Tag Archives: zucchini

Summer “Pasta” Salad

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"Pasta" salad with zucchini "noodles"

Here is the perfect paleo side dish for your summer BBQ. It has all of the things in a normal pasta salad except the noodles are replaced with thinly sliced zucchini. The key is to blanch the zucchini to cook out some of the rawness. Fresh raw bell peppers add some sweetness and crunch. Pepperoni, cheese and olives add a good amount of saltiness. The salad is dressed with a simple Italian vinaigrette. You can vary the amounts to your liking and add any other veggies you have on  hand such as carrots, onions, broccoli or cauliflower and the meat/cheese could be cut out to make this vegetarian as well.

Ingredients

  • 2 zucchini
  • 1 bell pepper, sliced thinly.
  • Cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered. I like Trader Joe’s mini heirloom tomatoes.
  • Pepperoni, cut into small cubes.
  • Cheese, cut into small cubes. I used grass-fed cheddar but whole milk mozzarella would be good here too.
  • Olives, chopped finely. I used Trader Joe’s jalepeno-stuffed green olives for an extra kick.
  • 5 T olive oil
  • 2.5 T red wine vinegar
  • 1-2 tsp each of dried oregano, basil and red chili flakes

Directions

Cut the zucchini into very thin broad slices using a mandoline. Cut the slices lengthwise several times so they resemble noodles. Add the zucchini “noodles” to a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drain and immerse the “noodles” into an ice bath to stop the cooking. Once the zucchini is chilled, drain well and add the peppers, tomatoes, pepperoni, olives and cheese. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar and spices and dress the vegetables. Chill before serving.

CSA Week 7

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So I’m liking this posting with a week delay. Rather than speculation, I have results. This week (last week) was sort of a transition week. More summer veggies and a really great variety. Spinach and lettuces are less frequent. Summer squash is plentiful. This week included:

    • 1 lettuce. Instead of salads this week we did chicken lettuce wraps. We cooked skinless chicken thighs in enchilada sauce I had frozen with a dash of homemade hot sauce. I would say this was a marginal success. The chicken was really good but it was too messy.  I have yet to find a good paleo tortilla. I’ve tried coconut flour but they were too fluffy and fell apart easily.
    • 3# squash. This was mostly the yellow summer squash and 1 large green zucchini. We incorporated this into “meatless Monday” by making a squash “pasta bake”. Essentially this was cooked sliced zucchini, onion, garlic, diced tomatoes and italian seasonings topped with fresh mozzarella and baked until brown and bubbly.
    • 1 large onion
    • Leeks. Now I love leaks. I posted my favorite preparation a while ago served with seared sea scallops. This time I quickly charred them on the grill, then wrapped them in foil with a little balsamic vinegar and let them braise on the grill for about 10-15 minutes.
    • Swiss chard. We made Jacquie’s breakfast casserole again using local sausage and sweet potatoes. Went really well with the homemade hot sauce and yielded breakfast for four days this week.
    • Beets. One of me and Jacquie’s favorite veggies. Nothing better than roasted beets with a little olive oil. There weren’t many so we also made roasted parsnips to go with them. Both were a great side dish for chicken Kiev.

      Chicken Kiev

      Chicken Kiev

    • Cucumbers. Made some quick pickles with these to serve with a marinated and grilled flank steak.

Quick Pickles

CSA Week 5

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So Morley and I just went to pick up our CSA box and it’s like Armageddon in Chapel Hill, NC. We had thunderstorms roll through this evening and some of the traffic lights lost power.  There were car horns and sirens everywhere (which Morley likes to imitate by howling at them).  To be fair this is how it gets every time there is weather down here; North Carolinians can’t handle it. Or maybe it was just a free-for-all mob-style protest of the passing of Amendment 1, I can’t be sure…

But anyway, Morley and I did manage to eventually get our veggies home. You can tell this stuff is fresh. It was dirtier this week than the last couple of weeks, probably because of the rain today.

I didn’t do a Week 4 post because everything was a repeat of something we had previously. I still have some lettuce and spinach from last week that I am trying to quickly finish up now that the stocks are replenished. I’m also super-excited that we just bought a food dehydrator. I can’t decide what to dehydrate first! Looks like there are some possibilities here. So here’s a list of the contents. Quite a bounty this week.

