Simple Cucumber Salad Ushers in Sweet, Sweet Summer

It was 104 this afternoon in the Costco parking and 102 in our shaded gravel driveway. Dreadful for us, but for tomatoes!? Hot damn! About a dozen Early Girls ripened significantly since yesterday. And the English-type cucumbers rival the zucchinis in wowzers overnight growth. The bounty above made it in short order onto our dinner plates. By mid-September, we'll be tired of this fare, but tonight was a culinary celebration.

On the plate our first Caprese salad. We had to make do with cheese other than fresh mozzarella, not as good, but for our first tomato harvest, it had to do; simple cucumber and onion salad (recipe below); grilled New York steak; marinated grilled zucchini, onions, and peppers (not from the garden.)

The cuke/onion salad is a summer staple. It is so easy to make and delicious. I credit my mother, who is fast approaching age 98, for this recipe. It is a piece of my midwestern childhood that has been repeating every summer for decades. The first salad of the season always tastes the most amazing. Here you go:

Simply Delicious Cucumber Onion Salad

Ingredients (serves 2 with some leftover)

You can alter the amounts easily. Figure a medium cuke per person plus a little onion. The dressing is one third water, one third vinegar, and one third sweetener. If you use a food processor to slice the veggies, this fresh crisp salad takes about five minutes.

2 medium-sized English cucumbers (or other slicing cukes) 

half of 1 small sweet onion such as Walla Walla

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

3 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons sugar (Or sugar substitute. I use Splenda.)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Slice the cukes into thin rounds. Slice the onion thinly. Place into glass bowl. Mix the vinegar, water, and sugar. Add whatever salt and pepper you like. Pour over cukes and onions and mix. Serve immediately at room temperature or wait a few hours. This is good the next day, but will have "wilted". Even then, the cukes and onions remain crunchy.  

Mid-July Garden Madness

The perspective here is that the white surface is not a cutting board. It is a freezer top. And the largest zucchini weighs 5 pounds. All this growth occurred in two days on three plants. Bad zucchini! The striped ones are Latino variety.
The deep green is the typical Black Beauty, and the yellow one is....
well, yellow, and not as prolific this year as in the past. Thank God.

Mid-summer has somehow crept up and it is becoming dangerous to leave the premises without a guard  to beat back the garden. Spring veggies - kale, broccoli, asparagus, chard etc. - were manageable and could be left alone for several days without their attempting to overtake the neighborhood. The summer garden is another story.

We were away a couple of days for an organized weekend bike ride, and I harvested all the zukes from our three plants before leaving. But when we returned just two days later, several huge numbers were bulging obscenely beneath hip-high leaves. Ridiculous. 

All the jokes about zucchinis are warranted. Too bad their exuberant growth habits can't be replicated in grapes (more wine!) Some of the best zuke uses are low carb zucchini pizza crust, zucchini spaghetti, and smoky zucchini lasagna noodles. (Unfortunately, I can't link to this post as it has mysteriously and maddeningly disappeared from my archive. I will recreate soon as I begin to smoke large zuke slices to use as lasagna noodles. )

But wait! There's more!

Twenty-seven pounds of cabbage in five heads, ready for the sauerkraut crock.
Look for this operation in a future post. 

The first of the cucumbers with Walla Walla  onions in a simple salad. One cucumber got too big while we were gone for two whole days, and I had to scrape the seeds out and halve, hence those half-moon slices. Still tastes great.
We eat this salad all summer, which requires a tiny fraction of the cukes produced by our small
group of happy vines.  Recipe below. 

The first of  the tomatoes, Sun Gold cherry variety. Photo is  blurry and warranted only because this is the first "harvest."  Tomatoes were saying, We're not ready! Don't take our picture! They'll be sweet ripe in a few days. 

Volunteer cosmos, sunflowers and others are joyous in their corner.
They require little attention and are unlikely to leap the fence. 

I love the in-your-face early volunteer sunflowers. The birds are already watching,
and the bees and other insects are ecstatic about all the pollen.

