From the garden with love

Happy Fourth of July! A story about our own "Victory Garden" seems like a lovely tribute.

Yesterday we had an awesome harvest of produce from the garden to share with my family for a holiday meal.

Basil! My goodness this stuff is expensive at the store, and relatively easily to grow. We decided to pick a good number of leaves, and try out our new food processor (yay!) by making pesto. Not only was it remarkably easy, the resulting pesto pasta was DELICIOUS. We used this pesto recipe, this time with pine nuts. Next time we might try walnuts. We combined the pesto and penne pasta with some added sauteed onion, zucchini, and garlic (since, as you'll see, we need to use zucchini in everything).

Yesterday was also our first harvest of snow peas and sugar snap peas. We grew up these plants from seed, and now the vines, supporting themselves on twine to grow upwards, are as tall as me. It was remarkable to me how quickly they went from seeds in the grown to producing bushes, and the results were delectable. We shared with my family, and dipped in a little ranch.

Our broccoli is a bit less successful. Broccoli is a cool season plant, and this hot weather and drought has been a bit too much. They seem to be flowering prematurely. The florets pictured above are on the verge of opening into yellow flowers, and we felt this head was too far gone. So, it's being employed as a centerpiece/science experiment. But, we did pick some properly mature, if small, heads. We've read that after the first harvest, broccoli will produce smaller side florets, so we're leaving them to see what happens. And we still have many more plants still to flower, so there will be no shortage of broccoli in this household. While I'm not a huge broccoli fan, I have to say that ours is far superior to the stuff I've had in your run of the mill veggie tray.

I can't claim to have grow these lilies from bulbs - I bought a mature plant because our flower bed looked sad - but my calla lilies and Renior lilies are growing. I think 2 of my package of California poppy seeds is germinating as well - apparently they have a low germination rate. Sadly, my lovely lavender plant is looking very sad right now. We suspect it may have a parasite - the joys of garden center plant purchases.

But the real news: we have an abundance of zucchini. I gave the first to my dad and stepmom when they visited earlier in the week. Fiance-with-the-mostest is proudly showcasing the second club-like weapon zucchini from our garden. Many more are on the way, in both green and yellow varieties. We're a little fearful of the sheer volume of zucchini we may be consuming. When I was little, my parents used to tease me about my picky eating and consumption of approximately 3 kinds of food (waffles, grilled cheese sandwiches, and the breading off of McDonald's Happy Meal chicken nuggets) and say that I was "going to turn into" my food of choice. I hope life as a zucchini will treat me well.

David the Gnome is also impressed with our harvest. Beyond an amusing photo-op, we plan to create plenty of zucchini stir frys and pastas, zucchini bread (we'll be taking some to Sustainable Kirkland on Thursday), and zucchini cupcake. Yes, that's right: ZUCCHINI CUPCAKES. I am totally excited about this. Here's a recipe involving peanut butter frosting - how could that not be good?

Did I mention that I plan to force zucchini on everyone I know? Those who invite us over, be warned. And my co-workers, well I just don't see how they can escape. Mwa-ha-ha.