Putting up the Zucchini

Another fabulous Saturday at the farmer's market and how could I not get some of my favorite, zucchini. I couldn't not buy it, it was calling to me. So I put a few aside for some of our meals this week, and then I threw some in my 4-cup chopper and...

Put in in baggies, with the amount labeled. I even took it another step and put it in the bags by how much my favorite recipes call for. So when the time comes and it's snowing and cold and dark and dismal and all I want is a zucchini spiced cupcake or a zucchini "crab" cake, I can just pull the bag out of the freezer and defrost.

Poof! Zucchini is put up!

Grilled Pineapple

I love summer because it means grilled pineapple. Although I guess you could grill pineapple anytime of the year, there is just something really great about it in the summer.

I drizzle a little balsamic vinegar and fresh cracked black pepper and put it right on the grill. It is beyond delicious, and really brings out the flavors and the juices. It goes perfect with pork, beef, chicken, ice cream, you name it. I literally jump for joy when pineapple's are on sale at the food store just so that I can grill. We generally grill the entire pineapple and then whatever is left, if anything, I snack on the next day. YUM. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

The picture above it is paired with grilled pork chops, apple sauce and zucchini cakes.

I heart Martha!

I love to hate Martha, I cannot lie. In fact my BFF and I went to her show. That's how much I love to hate her. And when I heard she was releasing a book about my favorite thing to bake...cupcakes, I about swooned. Okay I did.. a full on should be from the south swoon. What's next, I'll be eating grits. Oh but wait, I did that...

Anyhow, I got the book from my wonderful local library and I read it front to back in one night. Yes, I also love to read cookbooks. They are fascinating. In honor of zucchini season I picked out the Zucchini Spiced Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting to make for a friends BBQ.

What followed was almost euphoric. They were so simple, so delicious and I think I could probably have eaten the entire batch.

I also experimented with my mini muffin pan and that also turned out to be a really great experiment. I used my melon baller sized scooper from Pampered Chef!

Here is the recipe for the cupcakes and the frosting:

Zucchini-Spice Cupcakes

(Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes pg. 44)

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 cups packed light-brown sugar
3 cups packed grated zucchini
1 cup walnuts (about 3 ounces), toasted and coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. In another bowl, whisk together oil, eggs, vanilla and zest until well blended; whisk in brown sugar until smooth. Stir in zucchini, then add flour mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in walnuts.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.

To finish, use a small offset spatula to spread cupcakes with frosting. Refrigerate up to 3 days in airtight containers; bring to room temperature before serving.

CHANGES I MADE: I did not toast my walnuts and used finely chopped and I used 4 cups of zucchini. I also omitted the lemon zest. Did not use freshly grated nutmeg, mine was from a jar. Next time I will cut the oil and use EVOO and applesauce instead.

Cream Cheese Frosting
(Martha Stewart Cupcakes)

Ingredients
Makes about 2 cups
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions
Place cream cheese in a medium mixing bowl. Using a rubber spatula, soften cream cheese. Gradually add butter, and continue beating until smooth and well blended. Sift in confectioners' sugar, and continue beating until smooth. Add vanilla, and stir to combine.

Where to start...

When describing our house to people, I usually say, well it's a big old (and I mean OLD) colonial farmhouse on 8 acres of property in Bear Country, NJ and we also have a cabin and a stream. This makes it sound like something right out of the pages of a story book, right?

The truth is, it's a 1840ish (we've heard probably earlier) colonial farm house, with a "dilapadated" cabin (according to our tax records) and a really pretty creek, that pretty much dries up in the summer. And I love it.

We have deer and snakes and bears and wild turkeys. We've got lots of woods to explore, only a few (and far between) neighbors and there's no traffic.

I won't lie, it's not pretty. There was A LOT of brush up against the house, so one of the first things we did was to take down a tree, and remove all the shrubs and crap that were growing up against or near the house. We haven't 100% finished this job as it has been 90+ degrees almost every day since we moved in, but eventually.

Hopefully our neighbors are just so excited that we are doing soemthing, they don't care that we've not finished the job.

Looking better already, right?

Both front doors will be painted Behr's Jazz Blue. The grill has been moved, and the ground cover is getting ripped out and that will be all rocks.