The following recipe comes from my mother and her mother before her. They used real sugar, of course, while I use substitues. I've enjoyed this every summer since I can remember.

Simple Summer Cucumber/Onion Salad

2-3 small-to-medium cukes
1/2 large sweet onion, more to taste
1/4 cup red wine vinegar (or any other vinegar, non sweetened)*
1/4 cup water*
1/4 cup sugar, or sugar equivalent to taste.* I use a few tablespoons Splenda).
salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the cucumbers and onion thinly. Place into a glass bowl. Mix the vinegar, water, sugar substitute and salt and pepper and stir into the cukes and onions. Marinate for at least an hour. Adjust seasonings. Refrigerate unused portion for a week or so. It gets better by the day for up to a week.

* The proportions are the important consideration. Three equal parts. It gets tricky with sugar subs. I mix the vinegar and water then add Splenda, or whatever I'm using, to taste—in this case just a few teaspoons.

Zucchini frittata with dill sauce—and more!

Dinner tonight — Zucchini frittata with dill sauce and cucumber/onion salad. Those red things are our first tomatoes! but not at all essential to the recipe. Tomatoes are still a couple weeks away from ripeness.

Every year we have zukes to burn. Actually, we give most of them away or chop 'em up for compost. Used to be, in the old days, we fed 'em to the hogs. But now that we have only four zucchini plants (and zero hogs) and three of our zuke plants are sub-standard, thank god) I'm attempting to use more in dinners-for-two and perhaps even freeze some for winter. (Plus hauling burlap bags of them, along with multiple cukes, to the Community Center Food Bank.)
So here's a surprise experiment that turned out very well. I'm home alone tonight, but this could easily be doubled or quadrupled for the main dish—or used as a substantial side. As always, my recipes are "soft" in that I don't measure precisely. But this one is more measured than most. Here's a hint about real foodies: we cook without an audience (or a partner present) and relish every bite.

Zucchini Frittata
2 T olive oil
4 small to medium zukes, cut into like-sized pieces (think 1/3 inch thick and about the size of a quarter)
1/3 - 1/2 medium onion, finely sliced
1.5 T minced garlic
1 sweet or mild green pepper, sliced but not diced (optional—it happens that our peppers are coming on strong.)
2 beaten eggs (maybe some day we'll raise chickens again!)
1/2 to 3/4 c shredded fresh basil, loosely packed
1/2 c shredded Parmesan cheese (Feta cheese would also be good.)
salt and pepper to taste
pepper flakes to taste
dill sauce (recipe follows)

Directions
Saute the zukes in the olive oil until crisp/tender. This could take 10 minutes.  You don't want them mushy, just starting to become translucent. Add the onions and saute a couple minutes or so. Add the pepper and garlic and stir fry for a couple minutes til the garlic is intoxicating. (Don't get drunk, but do enjoy some wine while cooking!) Add the beaten eggs and fold into the veggies. When eggs are almost set, top with shredded basil and Parmesan cheese. Cook over low-medium heat a few more minutes until cheese is nearly melted. Remove from heat and let it rest for a few minutes. In the meantime, get the dill sauce ready to serve.


Dill Sauce
This is a staple in my kitchen while dill weed is running rampant in the garden. This year I've dried a lot of dill and will attempt to replicate fresh dill in winter. I think it can be done. Dill sauce is spectacular with dishes such as zucchini frittata, anything with potatoes, any fish, and much more. Plus it is simple to slap together and keeps a long time. If you have fresh dill, more power to you! If not, see what happens when you use dried dill that still exudes essence of dill. If dried dill doesn't smell like dill, use it for compost.

Ingredients
1/4 to 1/3 cup fresh dill, minced, or 3 T dried dill
1/3 c plain yogurt
1/3 c sour cream
1/3 c mayo
3 T fresh lemon juice (can substitute lime)
Optional: 1 T lemon zest; 1 tsp Tabasco

Directions
Combine ingredients and mix well. Taste. Adjust dill and lemon to taste. Cover and refrigerate. Keeps up to a month, but is so good it won't last long.

