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.) 

Volunteers - the garden variety

Plucky Swiss chard volunteer poking through paving stones. 

This photo of a burgeoning Swiss chard thriving between a rock and a hard place illustrates the nature of the volunteers we want, whether human or plant:

• They show up unexpectedly, but at exactly the right time. 
• They never leave, except for when they die.
• They don't ask for anything. 
• They are endlessly productive and even, sometimes, provocative! (I'm thinking of the voluptuous chard, the stalwart sunflowers, the diligent dill—all in possession of the traits we desire.)
• They are strong, brave, and nutritious. 
• They fill in the spaces that might otherwise be barren and boring and prone to weeds. 

This is a now-lowly fennel plant, which will jet to four or five feet and produce marvelously fragrant seed heads and attract beneficial insects. Once the seed heads mature, I'll use the some seeds in marinara sauce.
The birds can have the rest.

Garden volunteers go forward with purpose. They're strong and they replicate. Our garden is populated by volunteers of the most opportune sort. They see a spot and they go for it.

Here we have a happy cluster  of volunteer  chard, cosmos and dill, which have survived thinning, have been mulched, and are now being  cultivated as part of the 2011 volunteer crop. Finches adore chard, so many leaves are filigreed. Still, I have frozen 17 chard meals and, as we speak, have about 10 more harvested and ready to give away or get into the freezer. I'll try for giving away first! Contact me if you want chard. 

I love this volunteer poppy and all of its kin around the blueberry patch. They make me smile. I tried to eradicate them a year or two ago (WHY??!!) but just the right number survived in the nooks and crannies. 

These sunflowers started elsewhere in our garden, planted by birds, but I relocated them to form a fall bird-frenzy area. When the seeds are ready, the birds go crazy. It's a wonder to behold. Relocation also prevents huge sunflowers from shading peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. Sunflowers are wonderfully tolerant of rough transplanting.

Lastly, a stalwart volunteer outside of watering zones but already forming flower heads.
 Tomorrow I'm going to water this plant and give it encouragement. Come on, baby!
Think of how much fun the birds will have with you come fall!

Sunflower Love

Here's PK snuggling up to some of our proudest specimens. The best thing about this garden forest? It was planted by BIRDS, and lots of them. Come spring, sunflowers will once more leap from the soil, and I will again transplant most into groupings, as I did with this bunch. Since the original plants had cross-pollinated like crazy, I had no idea what they'd look like. They did not disappoint. And the birds are jubilant.Here are a two from the clouds of American and lesser goldfinches that descend, chirruping in glee, upon our garden everyday. These seed-eaters adore the sunflowers, but are haphazard about consuming each and every seed. The ones they drop all over the place turn into next year's stars. About a third of our large garden is bird-planted or wind-planted, especially lettuce, which appears in random patterns in sometimes-shocking sizes:
This succulent head is nearly 24-inches across and tasted as wonderful as it looks. Dill is another garden commodity that we no longer plant because it emerges as if propelled by partying earthworms and seeded by rockin' robins: And flowers? I still plant a lot of annuals and perennials, but this year the landscape was dominated by rangy four-foot tall volunteer marigolds, which bear scant resemblance to their hybrid predecessors, and reliable four o'clocks, which jumped in with enthusiasm.
But back to the garden rock stars. The acrobatic finches hang down to satisfy their insatiable avian appetites.
The finches have a darting and undulating flight habit, dodging amidst the hummingbirds, who plummet and soar and hover and thrill while extracting nectar from the asters, cosmos, marigolds, and more. Every now and then, blue jays invade and intimidate. But overall, it is an ecstatic scene, and standing quietly in the morning garden is a deep pleasure. But wait. There's more!This sunflower is over 16 inches across. The blue jays covet it, chasing the finches off. Probably the seeds are too large for the finches anyway. This variety is the only sunflower we planted from seed. PK chose it because of its density and hugeness of the seedhead. Later he'll hammer what remains of the dried seedheads to the fenceposts as easy pickings for the birds when they really need a boost. However, here's how these depressed and frustrated sunflowers look now:That's right. They are sunflowers that can NOT follow the sun. How pathetic. They are so heavy, that except for the one mutant, they're unable to adore the sun as sunflowers are programmed to do. It will be interesting next year to see if any of this variety volunteers. I was surprised to see this one come back from 2008:One single shaggy sunflower plant (with numerous flowers) emerged about 20 yards from where it grew last year, and I am so happy! It makes a great cut flower,and the bees enjoy it, but I'm not sure about the finches, jays, chickadees, nuthatches and such, which are more attuned to the "garden" variety. Fall is upon us. The sunflowers will dwindle, but until the end of October, the birds will rule the garden. And this is what will sustain them: Thank you, sunflowers.