Ways with Zucchini

Good morning, my friends. The zucchini invasion has begun. When a gardener plants three zucchini plants, said gardener must be prepared to engage in zucchini zealotry. I needed to hoe the garden again yesterday, but I started out mixing up what I needed for the cherry sherbet. I thought if I played my cards right, we could have it ready for dessert last night. So, read on, my friends. Let's just see if we were able to get 'er done.

First, I decided to harvest the smallest zucchini and leave the most mature among them to grow to size large. I'm really wanting to make some zucchini relish in the coming week, and so I hope they'll grow fast enough. I need 3 lbs. of zucchini...about eight medium. Here are the ones I harvested yesterday:

As you can see, they're on the smallish side. I used those to make my favorite Canal House Marinated Zucchini. I saw the recipe online several years ago. It looked good in the picture, and so I tried it for the first time many years ago. Now, it's become one of the things I look forward to in the years when we plant a garden. By harvesting them early, it keeps the zucchini population under control as well.

It's easy to make. The zucchini are browned on both sides, and then they're marinated at room temperature for about an hour before serving. These are for our dinner tonight, and so they went straight into the refrigerator after the marinade was added. Also, I'm trying out freeze-dried basil. I hate buying fresh basil in the grocery store because it goes bad so quickly. Freeze-dried might be an alternative to fresh when you only need a little bit.

After the garden was hoed, I took a walk around to check on the flowers. The day lilies are the stars right now, limited though they are. 

Just on the other side of the day lilies, the first echinacea has appeared. This is the one known as "Powwow Wild Berry."

Moving along the retaining wall, this hydrangea is in full flower. 

To my right, the first flowers are appearing on the variegated hydrangea.

Across the yard, the dahlia has three flower buds now. I really need to take a look at the name tag on this one so I can know what to expect when it blooms.

One other has developed a bud now too.

Back inside, I went to work quilting the final three plates at the top of my quilt.

There was plenty of time left in the day to quilt the blue sashing as well. Originally, I thought about doing something fancier here, but I decided to keep it simple with this ribbon motif.

When I had that finished, I summoned my quilt inspector. He takes his job very seriously.

He could barely wait for me to spread the quilt out.

Then he went straight to work.

Happily, this was his response:

I purrnounce it "acceptable."

And lemme just tell you, "acceptable" is high praise from a cat. I didn't even have to bribe him with treats. 

Here's a picture of the whole quilt. Just the crazy quilt blocks on the sides remain to be quilted. My goal for today will be to quilt at least one side. Depending on how long it takes, I might be able to finish it off.

It took me a while to decide what to do there. I've decided to use a motif I used once before when I quilted the Quiltmaker's Garden some years back. It was one I found in this book:

It looks like this:

When all the crazy quilt blocks are quilted, it'll be ready for binding. I have the rest of the week to finish it off to take along on our camping trip.

So that brought me to the end of the day. Mike and I sat outside for a while. The mornings have been cloudy and cool, with the sun making an appearance around noon. It makes the long evenings very comfortable. Yesterday, I noticed the first cherry tomatoes are nearly ripe. They're a little hard to see among the greenery. This is a Sungold cherry tomato, and so they are orange when they are fully ripe.

Inside, I had our dinner of Zucchini Onion Pie baking off in the toaster oven. This was a new recipe for us, and it turned out great. It was super easy too, with just a few ingredients to mix up. Then it's baked in a deep-dish pie plate. If you don't have a deep-dish pie plate, it can also be baked in a square baking dish.

We liked it, and it was easy enough to do in the RV...always a bonus in Recipeville.

So what about that cherry sherbet, huh? Well, I churned it around 4:00 p.m. and it looked like this:

Later on, we deemed it frozen enough to enjoy for our dessert. It was so tasty and refreshing with a strong cherry flavor. You can find the recipe right here. I used amaretto in place of the cherry liqueur.

So that brings us to this morning. Tiny House #26 has been released. It has a lot of sections, but some of them are small:

We're heading out on our camping trip next Monday, and so I want to get this one finished this week. I'll fall behind on the next one. These are such a PITA to make, I'm wanting to keep up week by week. If they start to stack up on me, I know I'll never be motivated to finish them, and that would be a shame.

It's a grocery shopping day. We managed to get through last week without doing any grocery shopping, and so our list is long today. We're also picking up things we'll need for next week's camping trip. There should still be plenty of time for quilting this afternoon. It feels as if the week is about to get very busy. For sure there will be quilting and sewing. Possibly there will be canning. By next weekend, there will be packing. And don't even get me started on the household chores. Aside from that, I'm getting a haircut tomorrow and a pedicure on Wednesday. So, you can see, this week's agenda is packed with to-do's. 

And don't forget to check in on Thursday. It'll be my 13th Blogiversary, and I'll have a giveaway for you. Consider this your invitation to the party.