Cucumber/onion salad
When it comes to fresh garden cukes and onions, this is a super simple recipe that never fails to please.
Double or triple as necessary. The salad keeps well, refrigerated, for several days.

Ingredients
2-3 medium cukes of any variety. Don't use super big ones that will have lots of seeds and bitter rinds.
Test to see if skins are bitter. If so, peel with a potato peeler. If not bitter, just cut off the ends. If you like, fancy up the recipe by striping the cuke with a peeler. If the cukes are large, you will  need to seed and peel them.
1/2 large sweet onion, thinly sliced
1/3 c rice vinegar
1/3 c sugar ( or substitute Splenda)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Combine ingredients and taste. Adjust seasonings. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Seasonings may need to be adjusted later as salt extracts water from cukes and onions.

Garden photos follow, if you like.

Overall early August garden scene.
 Plants encroaching on house. Residents preparing to flee.

Messy  entwined dill, green beans, and marigolds.
Still, it appears all co-exist to mutual benefit.
Can they please send a message to Congress?

Innocent-looking yellow six-inch zuke. Tomorrow? Twelve inches! Run!

Standing guard over the garden, youthful sunflowers are at their most audacious, tempting birds and bees with flagrant displays; They don't actually dance, except with the wind, but they don't need movement
when color and size and in-your-face life force are so outrageous. In a couple months they'll go to seed and be totally ravaged by birds. I won't forget their youth and beauty. (Or my mother's.) 

Oregon Coast Getaway with Four Wheel Camper

This is what you don't want to see when you visit the Oregon coast—a band of
thick fog sitting on Highway 101. It bodes ill.

Because when you see that fog bank ahead, here's what the

usually stunning scenery looks like. 

PK and I are always ready to charge off in our little Four Wheel pop-up camper, if even for a few days. Since the Four Wheel is the self-proclaimed "only true off-road camper," and we chose it so we could go places people driving boxcar-sized RV units can't, we usually shun massive campgrounds and opt for Forest Service camps, or we tuck into undeveloped pull-outs, cliff overhangs and shorelines. We weren't entirely successful in crowd avoidance during our recent two-night trek to Oregon's southern coast, however. More on that below.

When we left for the coast a couple weeks ago, we were fleeing the heat. We'd endured triple-digit temps alternating with high-nineties for what seemed like forever, but was really only most of July.  (Now we're living in smoke from numerous forest fires. See previous post if you like depressing stuff.)

This beach is in Northern California just a few miles from the Oregon border. We considered camping in the deserted nearby parking area in the spirit of our dear little camper, but dang, it was chilly, windy, and smelled of rotting fish. Also, fog was rolling in. Sometimes we have to practice tough love with the camper.

The Southern Oregon/Northern California coast is famously cool when the inland valleys are roasting. We left the ranch sweltering in 100+ temps and two hours later were shivering on the beach (alone, of course) with stiff winds challenging the worthiness of our wind jackets. We wanted out of the valley heat, but not in to coastal chill, wind, and fog.

 We ended up about 12 miles inland on the Chetco River just outside of Brookings, Oregon, completely out of the fog and into perfect weather. This is a Forest Service camping area, but without formal sites. There may have been as many as 50 people around, but we couldn't hear them.

We couldn't see them, either. We like this. (It looks like PK is
staring at the trees, but the Chetco River is the blackness beneath the trees.)

We weren't offended when a sweet little family used the swimming hole in front of our camp. 

Camping is a "special occasion" offering an excuse for drinking wine. I don't need much of an excuse, of course, but there are worse things. The slanted light did wonders for our plastic glasses. 

Easy dinner, mostly from the garden. Simple cucumber salad,

fried spuds with zucchini, onions, chard and basil, and Trader Joe's
hot Italian sausage.  

Next day we were ready for another go at the coast, but alas, the fog persisted and, for the most part, hid the Oregon coast's spectacular beauty.

