I left my (one) zucchini plant alone for two weeks, and this is what I got:

Zukes

My experience with large zucchini is that they tend to the bitter, but I plan to either grill these (lightly coated in olive oil) or shred and freeze them for zucchini bread.

Driving through Texas, my man and I stopped in Clarendon looking for dinner. We scoped the town of about 2,000 and chose the Nuttin Fancy Cafe because the parking lot was jammed with cars. (Well the parking lot was full of trucks really, which seems to be what everyone drives, except for one guy on a vintage motorcycle.)

I ordered the fried catfish dinner. It came with a dinner salad, hand-battered fried catfish, fried okra, fried sweet breads (those long skinny tubes on the plate). It was delicious! And the service was great too.

So, rule of thumb: when in doubt, pick the place with the full parking lot, it’s where the locals go.

Chives

Want some easy-to-grow plants that look good and that you can use for cooking, garnishing and eating? These are herbs that I have in our front yard that are perennial. (Perennial means they survive the winter and come back every year. In fact, chives, thyme and sage stay green most of the winter, or even throughout the winter if it’s mild, and you can still use them if you don’t take too much of the plant.)

I live in Denver, Colorado, and these grow quite easily without much help from me! All these receive 6+ hours sun a day. Our soil is slightly sandy and not especially nutrient rich. These get watered when we have hot dry spells, but mostly are fine with the typical Colorado summers.

Russian Tarragon

Chives. I use chives lightly cooked in white wine sauces, as topping for potatoes of any kind, garnish any time you’d like a very mild garlic or onion flavor. Use clean scissors to snip the most attractive shoots close to the stem.

Tarragon. Tarragon leaves (but no stems) can be chopped and added to home made salad dressing, vinaigrettes, and marinades. It has an anise-like flavor. A little goes a long way. I think this is Russian Tarragon, which grows really well here and actually prefers less nutritious soil. The recommended culinary version is French Tarragon which is a little more gangly and wayward growing (not so tall and spiky straight), but this version I have works great for my occasional use.

French Thyme

Thyme. Pictured here is French Thyme, the preferred version for chefs and cooks. We are also growing lemon thyme. I use thyme in soup, chicken+turkey dishes. Typically I just toss in a few large pieces into a soup or roasted turkey dish, and then remove the cooked stems before serving. Or you could trim the leaves from the steams and cook them into a pasta sauce.

Sage. This is tri-color sage (shown below). We also have a couple of other types growing in the herb patch, though this particular plant is the happiest. (This picture was just taken a couple of days ago. We’ve had a wet spring and it has really grown big the past few weeks.) I use this with soup, poultry dishes, and one of my favorite dishes of white beans, olive oil, white wine and garlic (and bacon if you’re into it). Again, with this, I toss in a clump during cooking and remove for the final preparation and serving.

Tri-color Sage

With all herbs, when you harvest some of the plant, you’re stimulating them to grow more, so don’t be shy! It’s best to cut the stems close to the ground rather than just picking off leaves. Cutting a stem will cause the plant to get thicker and fuller and retain its natural shape, while picking off individual leaves may cause the plant to split and make new shoots too far up it’s stems so that it gets awkward, more erratically shaped and even tip over.

I’m sure there are several other perennial herbs that work grow well in our arid Colorado climate, feel free to add your favorites in the comments!

Ingredients:

• 2 salmon fillets with skin on one side
• 1 cup fresh pineapple cut into small chunks
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce (I used Annie’s Smoky Maple BBQ sauce, but you could use your favorite, or make your own.)
• olive oil
• cayenne (to taste)

Directions:

1. Combine barbecue sauce, pineapple chunks and cayenne. Mix and set aside.
2. Clean and oil your grill grate.
3. