From Asparagus to Zucchini

While picking snap beans the other day, I looked down and saw the last of the asparagus coming up.  Most of it matures quickly now as it's warming up.  It's easy to miss.  But I got the asparagus, snapped it off, and ate it raw, right there in the snap bean row.

I finished the beans and remembered that I needed to check the squash.  They're growing ever so fast as well.

I had planned on weighing the garden produce this year, just to start tracking that, but, to be honest, it's too much work, ha ha.  Here's a big basket of nothing but zucchini I picked.  There will be more coming in tomorrow.  Tricia kind of gave me "the stink eye" when I came in with this.  "What are we going to do with all this," she said.  "We're gonna eat it," I replied.

We also give it away.  Today we walked some over to one of our neighbors.  Tricia also made Zucchini Fritters tonight.  We ate an entire zucchini squash, I'm not ashamed to say.  Zucchini Fritters are like crab cakes, without the crab.  You grate zucchini, put it in a colander, salt it, and let the water drain off.  Then you add flour, cheese, eggs, garlic and seasoning and stir.  Then make little patties and fry them.  My wife made a sour cream ranch dressing that we dipped them into.  Very good!

Since we've been using the dehydrator to preserve a lot of the fresh produce coming in, we decided to dehydrate some zucchini.  The zucchini was cut into slices like you see in the measuring cup below and were blanched according to the time instructed.

Blanching aids in protecting flavor, color, texture in the vegetables.  It inactivates enzymes that cause vegetables to deteriorate.  Although the vegetables don't stay in the water for long, we were wondering if you lose water soluble vitamins during blanching?  The answer is yes.  Although it takes a little longer, the next time we blanch, we'll try steam blanching.  Steam blanching allows the vegetables to retain vitamins otherwise lost in water blanching.

After removing and putting in ice water to immediately stop the cooking process, the blanched zucchini is drained and placed on the trays of the dehydrator.  I don't know how this is going to work out.  Zucchini has a very high water content.  It seems to me this process is akin to dehydrating ice cubes.

Twelve hours later, the dehydrated zucchini is done.

Wowzers!  There's nothing left.  If I still read newspapers, I could read one through the zucchini.  It is transparent and thin.  There's nothing left to it.

Five full trays of cut up zucchini yielded a PINT of dried zucchini.

Good for adding to soups and stews, I imagine, and it'll keep.

Three Stages of Life in the Garden

The first thing is asparagus.  We planted some asparagus over a decade ago.  What a faithful producer.  Each year it comes up and we snap the spears off and eat them.  I know where they pop up so I generally just plant around them.  This year, they'll share space with Roma II Italian Snap Beans.

We snap them off at the base.  They make a delightful snap.

This young one popping up reminds me of "Junior Asparagus" from the VeggieTales cartoons that the kids used to watch when they were much younger.

So we have lots of items popping up in the garden.  We also have crops finishing up.  Here are some broccoli that are flowering.  We picked pounds of florets.  Finally, we let them go to flower.  The honeybees are really enjoying them.  I'm letting the broccoli go to seed.  I'll harvest the seed pods as they mature and save seeds for this fall planting.

You can also see the cabbage that's maturing.

As it warms, the snails really like to get in the broccoli.  Tricia asked if I could hurry and pick all the cabbage remaining and store them in a box in the fridge.  So I harvested all the cabbage.  I needed that room to plant zucchini squash anyway.

I heard the food processor whirring in the kitchen and stepped in just in time to see Tricia chopping up some of the cabbage and mixing with whey and salt to make a couple of quarts of homemade Sauer kraut.

Sure looks good.  She'll leave at room temperature for a couple of days and then will put them in the fridge.  Then we will put in the fridge.  The flavor gets better as time passes on.

More on the garden coming up in future posts...

Asparagus

My mom gave me some asparagus roots years ago which I planted in my garden and they still make asparagus today.  We like to eat asparagus.  By the way, what is the plural of asparagus?  Surely it is not asparaguses!?  I'd bet it is asparagi, but it would probably just be safer and easier to say, "I ate 5 stalks of asparagus."

Asparagus is a plant indigenous to Europe and eaten by people worldwide.  If you plant them one time in your garden, they come up every year.  You've got to be very alert and check them every day in Springtime as you can only eat the young shoot.  If you let it get too big before cutting, it gets "woody" and is not palatable or fit for eating.  See in the picture below, there are two shoots ready to be cut and eaten.

Fresh asparagus ready to be harvested

Asparagus are easily recognizable by kids who watch Veggie Tales as one of the main characters is Junior, the asparagus.

  

Junior?  Is that you?

I can eat them raw right out of the garden.  They are delicious grilled, though.  I've even seen them wrapped with bacon and broiled.  You can't go wrong with that.

If you don't pay attention and harvest the young shoots to eat, the shoots quickly become what I call ferns.  The shoot grows upward, sends out branches that open and fall to the side.  They flower and make little bell-shaped flowers and produce little red berries on them.  Careful though - the berries are poisonous to humans.  In the fall, the foliage turns yellow and I generally cut it back.  Come Springtime, you'll have more asparagus!

Foliage of the asparagus plant

Here's an unrelated item that I wanted to share - next year's Sugar Snap Pea seeds.  I let the remaining peas turn brown on the vine and dry.  Prior to pulling the vines down to make room for the spring green bean crop, I pulled the pods off and let them continue to dry in a can.  This weekend, I shelled the peas.  I'll store them and use them for seed this fall.  

Sugar Snap pea seeds for next year!

I always like to save some seeds for next year rather than eating every single thing produced from the garden.  Don't eat your seed!  Think ahead for next year.