This was the view from atop Cape Sebastian, which is usually mind-blowing. 

We stopped for lunch at the picturesque Griff's restaurant on the dock at Port Orford, having read positive reviews on Yelp! PK gave thumbs up to his fish and chips. My crab Louis ($17!!) was dinner-salad sized, came with a packet of Ritz crackers (!!) and left me hungry and crabby (hahaha). 

Here we are at the second-night camp, cheek to jowl with cold grumpy campers on both sides, at Bullard's Beach State Park. Oregon has a great state parks system, but our camper does not like super developed and crowded campgrounds.Bullard's Beach has more than 300 sites plus a bunch of yurts and an equestrian camp. Sites are neatly divided by vegetation, but it didn't work for us. 

The indignities! The Four Wheel camper (she needs a name!) gets embarrassed when out of her element. We can get by without power and water hook-ups for several days, but we use them when available, especially when we've paid for them. The white bucket catches sink water. Having campers directly across the way and on either side is, well, just not fun.

PK on the last steps of a mile+ trail from camp to the beach. 

Another beach to ourselves! At least 600 people, probably more like 1,000, were in the campground, but truthfully, this beautiful beach wasn't that inviting and I don't blame them for sticking close to their RVs. The temperature differential between camp and the beach was probably 20+ degrees, so people we saw along the trail were mostly underdressed. A tee shirt is not going to do the trick here. That's grey fog blowing in on a stiff ocean breeze. Sand is skittering across the beach, and I guess we gave it five minutes. Or less. The Oregon coast isn't like California with nearly naked people frolicking in the surf (Here you could die! And you would most assuredly need a wetsuit.) The Oregon coast in July .... unknown to tourists who have not visited during summer months.... is often chilly, windy, and foggy. My sister came all the way from Minnesota one summer, traveled the Oregon coastline from north to south, and didn't see the ocean for more than a few minutes. Best time to visit? Late August and September. Then you can get by with shorts and tee shirts and the Oregon coast will blow your mind and make your eyes and your heart ache at the beauty of it all.

More posts about Southern Oregon/Northern California

Bear Trip on the Rogue River

There You Have - The Mighty Rogue!

Camping and Cooking on the Rogue

Quick Getaway - Crater Lake

Oregon's Illinois River with Four-Wheel Camper

Inventing Dinner

For years PK and I have marveled at our daily fare. We think it is the best in the world, and I'm not kidding. That is SO swaggering, but please bear with me. I bow before you whose Monday plates and Tuesday repasts and Wednesday feasts and home-cooked meals throughout the week also bring you to your knees with gratitude and praise. O holy skillet! Masterful grill! Garden font! Made-up recipes!

We  unabashedly exult (no one is around to hear, so we really go for it it) and imagine frequently what it might cost to eat what we eat if we had to buy it in restaurants, if we even could get it. We are the most ridiculous home-cooking foodies I know.

We couldn't afford comparable restaurant meals, for one thing. I have eaten in a few great restaurants —Italy comes to mind. But in general,  I can't remember a restaurant meal that I enjoyed as much as what we eat almost every night, even though I risk sounding prideful because I am the primary cook. (I cook. PK cleans up. That's our deal. Together we grow the food.) But I create the meals, chop the onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes etc. etc. etc., and it is a Zen exercise every time. More on the pleasure of kitchen details later, perhaps. But on to  dinner.

Garden on a plate - can life get any better? (don't answer)

Chard, tomatoes, spaghetti squash, garlic and more make an amazing no-noodles low-carb lasagna.

October already!! Can it be? October means that at any moment, winter will set in and the late summer and fall harvest we've been relishing will come to a frosty halt. We will mourn the garden's passing the moment it begins in earnest. That's one bad thing about getting older. You know what's coming. 
But still. We now have soooo much! We're still collecting zucchinis, tomatoes, cukes, chard, a few eggplants, basil, dill weed and seed, parsley, and winter squash.

It's prime time for making summer-culmination dishes such as the voluptuous spaghetti squash and chard lasagna in the photo. No noodles, folks. And you won't miss them, especially if you're privy to fresh veggies.

