in the South it also offers a bit of nostalgia; with the warm weather comes the stands selling produce and boiled peanuts.  Always.  They come year after year.  There's a continuity there.  It's peaceful and re-assuring.

All of that being said, here's a recipe for using some of the blueberries:

1 cup butter

2 1/3 cups sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 tsp Almond Extract

4 eggs

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup buttermilk

1 1/3 cups blueberries

2/3 cup almonds

In a large mixing bowl, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Beat in vanilla and almond extract; add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg.  Combine flour with baking soda and salt.  Add to batter.  Add buttermilk and mix well.  Fold in blueberries and almonds.  Butter and sugar a fluted Bundt pan.  Pour batter into pan.  Bake at 325° for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Since the weather is warm and produce stands are opening and expanding their offerings I thought this would be a good time to share one of my favorite recipes:

Fried Green Tomatoes 

The key to delicious fried green tomatoes is using VERY green tomatoes, not any that are beginning to ripen.  You will want to buy (or pick) them the day you plan to fry them, or at least no more than one day earlier.  Frying them in olive oil, rather than vegetable oil, also gives them a better over-all flavor.

Green tomatoes, sliced into thin round pieces

1 cup cornmeal

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Bowl of water

Olive oil

Combine cornmeal, salt, and pepper, in a small bowl.  (This mixture works to coat about 3 green tomatoes.)  Heat olive oil in large skillet over Medium-High heat. Dip tomato slices in water before dipping in cornmeal mixture.  This will help the cornmeal mixture stick to them better.  Make sure tomatoes are well coated on both sides.  Fry tomatoes until golden brown on each side.  Drain on paper towels.  Serve warm.