Even though I pulled my cucumbers a couple weeks ago, I still have a small mound of cucumbers sitting on my counter. At the same time, my in-law’s garden is just full of cherry tomatoes. So, here is a simple summer salad that uses up some items that may still be plentiful for you this time of year. Add a bit of acid with vinegar or lemon, and balance it with a bit of sugar, if desired.
This was me first time having and cooking with eggplant. When I was looking at recipes that use eggplant, I was surprised to find many people use eggplant in place of a protein like chicken or beef. I decided to make eggplant parmesan because it was one of the first recipes to pop into my head for eggplant. This recipe can easily be made vegetarian by swapping out cheese for vegan cheese, egg for an egg replacement, and using a natural oil like canola (what I used) or coconut. With this dish, I made homemade sauce. I added 1/3 of a very large zucchini and 1 large cucumber. Because these are both sweeter veggies, I added some salt and it came out tasting amazing and looking beautiful with speckles of green. I also added some red pepper flakes for spice, and same paprika for smokey flavor. Finally, I added the sauce at the end. I altered that for the recipe since I noticed after that many people like to bake it with the sauce. I chose not to though thinking the crispy crust was more important then having a gooey cheese on top. Either way, you can’t mess up this recipe! Makes 5-7 adult sized servings.
Slice off the top and bottom of your eggplant and discard. Slice remaining eggplant into 1/4 inch slices.
Add flour to one sandwich bag, add parmesan to the second. Crack your egg into the pie plate, add 2 Tbsp water, then beat with a fork until smooth. Add the oil to a dutch oven, and heat over medium heat until oil ripples.
One-Two pieces at a time, coat the eggplant slices with flour, then egg, then parmesan. Then, set aside. Repeat for all remaining slices.
Heat oven to 350 F.
Add slices carefully to oil. Cook on each side for 2 minutes. Then transfer directly to the baking dish.
Top each slice with 1 Tbsp sauce and a generous pinch of mozzarella. Add to oven and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.
August was an eventful month in the garden. In the beginning of the month, I pulled a tomato plant because of fungus. On the 27th, I pulled my cucumbers from the fabric pots. They began forming very misshapen fruits, and the leaves were dying off rather fast. I also planted radish seeds that day in the two open fabric pots and in the free rows of the raised beds. They already have decent sized sprouts, and the rainy weather helps too. I noticed several of my tomatoes had blossom end rot, but I added some crushed egg shells and with lots of rain in the forecast, it had only happened to 3 tomatoes. Finally, I also ordered garlic to be planted beginning to mid-October. I tried to grow garlic last winter, but I really had no idea what I was doing, so they didn’t make it through the freeze. Finally, I’ve also begun trying to root a pineapple top. And, I found a volunteer pumpkin vine by the house.
I’ve also been thinking extensively about the garden for next Spring, Summer, and Fall. Josh and I plan to build 2 more 8X3 or 4 beds. We plan on placing them by our baby peach tree and we plan to place lower maintenance plants there, though I check on my garden at least once a day. Beans grew really well for us this year, so we plan to grow more green beans. We bought heirloom garlic from MI Gardener, so we plan to grow 3 varieties. We didn’t have much luck at all with tomatoes this summer, so though I’ll be more careful next year to water more often and soak them, I plan to up our quantity to 10 tomato plants with 2 heirloom varieties. I’d like to grow bell and banana peppers next year, potatoes and sweet potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and more onions, but this time from seed. And, once garlic in harvested in July, we’ll wait about a month or so, and plant some peas. We are ambitious, but this summer has been such a blessing to us that we’d love to have even more fresh veggies next year! We would plant zucchini, yellow squash, or eggplant, but my in-laws always grow lots, so we help absorb some of their excess. Finally, we contemplated more carrots, growing celery, and beets, but we’d like to grow the garden in increments that won’t overwhelm me, and hopefully doubling in size won’t be too much.
This summer we also got quite a bit of seed from our garden. The radish seed pods below is about 1/2 the quantity I got from about 4-5 plants I let go to seed. It took me about 3 hours to break and filter out the seed, and I easily have 100-200 seeds. I also got 3 onion flowers from my sets this year. They formed seeds, but I want at least one other variety, so I will also be buying a packet of seeds. Finally, as I mentioned, my green beans have been doing great. We were harvesting once a week, but just Monday when I was harvesting, I found about 3 pods that were drying. So, I also got 12 new seeds from that, and I will now be harvesting beans twice a week until they slow down. I also am letting my lettuce go to seed, though we’ll see how far they get before I turn my beds.
Original recipe can be found here. I used Dried Dill instead of fresh, though the original recipe used fresh dill. I also forgot to add onion, so that also changed the flavor.
I made this recipe a week and a half ago. This weekend I was making picnic food, and I thought these pickles would pair very nicely. These pickles are very good. They aren’t as sour as store bought pickles, but they had the right flavor and tasted great! I used 9 tsp dried dill, 2 garlic cloves, and I forgot the onion. Despite this these pickles were very good and still had a fresh flavor about them. If you still have as many cucumbers as I do, this would be a great recipe to make!
Slice and dice ingredients listed above to you desired form.
You will want to remove as much of the empty carrot top stem as possible, since it is stiffer and less enjoyable than the rest of the carrot top. Carrot tops are also bitter, so you’ll want to add a pinch of salt to your personal plate, and you’ll want to pick a dressing that compliments or covers the flavor. I used ranch and Italian dressing.
The other ingredients are optional, and you can feel free to substitute in whatever you see fit.
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