What to do with giant marrows

Or...the little marrows that grew!

It's squash season...I need to cut twice a week to keep the plants flowering and to harvest the courgettes at the "right" size. The last week has had me running around tidying up end of year details and the garden to do list is a little neglected at the moment.

On Friday evening I popped out to the garden to take a look around and found MONSTER MARROWS which have been diligently doing their thing and growing-and-growing-and-growing-and-growing-and-growing. This basket below was so heavy that if I picked it up by the handle I am sure it would have snapped.

So carrying my treasures I headed indoors and my children each gave a huge distressed sigh when they saw what they would be eating for the next while :) I promised them I would make the meals special..here what I did with the ones I didn't give away...

The two largest ones were sliced and used as "lasagne" sheets. This was so delicious and filling that I fed 9 people on one medium dish of lasagne - 5 of them older teen boys with big appetites. I love cooking for people who enjoy food and it was great to watch them munch it down.

The mince should be really rich in flavours and filled with herbs and tomatoes. You layer it just the same as you would lasagne but do not put cheese in the dish only a good lot of Parmesan on the top. I didn't make a cheese sauce but poured 250ml of cream around the outside. The other hint is to do this early in the morning and then let the flavours soak through the marrow. I baked it for about 1 hour to make sure the marrow was cooked. It was superb and got the thumbs up from the kids.

The next dish I made was not my own recipe but this sage, sausage and walnut stuffed squash. It was surprisingly quick and easy to make and was really delicious too!

The next big squash went into "spaghetti" tonight. Once you have sliced the marrow in "sheets", julienne them as fine as you can. Fry them in some olive oil or butter and add your favorite sauce. I made a fresh basil pesto and stirred that in with some cream, topped with Parmesan and black pepper it was another scrumptious meal.

Now I just have two more to go....hang in there kids!

Linking up at Simple Lives Thursday and Raising Arrows and A Wise Woman Builds

Surprise harvests

Despite feeling quite overwhelmed with the amount of weeds that have come up with the last batch of manure added to the compost we have been enjoying some harvests from our garden.

The garden itself is quite overgrown and I haven't had a chace to stake the tomatoes and train creeping cucumbers and squash so we have to look hard to find the fruits of the plants.

Here are some things we are enjoying from the garden now...

Roast vegetables appear often with our courgettes

Berry and wheatgrass smoothies. Raspberries not ours.

Lemon Cucumbers - delicious

Courgettes

 

Aubergine in flower

Corn on the menu

Green beans by the ton!

So many cherry tomatoes

Not on the menu - Tiffany - the garden cat

Still to come, colorful trailing squash

Delights of seasonal eating

Tonight found me enjoying a seasonal bag from our organic food suppliers where I buy our raw milk.  I saw that they had squash flowers for sale this week and promptly bought 3 bags. These were stuffed with a little mozarella and fried....

Beautiful squash flowers

I don't deep fry, just batter and fry in a little olive oil

Just had to check if they were good to eat!

Also in the bag was asparagus which I dry fried and sprinkled with salt, pepper, lemon juice and parmesan.

ThenI made a batch of chicken meatballs and put them in a Italian herby tomato sauce....

Chicken meatballs.

Also in the bag today was some beetroot which once boiled soft was drizzled with olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt pepper and garlic.

A delicious, quick, easy seasonal meal.

Tis the season to be pickling....

Tralalalalalaaaa.........

Today I did some pickling....

I used Jane's Delicious Kitchen recipe book for two of the recipes...Hot Diggedy Chilli Jelly and Squash in Olive Oil.

The chilli jelly is nicely hot, not unbearable...

10 red chillies
2 sweet peppers
6 cups sugar
Tablespoon of lemon seeds (pectin rich)
1/3 cup lemon juice.

Blend chillies and sweet peppers, heat to boiling point. Add other ingredients then boil until set. Put into sterilized jars - it yielded 2 500ml jars.

The marrows were a little more complicated, and to be fair, buying the book is highly recommended. I have to harvest all our marrows small now as if I leave them on the plant they get stung.

Then I pickled the chillies we picked this morning in my simple mixture from last year.

The bigger chillies were picked a while back and are drying....

Bounty today...

What a pleasure....

The time has come!

Yesterday evening in a howling Cape Town wind I decided it was time to plant.

A lot of the corn I planted in newspaper pots were ready and the patty pans that I got from Living Seeds were standing tall.

I turned over the lucerne into the earth and while it is not as full bodied as the soil in the rest of the garden I believe that this soil can grow these plants to maturity.

There are 12 patty pan plants and 32 corn planted, and there are still more corn to go in when they are ready. I also planted 10 tomato plants. Today I want to plant my seed potatoes too.

And then a thank you...a little bird left a gift in my postbox yesterday. I know it has to be someone who reads my blog and who is local, so I just want to say thank you...it is lovely and I will enjoy using it. Hugs to you!

More Marrow Munchies

Here are two more recipes for those who need things to make with marrows, or zucchini like the American's call it.

Marrow Muffins (I hope you can notice all the m & m's)

1/2 large marrow grated
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup oil or melted butter
1 cup wheatergern
1 cup cake flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1 1/2 cups nuts (walnuts or pecans)

Mix the dry ingredients, add grated marrow in bits and mix. Mix wet ingredients and add to dry. Don't overmix! Spoon into geased muffin tins and bake at 180 deg C for about 20 minutes. You can ice them with cream cheese icing, but we like them as is.

Then last night I used my summer squashes to make Delicious Jane's salad. I am sure she won't mind me sharing one recipe from her book...it may make you rush out and buy it! I find myself reaching for it often these days as the summer gluts of veggies hit. I didn't use the pomegranate pulp or mangoes. I used peaches instead.

