Zucchini-Squash Casserole

Every month at church we have a pot-luck. For all of my southern friends, this is the norm for church fellowship....perhaps this is the norm all over the country, but it is especially prevalent in the south. So our church always has the same people bring the same type of food For example, because my last name starts with 'A' I get to bring vegetables. To be clear this does not include salad nor does it include potatoes. Usually I have difficulty coming up with a vegetable, but not during the summer.

So, since squash and zucchini are in season, I am going to make a squash and zucchini casserole. I asked my mother and granny what they do to create a great Squash/Zucchini casserole (because to be honest, I don't make a lot of Squash and Zucchini). They gave me some good southern cooking ideas, and I am adding some of my favorite casserole dish techniques to spice it up a little. I tried to be ingenious and come up with a clever recipe name, but since it's for a church pot-luck it would be wrong to call it something other than Zucchini-Squash Casserole (though I'd rename it if I were in MN to Zucchini-Squash Hotdish). One day maybe it'll be Mrs. Ask's famous Zucchini-Squash Casserole, but for now it is simply an attempt to make an excellent casserole.

ZUCCHINI-SQUASH CASSEROLE
From Lisa Ask's Kitchen
with secrets from Mom & Granny

Preheat over to 350 degrees.

Chop 3 Zucchini, 3 Squash into one inch cubes. Finely chop small onion.

Saute Vegetables in 1/2 Stick Butter until soft but not mushy.

Season vegetables to taste with the following ingredients:
Sugar
Garlic Salt
Black Pepper

Pour sauteed vegetables into a 9x13" casserole. Add a cup of shredded cheese and combine. I use Colby/Jack.

Combine one stick of melted butter, one sleeve crushed Ritz Cracker and 1/2-1 cup Italian Bread Crumbs (enough to top the casserole)

Bake 20 minutes or until bubbly!

Salad Day at Pre-school and More.

My son took cucumber and squash to his school today for "salad day." He was proud to say that he picked them from his garden. My favorite kid interpretation is calling Zucchini a Bikini.


I have mentioned how our peppers aren't our best crop? I am serious. These peppers have been in the ground for a LONG time. AND now finally we see some jalapenos. The plants are nearly three feet tall. They are beautiful plants, but I wish they'd spend their beauty on the peppers.



These are my small, fancy gourds. I have been training them on the trellis this week. I am hoping this will allow more garden space, but also, I am hoping that the fruit will be nice and round since they are off the ground.


Here are a couple, beautiful gourds. So far, so round.



This is my tallest sunflower. I like how this sunflower is about six inches in diameter rather than twenty inches. This year I am growing it for beauty rather than for the seeds. You can see a little sunflower underneath. It's even smaller.



My Baby Boos are doing so well. They are growing quickly. I wonder when I will have to harvest them. They are only supposed to be about three inches. I will have to do more research on this. I also trained the Baby Boos to grow on a trellis. This made a huge difference. See below.



And this is the largest of my Cinderella Pumpkins to date. I can't wait to see what they turn into. I built a make-shift trellis to prevent them from growing over the tomatoes and peppers, but I am concerned that the tellis will fall with the weight if pumpkins grow on my trellis creation.



A couple weeks ago I thought my garden was looking bare. I was thinking that maybe I over spaced them. By my memory of last years pumpkins proved accurate. This plant has more than tripled in size in the last couple weeks. I am now starting to think about pruning.


This is our guard dog, Caleb. We keep him chained in the garden at night (with food, water and shelter, of course) to scare off the deer. So far it is really working!



Change of location. We're at my house checking out my False Alarm Hybrid Peppers. They are growing well in the pots...this pot particularly well as it holds water the best. I think I even see the beginnings of some pepper buds. Please disregard the awful weeds. It's on my to do list.


This is also an experiment. I am growing birdhouse gourds in a whiskey barrel. I bet by the time summer is over my whole house will be covered in vines!



These are the squash. Fabulous, huh?

And the harvesting has begun!

Here are the first of the squash! My son is excited to take his squash to school for salad day. I know, right, salad day? Well, that's the plan. We anticipate a couple weeks or so of plenty of squash. I'll get some recipes up next blog.

GOURDS & PUMPKINS

I am quite excited about this little guy. This is a picture of my "small, fancy" gourd. It took everything for my son to not pull it off the vine.


And check out this little pumpkin. This is a miniature Lumina pumpkin. It'll get around 3 inches and will be white. I think it'll be fun to play with these things come fall. But at the rate it is growing now, we might be enjoying them early!

