Zucchini

And rhubarb, because when we got the last CSA box of our short 4-week season last Thursday, I dumped my kohlrabi in the swap box and in exchange took someone else’s rhubarb that they had dumped. So I got double rhubarb and no kohlrabi which is A-OK with me, but now I do need to make some things with the rhubarb.

So far, I’ve made pickled zucchini, my recipe.

And zucchini muffins with a little chocolate swirl and soem olive oil and yogurt in the batter, Justine Doiron’s recipe. They’re good and keep a long time, I think because of the olive oil.

I’ve also been mucking with my zucchini bread/muffins recipe, after I made a batch and the batter didn’t fill the pan. The batch below, the loaf shown plus 10 muffins, is still not right. It looks OK, but it’s a little too salty and not sweet enough and too dry. I think it needs more oil or butter. I’m going to try again shortly.

And I made a zucchini tart with homemade puff pastry, rough puff or quick, puff pastry anyhow. And this pastry has a lot of Parmesan in it. I came across this Brooklyn Supper recipe for zucchini tart, and I was thinking about using it for a CSA recipe, but there’s a pretty strict statement on the website about not using anything except with express written permission, so I decided against sharing it in the CSA newsletter, but still used it as inspiration. I made the zucchini filling differently so I could use up more zucchini. Zucchini ribbons made with a Y peeler and tossed in olive oil with finely chopped shallots instead of coins.

So far with the rhubarb, I’ve made these rhubarb almond bars.

These are also based on somebody else’s recipe, Smitten Kitchen, but I decided the chevron pattern was just too OCD, even for me, plus my rhubarb was pretty skinny so not so condusive to being split and butterflied into the chevrons.

I think that’s all I’m going to do with the rhubarb right now. I moved it up to the kitchen fridge from the basement fridge to encourage myself to deal with it sooner. Tomorrow, I hope. My plan is to make it into thickened rhubarb puree, like I have in my coffee cake recipe, and then use it to make rhubarb handpies. I’m having people over for a picnic on the Saturday after July 4, and handpies would be nice for dessert. I think I’ll swipe the lemon cream cheese from Smitten’s recipe, but use my crust and the rhubarb puree. In fact I think I’ve done this before, although not really sure if I did put the cream cheese in. I do think this is the batch where there were so many, I baked one tray and shaped and froze the rest to be baked later.

Speaking of chevrons, it’s been kind of a shitty week, for liberals in general and me in particular. Monday wasn’t such a bad day. Our student had to be at O’Hare for her flight to Germany by 3:00PM, so we took her out for breakfast. Then I went to work at the book sale, and Mark drove her to the airport. Tuesday was also a pretty normal day. Wednesday was a Jasper day (see pics below) and when he had just fallen asleep for his nap (and it had been hard to get him to go down; he kept sliding off my lap and finding more things to play with, like his sun hat), Mark came upstairs to tell me the washer was not happy. It’s doing the same thing it did when it broke in the winter of 2021-22, won’t spin or drain. When I swear the repair guy said he could no longer get parts for a machine this old, upwards of 30. The repair cost around $300 back then, but I looked all through my bank account and can’t find a record. I called the appliance service I usually use and they could only find a repair in 2019, which was something similar, the drain pump, but I think in 2021, it was not only the pump, the motor broke too. I think what might’ve happened is the guys I usually call couldn’t get here quickly enough – our student that year was asking every day when she got home from school if she could wash clothes yet – so I tried someone else. The regular repair service said they could get parts but considering the amount I’ve spent on repairs in the last 5 years is more than half the cost of new, all things were pointing to replace. Not to mention that we just did a quick fix on the dryer, replacing a gasket, and it’s close to ancient as well, who knows how long that will last.

Then Thursday night was the presidential debate disaster, and Friday the supreme court rulings that weaken regulatory agencies, like the EPA’s ability to do their work, and give some January 6th seditious rioters a chance to appeal their convictions.

Friday was grey and it rained pretty much all day. I woke up with such a bad sore throat I took a Covid test. Which was negative, but my throat is still sore today (Sunday) and I’m all stuffed up and my nose is running, even though the heat broke last night and it was 55° and not nearly as humid this morning. I guess I’ll take another test in the morning if I still feel like this. (Monday test was negative, BTW).

Still on Friday we took a walk in the rain and then spent the afternoon spending money. We’re inheriting the old sled bed that was my parent’s back from the kids. My mom moved it here from Pittsburgh, and Al always used it, and he and Emma had it at their house. But they decided they want a king size bed and at the same time Mark was also wanting a bigger bed, a queen, which is what the sled is so we get it back. The kids kept the (new) mattress, so we needed a mattress, and Friday we started off going to east side to buy the mattress, and then we looped back to the west side, Fitchburg, to get the washer/dryer combo.

As above it was lovely and cool Sunday morning and Monday’s pretty nice too. But I think we can still complain about the weather, like the unexpected downpour Friday night leaving a smallish amount of water in the basement and thank goodness because with no washer I can’t spin the towels semi dry before putting them in the dryer. Or the predicted but still crazy downpour a week ago Saturday where we got soaked walking barely 2 blocks from the parking garage to the University music hall for the chamber music concert. That storm I think put an end to our local strawberry season. My CSA farmer said it “pulverized” their remaining strawberries.

I submitted some photos to a photography show, although I am dubious that food pictures by an old white lady are going to be the kind of thing they want. I also, of course, kind of screwed up my entry. It said minimum 3 photos, maximum 5, for the $45 entry fee and the application also stressed that everything be ready to hang if accepted. I had an idea for “Local & Seasonal”, four photos that could be hung in a group. But I submitted them separately, and probably should’ve done the  mock up that’s the overleaf. So who knows what will happen but at least I tried.

And the political news continues to be terrible so I guess I might as well go see if I can fix my zucchini bread recipe. [It’s fixed now ♥ ]