This lasagna's success depends on fresh everything, including, of course, homemade from-scratch marinara sauce. The thing about the "recipe" linked in the previous sentence, is that it understates the amount of time required to reduce fresh tomato puree by half. For a large deep skillet or a soup pot full of freshly whirred-up garden tomatoes, figure at least eight hours at low heat.

Garden-fresh cooking requires devotion and patience. A good shot of tequila doesn't hurt to carry you along. First you must plant the seeds and grow the vegetables, then tend them throughout the growing season. You must be able to put up with stooping between the rows to tug at weeds and dodge the multitudes of birds and bees that have set up house in your microcosm. You'll be forced to endure the rich earthy aroma that arises in waves from between the tines of your pitchfork or garden shovel as you turn the soil or compost. Sometimes it's enough to make you swoon.

You'll need to brace yourself against the wildlife dramas that may play out, such as bluebirds being driven from their nests by swallows, or hawks swooping in to catch critters outside the garden fence. You must be steeled against the time-telescoping that gardens so brutally illustrate—that spring-summer-fall-winter cycle that you can't help but notice applies to all living things. Me? I'm maybe late fall, early winter. But I do have that grandbaby, Noah, in his earliest of spring seasons, to keep me grounded. I am so enjoying his sproutiness and even the ever-so-slight wilting of his over-worked parents' leaves. (See you soon, little sprig!)
Well, enough of the life/garden analogies. On to more photos and important cooking stuff.

Sour cream and vinegar cuke and onion salad, with classic Caprese on the right. This photo is my current screen saver, not that I'm a foodie, or anything. I am so shameless I could lick the screen. Cuke/onion salad recipe is below.

A couple days later, leftover "lasagna" on the left, with sliced tomatoes with dabs of chipotle sauce atop, and zuke, onion, and pepper stir fry. It's easy. See below. And a link to chipotle sauce recipe and more.

Spectacular spaghetti squash/chard lasagna
Ingredients
1 medium- large spaghetti squash, baked whole, seeded and removed in strands from rind
(To bake squash, prick with fork, place on oven rack and bake at 350 for at least an hour. Check with fork. When fork will penetrate easily, remove from oven and cool before handling.)
1 large bunch chard leaves, steamed and drained. Squeeze excess water before adding to casserole.
1/2 qt. ricotta cheese (or combination of ricotta, sour cream and cottage cheese)
1-2 eggs
1/4 cup pesto sauce (optional but recommended)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1-2 cups grated Italian cheeses
1 quart + marinara sauce
1 pound good spicy Italian sauage. ( I use Diestal turkey sausage)

Directions

Cook and crumble sausage and add to marina sauce.
Add an egg or two to the soft cheeses. Add pesto, if using. Mix well.

Ladle sauce to cover bottom of a 9X13 baking dish. Not a deep layer, just a thin covering. Add a thin layer of spaghetti squash. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Spread soft cheese mixture over all. Add a layer of steamed chard to cover completely. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Add another thin layer of spaghetti squash. Cover with generous layer of marinara sauce.

Put into pre-heated 350 oven and bake for 45 minute, and check then to see if the casserole is bubbling around the edges. If not, bake another 15 minutes. Turn off oven and remove casserole. Cover with Italian cheeses, including more Parmesan, and return to cooling oven for five - ten minutes to melt cheeses.
Let it rest/cool for 15 to 20 minutes before serving. Serve with grated Parmesan and pepper flakes.

Cucumber/onion sour cream salad
As with all my cooking advice, this "recipe" is a rough guide. Use your  instincts.
Ingredients
4-6 medium-sized cucumbers. I use the long burpless type. If the skin is bitter, peel the cukes. I generally use a vegetable peeler and make stripes.
1 small onion, preferably sweet, sliced thin
1/2 cup sour cream
2-4 tbsp. cider vinegar
2 tbsp. olive oil
1-3 tbsp. sugar or Splenda or other sweetener
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Peel, or partially peel, the cukes. Slice thinly and spread in a colander. Sprinkle with salt on both sides. Let rest/drain for at least 10 - 15 minutes. Shake off water and squeeze gently. Put cukes in bowl with onions. Mix the sour cream, vinegar, oil, sweetener and salt and pepper then add to cukes and onions. Taste and adjust seasonings.


