Two Unrelated Recipes

In my last post I mentioned two recipes you may want to try with your families.

Squash Kugel
Courtesy of our dear neighbors
Ingredients:
20 oz. frozen squash, defrosted
1/2 c. creamer (I use light cream)
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) butter, softened
7/8 c. natural applesauce (I use our applesauce)
2 c. flour
2 c. sugar (IF I add sugar, I halve it)
5 eggs
cinnamon

Instructions:
Mix everything EXCEPT the cinnamon in a large bowl. I use an immersion blender to make it reasonably smooth. Pour in an 8x8 or 9x9 pan lined with parchment paper. You probably could spray your pan instead of using paper. I use paper.

Bake at 350 for at least 1 hour, until set. Serve warm.

Tomato-Cucumber Salad
From ???
Ingredients:
2 medium cucumbers, diced
2-3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 small or medium red onion, diced
olive oil
lemon juice
salt and pepper

Instructions:
Combine cucumbers, tomatoes, and onion in a bowl. There should be approximately equally amounts of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onion such that if you took a spoonful, you would have a taste of each vegetable.

Add olive oil (maybe 1/8-1/4 c.?), lemon juice (about same as olive oil), and salt and pepper to taste. Allowing to marinate for 30-60 minutes in the fridge is ideal.

Note:
This is one of the few ways I enjoy fresh uncooked tomatoes. :)

Involving Kids in Their Food

Something I think has helped our kids to be willing to try vegetables as well as other new foods has been involving them in the process of producing, acquiring, and making food. Today was a good example of involving them. Aaron and I cut a deal that he would buy the fish for tonight's dinner (saving me a trip to the grocery with 2 kids who don't really want to shop) and I would pick green beans from our garden, as well as anything else in need of harvesting. I was certain there would not be enough green beans to share with our friends who would be joining us for dinner, but I agreed to the deal.

Look what we found!


3 cukes, a tomato, and a little less than a pound of beans. The kids were really excited to show off the produce. I told Caleb about how much he helped by planting, watering, and picking dead leaves from the plants. Ellie enjoyed smelling the tomato (which she does not like eating yet) as well as trying to snag a green bean (they were washed before dinner!).

After harvesting the vegetables, the kids had lunch. I included a peeled and "sticked" cucumber, and they both ate it happily. Caleb also ate some tomato. Ellie has yet to develop a real taste for tomatoes, but I don't like them uncooked either, so I'm not too worried. After the so-called naptime, Caleb and I made squash kugel, which did not involve our harvested produce, but he still saw what went into making one of his favorite dishes. He enjoyed using my immersion blender, and he was surprised (annoyed?) that the mixture didn't look like "squash cake" when he was done mixing.

Involving him in the magic of cooking seems to help him try new things and enjoy the dishes we create together. At dinner, he tried the cucumber tomato salad even though I know he isn't fond of vegetables that have been "dressed up." He told me he liked the cucumber but not the other parts. I'm guessing he didn't like the onions. Anyway, he knew the salad came from our garden, and he was willing to try it because he was curious about what came out of our backyard. I think I even caught Ellie munching on a piece of cucumber or tomato.

Maybe this post isn't surprising, but I wanted to share that involving kids in the process of food does seem to have an effect, at least in our house.

Recipes for salad and kugel forthcoming!

Garden Update - Good and Bad News

First the good news:
Last night we harvested our first cucumbers (4!), our first red tomato, and our volunteer squash (i.e., we didn't plan for it to be there but it worked out).


Now the bad news:
The squash bed has not worked out and we have been digging up the dead plants. I think 2 things happened - first, I think that we had all male flowers and no (or not enough) females. Supportive as I am of same-sex marriage, it doesn't work out well in a vegetable garden. :P The second thing that may have happened is a squash borer population (nasty moth larvae that eats the stems from the inside out). Grf. No pumpkins this year. In theory we could re-plant the other squash, but I'm too grumpy to re-plant. Aaron has suggested planting kale, but again my grumpiness needs to pass first. I've given him a green light to plant as he sees fit.

In additional bad news, I fear we may have tomatoes with blight. Check out the second picture of last night's small harvest.

What do you think of the tomato now? Last summer loads of people ended up with tomato blight and we totally lucked out with healthy beautiful and yummy tomatoes. The black spot has me worried. I thought blighted tomatoes looked healthy on the outside but crummy on the inside, but maybe I'm wrong and sometimes the blight is visible on the outside.

Back to the good news, aren't our cucumbers delightful? The first one on the left is enormous! The second one is ridiculously fat. The last two might be supermarket passable *smirk*. Did you know that supermarkets will reject perfectly edible produce solely based on shape of the fruit/vegetable? Our family cares less about shape and more about yumminess.

Off to figure out about our 'maters!