Mix together:

1/4 cup pomegranate concentrate
1/4 cup mango juice
2 T olive oil
1 T whole grain mustard
Salt and pepper
1 thinly sliced red onion

Into bite size pieces:

5 courgettes
5 patty pans
1 small cucumber

Steam squash and then cool.

Mix cucumber with:
1/2 cup shredded basil leaves
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1/2 mango (cubed - I used peaches)
1 fresh red chilli sliced.

Mix squash into salad, pour over dressing and lightly toss til covered...simply divine!

A fighting chance

I thought I would give a quick update on the new area. After 3 days of sowing the lucerne, green fuzz was starting to show.



I am itching to get planting but I need to let it grow to a decent length so that I can turn it in as green manure.



Yesterday I bought a tripod which I want Superman to copy and make a few more for the other beds. I hope to grow cucumbers, loofahs and butternut up them.

This morning at 7am I took all my "Ladies In Waiting" and sowed seeds in anticipation of the new beds being ready in about 3 weeks time. I sowed 40 sweet corn, lots of loofahs, cucumbers, marrows and butternut.



I realized after filling the 40 pots that I need 40 more, so will get busy on those this evening.

Bye Bye Baby

It was time...it had been looking at me for 2 weeks now...I had been admiring it from afar, but to all good pumpkins come their final sacrifice....pumpkin pie!

My gorgeous pumpkin, 1 of 4, but the most perfect looking one I have seen, said goodbye to the world today. The seeds have been saved for next year...I have plenty to share with friends too.



I started by making a smiple puree by baking it until browned at the edges then scraping out the flesh and using my blender to make it smoooooth.



Half has been frozen in bags for a later date and the rest was combined with maple syrup, nutmeg and eggs to go into these little tartlets.



I served them with a dollop of whipped cream after dinner....



My little guy thinks they were delicious!

Successes and failures

I think there is a tendency in blogland to only share our victories and our good news. But behind the scenes there are other hard lessons being learnt. So while these photos aren't all feel-good photos, they will perhaps share some of the problems we have faced.

Our first big problem was milddew. We were able to harvest only two Heirloom Oil Pumpkins before the plant succumbed. Luckily we have two huge Ghost Riders still growing in the compost.



We also lost most of our gemsquash plants to milddew but we did get about 40 odd gems from them before they too went the way of all battle weary plants.

Our next problem is more recent...most of our Carbon Tomatoes were attacked by red spider mite and while the garlic spray did slow it down, the damage was done. We harvested about 20 huge tomatoes from this and they were delicious, however this area has now been cleaned out to prevent further spreading and about double that in green tomatoes had to be turfed in the bin.

Then a couple of weeks back I went to get some of our Rainbow Corn and found it to look like this. We planted it back in September but it obviously didn't pollinate properly and this was the result.



We have planted lots of other corn and we can hopefully count on those for late summer and autumn. I think the thing for me to get a grasp on is that we have so little space to grow food that when things fail like this I take it hard. Everything that I plant is loved, nutured and tended and thereafter I hope for a good yield from our small space.

On a more uplifting note we have also had great successes with strawberries, cucumbers, courgette (zucchini), potatoes and chillies.



These are what we picked today. So while we have had a fabulous harvest of cucumbers, they are not exactly a staple food like corn...or something like tomatoes that we use in almost every meal...ho hum...I suppose this is the joys of growing your own food.

Superman said to me tonight when he saw the corn: "Thank goodness we don't live 400 years ago in the middle of nowheree...'cause we would starve!"

I know he is just saying out loud what is in my mind, but it kind made me start a little. Thank goodness Woolies are just around the corner!

A garden feast

We went away for the weekend to a little cabin on the beach to celebrate my 40th birthday...it was a time of reading, walks, beaching, playing chess and scrabble, watching the stars and wildlife - a Kudu grazed under our window at night. What a wonderful weekend escape for us all.

But back at the lil ol homestead things were growing and ripening...



I am running out of room in my cooler drawer for more produce and with the heat being what it is at the moment need to pick and use asap. So tonight we had another dinner from our garden...

Iced cucumber and yoghurt soup (this was a bit of a challenge for us all - YKWIM - cold soup, but it was delicious.)



Simply made with 4 cucumbers, 3 cups of yoghurt, 1 cup of water, a pinch of fennel seeds and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Blend til smooth and chill.



Two French loaves...and stuffed marrow.

The stuffed marrows were delicious...ours was so big that I halved it lengthways, then cut it into 6 pieces. Scrape out the flesh with the seeds. Fry some onion garlic and pinenuts with the cubed flesh of the marrow.



Mix it together with 2 - 3 cups fresh breadcrumbs, 2 eggs, lots of fresh chopped parsely and sage and stuff it into the marrow shells.



Top with lots of parmesan and bake for about 1/2 hr. I had them in the oven at the same time as our bread was baking.



Dear Daughter Number 2 mixed up a batch of chocolate waffle batter and served chocolate waffles with cream and the strawberries we picked. Our strawberries are tapering off now as they send out their runners for new plants but we still are getting a fair amount of them to enjoy.



It was a true feast tonight.

Eating local...

I try to plan one meal completely from our garden once a week, more if our plants are yielding lots! Tonight we had this to work with...new potatoes, a massive courgette, tomatoes, eggs and beans.



I used the tomatoes and beans to make a spicy bean dish...



Zucchini and parmesan (ok, not local) fritters...



Served with boiled new potatoes.



Delicious.