Hotszie tozie zukes, onions, peppers
Ingredients
4-5 small to medium zucchini, cut into equal-sized pieces
one large onion, thinly sliced
12-16 peppers, a combination of New Mexico types, bells, jalapenos, poblanos, whatever you have, chopped. Chop the hot peppers into smaller pieces.
olive oil
salt and pepper

Use younger zukes. Nothing with seeds developing. Slice into like-sized pieces. Saute in olive oil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. When pieces are beginning to brown and becoming translucent, remove from heat and set aside in a bowl.
Add a bit more oil to the pan, then dump in the sliced onion. Saute for a few minutes, then add the peppers and saute for a few more minutes. Turn the cooked zukes back in there and mix. Turn off the burner and give the cattle call. Expect a stampede into the kitchen because of the great aromas wafting off the peppers and onions. (Add a little garlic, if you feel the need for more chopping and aroma.)
Serve with sour cream or chipotle sauce or shredded  cheese, or all of the above.

Making a Mean Marinara- updated

Updated August 23, 2015
Email subscribers, please click on the blog title to get to the website where photos look better and text is easier to read. 

There's a lot going on here. Fresh cucumber/sweet onion salad, zucchini noodles, balsamic glaze drizzled over all, but the star of the show? Thick and rich homemade marinara.

We could about fill a bathtub with the tomatoes from our garden.  We could take turns lolling in the red, lush and lovely Romas, Celebrities, Early Girls and Brandywines to convert them to mush in preparation for making marinara. The sticky sweetness would drip from our limbs, and we could funnel some of the juices into our upturned and smiling mouths before diverting them into pots to boil and bubble into wondrous sauce for eggplant Parmesan, lasagna, spaghetti and so on to bring summer back during the inevitable dark, dank, dreary months.

Romas are the best choice for marinara as they are meaty with not as much juice to cook down.

But don't worry. You don't have to watch for hair or scabs in your spaghetti sauce, should you be invited to dinner. My best friend in the kitchen—the Cuisinart food processor—does all this squishing and smashing in a hot minute.

Process thoroughly to puree the tomato skins, which you do

NOT need to remove. Keep the fiber and the vitamins.

I ignore recipes when making marinara, especially any that require plunging tomatoes into boiling water first to remove the skins. DO NOT DO THIS! It adds immeasurably to the work and makes no difference in the end. Except for you've salvaged for your sauce all the fiber and flavor in the tomato skins.

Here's a rough guide on how to take advantage of tomato season to make a mean marinara for dinner and also the freezer. I'm not being coy with the "rough" stuff. So many recipes are approximations. When you're dealing with fresh garden produce, either from your own backyard or from farmers' markets, exact amounts depend on the cook's creativity. (Except, of course, when you're canning and absolutely must adhere precisely.) So here's how I make marinara, and you can adapt to fit whatever you have on hand.

Rich Delicious Marinara using Fresh Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 12-15  pounds of fresh tomatoes, mostly romas, cored and pureed
• 6-7 ounces of prepared basil pesto, without cheese. In the absence of pesto, process in a food processor 10-12 cloves of garlic, 2 packed cups of fresh basil, 1/2 + cup of olive oil, a 2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/4 cup of pine nuts or walnuts 
• 2 large winter onions, chopped fine
• a teaspoon each of finely crushed dried fennel seeds, oregano, thyme and rosemary
• 2-3 finely chopped jalapeno peppers, seeds removed, if you relish a little hotness. Or you could add pepper flakes to taste.
• salt and pepper to taste, using kosher, sea, or smoked salt. Smoked salt adds a whole new dimension.
• 1-2 tablespoons honey, if needed

A cheat: If you lack the patience or inclination to simmer anything five or six hours, add a small can or two of tomato paste early on. It'll still be a great marinara.

