Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [99]
1 chopped onion, garlic to taste
3 large zucchini
Olive oil for sauté
Use a cheese grater or mandoline to shred zucchini; sauté briefly with chopped onion and garlic until lightly golden.
Thyme
Oregano
¼ cup grated Parmesan or any hard yellow cheese
Add spices to zucchini mixture, stir thoroughly, and then remove mixture from heat.
Combine with cheese and cooked orzo, salt to taste, serve cool or at room temperature.
ZUCCHINI CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
(Makes about two dozen)
1 egg, beaten
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Combine in large bowl.
1 cup white flour 1 cup whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
Combine in a separate, small bowl and blend into liquid mixture
1 cup finely shredded zucchini
12 ounces chocolate chips
Stir these into other ingredients, mix well. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350°, 10 to 15 minutes.
Don’t tell my sister.
Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com
SQUASH-SEASON MEAL PLAN
Sunday ~ Braised chicken with squash, corn, and cilantro
Monday ~ Grilled vegetable panini, served with green salad
Tuesday ~ Sliced cold chicken (cooked Sunday) and zucchini orzo
Wednesday ~ Grilled hamburgers with grilled green beans and squash
Thursday ~ Egg-battered squash blossoms stuffed with cheese, served with salad
Friday ~ Pizza with grilled baby squash, eggplant, caramelized onions, and mozzarella
Saturday ~ Lamb chops and baked stuffed zucchini
* * *
13 • LIFE IN A RED STATE
August
I’ve kept a journal for most of the years I’ve been gardening. I’m a habitual scribbler, jotting down the triumphs and flops of each season that I always feel pretty sure I’d remember anyway: that the Collective Farm Woman melons were surprisingly prissy; that the Dolly Partons produced such whopping tomatoes, the plants fell over. Who could forget any of that? Me, as it turns out. Come winter when it’s time to order seeds again, I always need to go back and check the record. The journal lying open beside my bed also offers a handy incentive at each day’s end for making a few notes about the weather, seasonal shifts in bloom and fruiting times, big family events, the day’s harvest, or just the minutiae that keep me entertained. The power inside the pea-sized brain of a hummingbird, for example, that repeatedly built her nest near our kitchen door: despite her migrations across continents and the storms of life, her return date every spring was the same, give or take no more than twenty-four hours.
Over years, trends like that show up. Another one is that however jaded I may have become, winter knocks down the hollow stem of my worldliness and I’ll start each summer again with expectations as simple as a child’s. The first tomato of the season brings me to my knees. Its vital stats are recorded in my journal with the care of a birth announcement: It’s an Early Girl! Four ounces! June 16! Blessed event, we’ve waited so long. Over the next few weeks I note the number, size, and quality of the different tomato varieties as they begin to come in: two Green Zebras, four gorgeous Jaune Flammés, one single half-pound Russian Black. I note that the latter wins our summer’s first comparative taste test—a good balance of tart and sweet with strong spicy notes. I describe it in my journal the way an oenophile takes notes on a new wine discovery. On the same day, I report that our neighbor wants to give away all her Russian Blacks on the grounds they are “too ugly to eat.” I actually let her give me a couple.
As supply rises, value depreciates. Three weeks after the **First Tomato!** entry in my journal, I’ve dropped the Blessed Event language and am just putting them down for the count: “10 Romas today, 8 Celebrity, 30 Juliet.” I continue keeping track so we’ll know eventually which varieties performed best, but by early August