  • 1 pint of strawberries – Still strawberry season here in NC. No complaints from this guy. I might try dehydrating these.
  • 1 head of cauliflower
  • 1 lettuce
  • 3 onions
  • 1 bunch of turnips – The onions and turnips are easy. I was really excited to see these. I see a breakfast casserole in our future made with grated turnips, diced onions, eggs and farm sausage.
  • 3 green/3 yellow squash – Another option for dehydrating. I want to try me some zucchini chips.
  • 3/4# spinach – I’ve been eating a lot of spinach lately. Will have to think about this one a little more.

Growing Zucchini

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Before this post, I’ve never grown anything. My only gardening history is from last year when I bought a flower from Lowe’s and tried to not kill it… well, it was supposed to be a flower… but it never lived that long. Now that Sean and I have been focusing on eating local, I’ve wanted more than ever to be able to grow my own vegetables. So I decided to pick one vegetable to grow from seed this year. A vegetable that could grow in a container too; we rent a townhouse so as much as I wish I could have a nice garden in the backyard I will make-do with container gardening. I did a bunch of Googling on the easiest vegetables to grow from seed… and zucchini was the lucky winner.

So on March 11th I planted 20 zucchini seeds in little Jiffy Pots. I wrapped them up in plastic wrap to keep them warm and moist and crossed my fingers. I planted 20 seeds because I was expecting with my

lack-of-a-green-thumb, only one or two of those would actually sprout. Boy was I wrong! Four days later I had my first three seedlings, and the next day I had another six! As the zucchini seedlings started to show I unwrapped the plastic wrap and set them in a sunny place in the house. On weekends when I was home during the day I would set the seedlings outside to soak in the nice NC sun. When their potting mix looked dry I would lightly water the surface of the potting mix with a spray bottle and pour some water in their tray so the roots could soak it up. I also had a rotating fan lightly blowing on the seedlings every so often; I read somewhere that it imitates the wind and makes their stems stronger, giving them a better chance of survival when you transplant them outdoors.

Ten days after sowing my seeds, and after spending a little-too-much time Googling zucchini, I had 13 seedlings. (That’s an impressive 65% success rate for anyone who was wondering!) Growing something from seed is very rewarding. I’m not going to lie, I became a little obsessed with my zucchini seedlings. They were just so damn cute and I really really didn’t want to kill them :-)

You are supposed to transplant the seedlings when they get their first “true leaves”. Apparently the first two leaves you see are the seedlings leaves, and after that they are the “true leaves”. It was obvious when the first true leaf showed on the seedlings, it had a different texture and color. Some of the seedlings roots even started growing through my Jiffy Pot by that point – next time I would use a bigger starting pot for the seeds. So on day 12 I decided it was time to transplant my zucchini seedlings into their containers and set them outside for good. I choose the 2 best looking zucchini seedlings, gave a few to a friend, and shed a tear as I said good-bye to the least healthy seedlings – natural selection is cruel. I transplanted each seedling in their own large plastic gardening container. I read not to use any kind of potting mix that contains soil because the soil doesn’t allow water to drain well in the container, so I went to the local gardening store and bought some Conrad Fafard Professional Potting Mix. It appears to be working well? … but seriously, sometimes I have no clue what I’m doing and I guess :-)

The night before I transplanted my 2 seedlings I made a homemade garlic-pepper spray to spray on my seedlings to keep off caterpillars, slugs and other hungry critters. This stuff seriously reeks, but it definitely works. I boiled 3 c of water and added to that 1/2 diced red onion, 2 tbsp of crushed garlic & 1/2 tbsp of cayenne pepper and covered it and let it sit overnight (outside that is, because it stunk). The next day I strained out the onions and funneled the liquid into a spray bottle. I spray the tops and bottoms of my plant’s leaves with the spray after I water them or after it rains, and I always use the spray at night; during the testing-stage, I accidentally sprayed a leaf during the day with the stuff and the combination of the spray and sun scorched the leaf a bit.

So as of today, April 9th, it is 30 days after sowing my zucchini seeds. And my zucchini plants are looking great! As you can see some of the leaves look a little torn up… we’ve had some hail in NC unfortunately. But I’m not too concerned, it’s been over a week since they took on their slight hail damage and they seem to be doing just fine. I’ve heard vegetables plants are pretty resilient to hail damage, so I’m just going to keep a close eye on them.

My plants each have their 2 seedling leaves, 4-5 true leaves and are even starting to bud! I can’t wait to see a zucchini flower; I think it will be one of this summer’s Top 10 moments for me.

For now, that’s all on my zucchini adventures. I’ve read a few other people’s blogs on their adventures in container gardening and I found everything to be so helpful, so I figured I would contribute my experiences. Hopefully you feel inspired now and want to grow zucchini :-)