Directions
Start with dead-ripe fresh tomatoes, the redder the better. Roma types are best, but I also use round tomatoes that need to be used. Rinse, then cut off the stem end and core. Squeeze out seeds (and a lot of juice), tear or cut once or twice and load up the food processor. Process until there's nothing but air-fluffed tomato puree, then dump into your cooking pot. Often I have a couple pots going at the same time. Keep adding pureed tomatoes until the pot (uncovered, of course) is full.  Cook at low/medium heat until the volume is reduced by half.  Stir often to make sure it's not sticking. When the volume is about half add the rest of the vegetables and seasonings.

This is A LOT of pureed whole tomatoes! I had to scoop three 

cups out so it didn't spill over the sides. This large deep stainless

steel pan has become my favorite for making marinara.

That's it. Simmer until it is reduced by at least half the original volume. This can take hours. There should be very little watery stuff at the top. I always have to tinker with the seasonings near the end. Taste and adjust to your satisfaction. What we don't eat for dinner, I freeze flat in quart bags.

Ratatouille with Sizzle

I trotted out to the garden late in the afternoon to pick a few veggies for dinner. Well, it turned out to be way more than "a few veggies." Did I forget it's August? The month of way too much produce for the ordinary person in her ordinary life? Stay away from the garden for a couple days and gremlins sneak in to inject plants with steroids. It's crazy! But wonderful.

Whew! The garden surprised me after a couple days away with about 20 times more than we can eat.
I'll give away most of those great English cucumbers (they're appreciated by residents at the assisted living place where my mom lives). I'll put on my apron and figure out the rest. 

Anybody up for eggplant? We planted just one variety this year, and it all ripened at the same time. How inconvenient!  The eggplants are at their peak—purple/black and glossy. They must be used soon. The fruits are too small, mostly, for eggplant Parmesan, which is my favorite. It's a good year for eggplant volume, but not so much for size. So it'll be ratatouille that makes its way into the freezer to remind us in the dead of winter that we had a glorious August harvest. Why is it so difficult to remember when it's cold. grey and wet that we had these bright warm days (even tho smoky) just a few months back?

Usually I make roasted ratatouille in big batches and freeze it. Today I didn't mean to harvest all this stuff, but since I had so much, and it was so perfectly fresh and beautiful, I decided to revert to my earlier approach to ratatouille—frying—and make enough for one dinner for two. Let me tell you, it hardly made a dent in the volume of just-picked produce. I'll rally tomorrow or the next day to do the big ratatouille roasting operation. (Roasted ratatouille recipe coming soon.)

In the meantime, I remember how much work it is to do fried as opposed to roasted. With small amounts, however, it isn't that big of a deal. I added a couple new elements: jalapeno peppers and smoked salt. I gotta say, yummers! Here's how to make fried ratatouille with a peppery twist.

Ratatouille with Sizzle

Ingredients (for 2 or 3 people)

• 2 small to medium zucchini, yellow, green, or striped
• 1 medium eggplant
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 jalapeno peppers (optional)
• 1 sweet red pepper
• 2 cups roughly chopped fresh tomatoes 
• smoked salt to taste (I used Trader Joe's South African Seasoning Blend)
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (important!)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 2-6 tablespoons olive oil (huge disparity, I know. Stick with me.)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Make life easier and use two non-stick fry pans. Cut the zukes into about one-inch sized pieces. The eggplant may be sliced into slightly larger uniform-sized pieces. Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Mince the jalapeno and slice the sweet pepper into uniform chunks. Get it all ready before starting.

Stir fry the zukes in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. At the same time, stir fry the eggplant in a separate pan. Eggplant tends to eat oil, so I start with 2 tablespoons and when the pan gets dry and the eggplant threatens to burn, I add a little water. It boils away and the eggplant is just fine. Combine the eggplant and zukes and set aside.