What did we discover through this project?

-We had a front walk way that had been covered for YEARS.

-A cute little garden snake.

-That we should probably get tetnus shots because there are a lot of random metal things hidden in there.

Just another Tuesday night!

It was just another Tuesday night at our house. I decided to do grilled vegetable sandwich's and grilled red potatoes after our planned leftovers from the night before got eaten by a certain foster dog. Rather than worry about defrosting anything, I whipped these tasty sandwiches and potatoes up.

Fabulous husband was a tad dissapointed because there was no meat, but he got over it.

Vegetable sandwich

1 White Eggplant
1 Yellow Squash
Onion
EVOO
Garlic Ranch Dressing
Ciabatta rolls
Parm-Reggiano cheese
Salt & Pepper

Slice the eggplant and squash longways, slice onion. Drizzle with EVOO and salt and pepper to taste. Grill until desired tenderness. Brush rolls with EVOO on the inside and grill.
Spread ranch on bottom and top of roll, sprinkle with some Parm-Regg and load with veggies. Serve with Grilled Red Potatoes.

Grilled Red Potatoes
Red Potatoes
EVOO
Fresh Parsley
Salt & Pepper

Cut potatoes, coat with EVOO, place on tinfoil (spray with PAM), spring salt and pepper to taste and place on Grill. Grill until cooked through. Remove from grill, toss with fresh parsley and serve.

Cherry Vanilla Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

Say that 3 times in a row!!!



One of my favorite bridal shower gifts has been my Kitchen Aid Ice Cream maker attachment. I have used it 3 times since we moved and I opened it. It’s relatively simple, you keep it in the freezer for 15+ hours, then pop it onto your mixer and mix your mix, freeze that for 3+hours and POOF! You are a regular Ben & Jerry! Okay maybe not just yet, but I’ve got high hopes. While at the big W I found some Rival Ice cream mixes and picked a few up on clearance.



Using Rival’s Cherry Vanilla mix, 4 cups of whole milk, my Kitchen Aide Ice Cream maker attachment as well as some fresh cherries and chocolate chunks, I created a very fabulous Cherry Vanilla Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream.

Fabulous husband really liked this one as well. Sadly it just wasn’t the right taste to go with the cobbler. I’m really glad I bought two of these mixes because this one was delicious. However, I may try something other than whole milk. It wasn’t very creamy, and I think using a heavy cream or something like that would really improve upon it!

No final product pictures as I completely forgot and by the time I remembered, fabulous husband had finished it all.

Blackberry and Peaches, oh my!

This is a recipe I pulled from Whole Foods for Blackberry Peach Buttermilk Cobbler. In honor of fabulous husbands birthday, and lots of fresh peaches from the farmer's market, I decided to whip this up last week.

Without further adieu...

Serves 8
Sweet and juicy peaches are fantastic with this tangy buttermilk batter that crisps around the edges and is soft and tender in the center. Use peak-of-season fruits and serve with your favorite ice cream.
Ingredients
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon cornstarch
3/4 pound peaches, pitted and thickly sliced
1 (6-ounce) carton blackberries
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, cut into large pieces
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups lowfat buttermilk

Method
Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, whisk together maple syrup and cornstarch. Add peaches and blackberries and toss gently to coat; set aside. Put butter into an 8-inch round or square glass or metal cake pan. Heat in oven just until butter is melted, 2 to 3 minutes, then remove and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in buttermilk and mix until just combined to make a thick batter. Pour into pan over melted butter without stirring. Scatter reserved peach mixture evenly over top of batter and bake until golden and bubbly, 50 to 55 minutes.

How good does this look! I could have eaten it like this!
Hope the oven is ready for this prettiness!

All done!

My notes:

-I used sugar free generic maple syrup as that was all we had. I think next time I will make sure I have some good VT maple syrup on hand.

-I used WW flour instead of regular.
-Ironically the WF that I shopped at did not have buttermilk, but they had a powdered buttermilk that you could use. So I used that. Not sure if it would taste differently or not with real buttermilk.
It was a nice treat and what a way to showcase fresh, perfectly ripe peaches. We did not have any vanilla ice cream (only Cherry Vanilla with Choc Chunk), and that would really have paired well with this.