zucchini cookies

sounds a bit odd, but they're really good. i got the recipe from my everyday food magazine. it's a great mix of lemon zest, cornmeal, and finely grated zucchini. the inside is chewy with a great crunch at the bottom. not bad at all.

zuke boats v2

this time they were stuffed with ground beef, garlic, onion, green pepper (from the garden), diced tomatoes and basil & oregano (both from the garden). topped with mozz cheese and baked for 20 minutes. the zukes were still a little crunchy, so next time i'm going to bake them longer.

zucchini bread

i knew it was going to be good since it's a paula deen recipe. check it out here. i used mini chocolate chips for this one too...and it took a full 15 minutes longer than the recipe suggests to bake them. who knows if it's my easy bake oven or the recipe.

zucchini boats

last night was easily the hottest, most humid night of the summer. so i decided to bake zucchini for dinner.

i cut two zucchinis in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, and filled them with cooked ground turkey, sour cream, oregano, and artichoke hearts. i topped them with breadcrumbs and baked until the zucchini was just starting to get soft.

zucchini cupcakes

since we picked 25+ zucchinis in july, i've got to start finding something to do with them besides grilling. so today i made chocolate chip zucchini cupcakes from this recipe. i used mini chocolate chips, regular vegetable oil instead of coconut oil, and milk instead of buttermilk. i also topped them with a cinnamon glaze. delish.

definitely something i can make in the winter...since i now have 10 cups worth of grated zucchini in my freezer.

what the heck is this?

it's growing in our front yard next to the cherry tree (so it's deliberate and not a weed), but i have no clue what the heck it is.

any clue?

july garden update

the garden is coming along nicely, with a few hiccups:

- only 2 of my entire pack of cucumber seeds came up. what a bummer, since we easily eat a cucumber a day.
- none (that's right, not a single one) of my honeydews came up. lame.
- something (i think it's a rabbit) ate off the tops of two of my roma plants. good news is some of the others have flowers on them now. hopefully those don't get eaten too.

on a good note...
- green beans are going nuts and green peppers have flowers on them
- carrots still look good and now that the holes in the fence are patched, the rabbit shouldn't be eating them anymore
- corn is definitely on track since it's past knee high already
- the honeydew stinks but we have about 12-14 watermelon plants that made it
- we've got some baby zucchinis coming already too

gardening nerd project

so it's been a while. ok, more than a while, but i'm busy. a little more than 4 months til the wedding and two weeks in the house. i've got a great little summer nerd project going.

i planted vegetables and herbs in both gardens and some random pots in the back. i'm curious to see how much $$ i can really save by growing my own produce, so here's how the costs broke down:

$3.25 6pack basil plants
$3.48 oregano plant
$3.48 lemon basil plant
$3.48 lemon balm plant
$8.63 rosemary bush
$3.25 6pack green pepper plants
$3.48 9pack silver queen corn plants
$3.50 6pack zucchini plants
$1.00 organic green bean seeds
$1.50 corn seeds
$1.19 organic watermelon seeds
$1.19 honeydew seeds
$1.49 carrott seeds
$1.50 organic cucumber seeds
$2.00 6pack roma tomato plants
$8.47 potting soil (lemon balm, oregano, and lemon basil are in pots)
$29.94 2 plastic pots
$14.97 rake
$95.37 2 hoses with nozzles
$14.00 4 tomato cages
Total = $205.17
Total plants & seeds only = $50.89

no, i am not adding the cost of labor, water, and fertilizer. i didn't use any fertilizer this year (i'm sure in subsequent years i'll need it and will add the cost into it then) and plan on using most of the water my basement dehumidifier (that would normally get poured down the drain).

i'm keeping track of how much grows and we harvest. we've already got parsley, peppermint, spearmint, and chives growing outside, so i'll keep track of those too. i'll post the summary at the end of the summer. it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

massena in the news...and not the public record

i've had some damn good pancake breakfasts growing up...

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/11/chris_smith_on_hillary_paterso.html?f=most-commente

who doesn't love a good book?

i'll keep the list updated as i start/finish books.

09.12.08-09.12.08 A: "veronika decides to die" by paulo coelho
09.09.08-09.12.08 A: "not just a pretty face: the ugly side of the beauty industry" by stacy malkan
09.13.08-09.16.08 A+: "the world without us" by alan weisman
08.19.08-08.27.08 A+ : "in defense of food: an eater's manifesto" by michael pollan
08.09.08-08.18.08 B: "lullaby" by chuck palahniuk
07.28.08-07.31.08 A+: "the witch of portobello" by paulo coelho
07.15.08-08.15.08 C+: "the politically incorrect guide to global warming and the environment"

green tp

yes, that's right...tp that's from 100% recycled paper and bleached without chlorine. and it was the cheapest (besides wegmans brand) in wegmans. seriously.

pear trees in ny?

who knew...

barktoberfest

today we walked 1.5 miles at barktoberfest, lollypop farm's annual fundraiser. too bad it was kinda of a crummy day. but we did see lots of animals on our walk...and one pulverized car from who knows when.

http://www.lollypop.org/

choke

i'm a big fan of chuck palahniuk's books, so when i saw they were making another one into a movie, i wanted to see it (the first was fight club). yes, it's just as messed up and twisted as fight club, but what the movie was lacking from the book is the deepness about life. fight club (and all his books) are messed up in their own unique way, but they all have a fundamental lesson and are pretty deep about different aspects of life. the movie was missing this. i think that's a huge reason why people liked fight club...all the talk about life being a machine and not living your life to serve it. the depth was missing from this movie, which is a disasspointment as it's definitely a big part of the book. all in all, i give it a B.

soymilk

no, i haven't gone completely hippy yet. i was in lowell, mass for a work thing and wanted milk for dinner. the grocery store didn't have small single serve milk, so i got soymilk. all those silk commercials made me think it wasn't going to be so bad and i've always kinda wanted to try it. well...it's not that it's horrible, i would just much rather have real milk than soy. it has a bad chalky aftertaste that i do not care for. others may like it. me, not so much.

weird red berries

these are the same bushes/berries we saw in the park in cleveland. only these were in corbett's glen. no clue what they are either. they look like cherries, but definitely aren't.

weird berries

i saw these berries when we were walking through corbett's glen. i have no clue what they are, but i love the bright colors.

night tree

corbett's glen

we went to corbett's glen for the afternoon today. not a bad little park at all. there were a couple people there with their dogs and some playing in the water, but definitely tucked away enough to not be crowded. i wanna go back in the summer when it's hot and play in the water...and later this fall when the leaves have changed.

lovin cup

we tried lovin cup today for lunch. here's my take:
the food is basic cafe fare...salads, sandwiches, pizza, and coffees...nothing too crazy. the food isn't bad. nothing great, but not bad. i'd go back there if someone else really wanted to, but i don't think i'd make a point to.

i had the "i'm hot for teacher." sounds funny at first. until you realize their entire menu is made up of names that don't even hint at what the food actually is. not only are the meals themselves named this way, but the groups of foods are too...for example, "unplugged" means "cold sandwiches." it's pretty obnoxious considering you need to seriously read the entire menu to determine what you want.

...couple the above weird food names with the menu display and it takes a good ten minutes just to read the menu. the menu is on the wall above the register written on a good 20 old picture frames. and in hard to read text. annoying.

the menu wouldn't be so annoying if you didn't have to order at a counter and instead had a waiter.

my coffee was kinda lame. frankly at this day and age if you're charging $4 for coffee, it's expected to be really good. mine was subpar.

and it was pricey. $20 for two sandwiches and a coffee.