The eggplant and zukes are in the smaller pan. The onions, peppers and garlic are in the larger pan, where all ingredients will converge in the end. 

In the larger pan, saute the garlic and onion for a few minutes in 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add the peppers and stir fry for a couple more minutes. Dump the zukes and eggplant into the onion/pepper/garlic/rosemary mix and turn off the heat. Rosemary is a big deal for this recipe. Nothing else will do the trick.

Zukes, eggplant, onion, garlic, peppers stir fried and combined. 

Put the cut-up tomatoes into the now-vacant frying pan. Cook over medium-high heat until the tomatoes are soft and the moisture is steaming away. Add the chopped rosemary and a little table salt.

Tomatoes are beginning to sweat and reduce.

Cook until about half the tomato juice has evaporated and then add to the rest of the ingredients. Turn the heat to medium high. If you're using smoked salt, add it now and be careful—it can overpower, especially the African blend that includes other spices.  Add the chopped basil at the last minute.

The finished ratatouille took about 35-40 minutes to prepare, not counting the time required to grow and harvest the ingredients. It is served with simple cucumber onion salad, Trader Joe's hot Italian sausage, grilled, and the ubiquitous (at our house) chipotle and creamy garlic dill sauces. 

The garden also provides food for the soul. I didn't get any bird pictures, but from my harvesting position I admired swarming swooping chattering avians plus other garden beauties.

Bird-planted sunflowers with lots of bees. 

Lovely cosmos, which self seeds all over the place.

Yellow zinnias with a fig "tree" behind.

Fifteen-feet tall sunflowers. I'm not kidding. 

Impressive weightlifting, if I do say so myself. 

About the aging part..

I recently added "gardening, cooking, aging and adventures" to my blog title. As "Ordinary Life," I didn't have to refine. Any old thing would go, and it's easy to see how cooking and gardening fit in as those are frequent topics. Tonight's dinner! Made almost entirely from scratch! The garden! Wow!

Yes, we enjoyed another great feast tonight. Clockwise, smoked peppers, caramelized onions, garlic/pepper sauce and rice; a bit of marinated grilled steak; steamed green beans with butter  and lemon; the very LAST brandywine tomato, and a cucumber, onion, and pepper salad. See, I can't help myself!

Here's LaVone today washing up. She's almost 96, but I think she's still good looking

Here's LaVone on her exercise 'walk." I'm right behind her with her wheelchair, just in case.

Adventures? I have them, most often close to home and sometimes far afield, and have blogged them with photos and words. But I've generally shunned the aging topic, except when it applies to my mother, who quickly approaches 96. She seems blissfully oblivious. She's not an Alzheimer's patient, and does not suffer from severe dementia. But she is in a twilight zone. Her needs are simple yet complex. Her physical requirements are fulfilled, mostly, by assisted living. But there's no substitute for a loving daughter stopping by nearly every day to put her through her walking paces and attend to the details that the overworked caregivers can't fulfill: hearing aid issues; seasonal clothing; intimate items, hand holding, reassurance, etc.
I quickly approach 67, which, to people in their 90s is a fresh age full of promise, but to me, seems dangerously close to 70, very old indeed. If you don't die, then you grow old, so I just need to get used to it. I would rather not contract a deadly disease that would kill me slowly, or even a sudden event such as a car accident, a stroke, or a heart attack. So I guess I'm resigned to going with my genes and seeing what happens. I'm processing the approach of age 70. In the meantime, I'm engaged with LaVone as she approaches 100. Is she resigned? She is. She definitely is. She is the very picture of be here now. Thanks, Ram Dass, but of course, she's never heard of you.
In coming months I intend to chronicle her life, especially the past few years. I know that if someone had told her she would be where she is and who she is now 30 years ago, she would have scoffed and maybe prodded them with her crochet hook. Who, me? I won't ever be in a wheelchair, in "briefs", and in an endless cycle of bingo and dice. You know what? It's not so bad. At least not for her. As for me, I'm getting older too.  And I do not like it.