I can't even believe it myself, 3 squash posts in a row. And there are two more 3 footers growing on the vine, so there very well may be several more squash posts! But I'm definitely not complaining - I'm happy to have finally reached that 'so-much-squash-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it' point that so many gardeners talk about. Especially considering it didn't happen until late September/October, and these tromboncino's are so delicious. Above you see two that were harvested on Sep. 26th, along with the rest of the bounty I gathered from the garden that day.Here are the latest two dishes I made with the squash. First up, the "crab" cakes that I mentioned in the last post. Sorry it is a pretty boring picture, with no parsley garnish or anything, because I'm working on two huge reports for work this week and had no time to do dinner. (Which also means tonight's 1st veganmofo post will be quick. I hope to finish these reports by Monday so next week will be better!) But, it did taste really good! I think the Old Bay seasonings were a bit light though. Next time I think I would add more.
The squash that made these cakes was so big, it was enough to make another two batches of the zucchini bread from two posts ago. We already ate one loaf, and froze the other. But that left another small squash to deal with! So last night I made it into a sort of 'kitchen sink' veggie stew - my go to recipe for summer produce.This time it had the squash plus lots of garden yellow grape tomatoes, green peppers and jalapenos since I needed to use those up, as well as what is probably (sadly) our last batch of the emerite haricot verts pictured above. There will be another post about those this October for sure - I think it may have been my favorite plant this year. Soooo delicious. I also added some herbs from the garden - thyme, fresh bay leaf, oregano and a bit of marjoram.
Plus from the store, some shredded broccoli slaw I had leftover (and since I had no broccoli tops, which I usually like to put into a stew like this), chick peas, carrots, onions, garlic, jarred tomato sauce and shiraz wine (which gave it the kinda purple color). Not my best stew yet, but certainly good. We both sort of looked at it like 'eh, meh' considering how much good food we've eaten lately. But then like 10 minutes later we looked at our plates and it was all gone! Om nom nom. Haha. Must have tasted pretty good! It is really hard to go wrong with this combo of ingredients.
I served it with shells and Joanne Stepaniak's mostarella chreeze, smoky variation. This chreeze takes a bit of getting used to - it definitely isn't quite like mozzarella. But it is so good in its own right, and contains no soy, plus protein from the oats and tahini. We love this chreeze. The following picture isn't that great, but hopefully you can see how it gets melty and creamy on the shells. It is one of our favorite recipes.
The tomatoes are doing better - not quite as good as last year, but still decent. Here's the first batch of Roma, plus some grapes which have been producing a few handfuls each day now.
The yellow and red grape tomatoes, plus jalapenos and cilantro from the garden got made into this delicious black bean salsa yesterday. You can't quite tell from the pic but the bowl is huge - a few handfuls a day really adds up nicely. The only things we had to add were a can of black beans, a little white onion and some lime juice.