SUNFLOWERS

I was way off in thinking that the sunflower was about as tall as my daughter. It towers over her! Isn't she cute? Oh, right, the sunflowers, yes...I was excited to see that some of the stalks have several buds for flowers. I am so excited to see how these turn out.

GREEN BEANS

Green beans are so much fun. My granny is sitting in her chair breaking green beans. I remember as a wee lassie breaking beans with my Granny. But the process only starts here. She will can all of these beans. I THINK we got about fifty cans last year...and the deer ate half the crop. Who knows how many we'll get this year. Good thing we are all green bean fans. And Granny makes the BEST southern style green beans. These beans are Italian green beans. They are different because they are flat. My family prefers these, but Granny likes the round ones....If she makes them I eat those, too.

Major Growth!

Check out this beautiful leaf! I love squash plants, they are large, lush and beautiful. These plants have my favorite foliage...at least during their prime!



Check out this little squash. Within the next couple weeks we'll have more squash than we'll know what to do with!



Green beans, too. I took this picture on June 12th, so this green bean is probably pickin' size. Last week, the Italian beans weren't even growing. When I looked at them yesterday, they were a good 5 inches. BTW, the green bean is in the very center sitting horizontally!



This plant is my Cinderella Pumpkin plant. These are by far the most beautiful and prolific of my pumpkin plants. In fact, there are little pumpkins about the size of a marbles already there.



My daughter is over two feet tall and these sunflowers are taller than she. These sunflowers won't grow very tall. I did that deliberately since they were much too tall to enjoy last year. Not to mention, the flowers were quite large and heavy.



You can already see the flower bud on the sunflowers.



These are small, fancy gourds. They are crawling up the trellis nicely. Yesterday I noticed two golf ball sized gourds hanging there!



Here are the pumpkin blooms. I am excited!!!!



So, I finally got around to planting my burpee tomato plants that I grew from seed. They look great. Additionally, I found some volunteer tomatoes from last years crop. I have transplanted those to a row and am excited to see what kind of tomatoes they are! They could be cherry, heirloom, ice tomatoes...who knows! I love a good surprise! And yes, this past weekend, I weeded. YUCK!



Lookie what I see....tomatoes. We're going to have tomatoes coming out of our ears!



See how beautiful. We got a huge rain yesterday. I 'll be they are even more incredible now!

Blackberries!

So it's blackberry season.  By the end of June we should have loads and loads of blackberries. Now I can't lie, blackberries are not my favorite fruit.  I don't like biting into seeds, but my Granny can make a fierce blackberry cobbler.  My son on the other hand can eat the berries right off the vine in mass proportion.  

My sons ability to walk right up to a blackberry vine is a direct result of my "Pop paw's" plan to grow thornless, thumb-sized berries.  Now I have heard that the thornless berries are better for pies and cobblers since they are not as sweet as wild blackberries...BUT there is certainly a price to pay to get those delicious, wild blackberries.  The wild berries are just that WILD. They are brutal and their thorns show no mercy.

This past spring my mother and cleared the brush near the garden to allow for easy lawn mowing.  We scratched our skin up trying to battle through loads on thorn bushes.  After a painful battle, we felt that we saved the person on the mower from brutal scarring and pain. Little did we know, only a few months later, those vicious vines popped right back up....it was then we realized we were fighting wild blackberries.

Regardless, scratches or not, we'll be picking all those berries both domestic and wild.  

French Dressing Recipe & More

Tonight I will be eating the delicious lettuce from the garden again! I am so excited! A salad for me usually consists of a little lettuce and loads of toppings; however, the fresh, tender lettuce from the garden needs nothing but some french dressing.

Here's the recipe:

French Dressing

3/4c vegetable Oil
1/4c white vinegar
1/4c Ketchup
1 pressed garlic clove
2T Sugar
1t Worcestershire

Normally, I wouldn't use anything but ranch and honey mustard, but that would be much too heavy for such a tender leaf.



(above)
This view of the garden is mother's. Gorgeous, huh?

(above)
And if you look past the two rows of green beans, row of cucumbers, row of okra, row of peppers You'll see my garden area. The picture doesn't do it justice, really...but you'll be amazed how in the coming month's my little area will become massive. The nature of the pumpkin. I forgot to mention that I planted a row and a half of tomatoes. Lots of fun.




(above)
If you look closely you will see some green bean flowers. It's about that time!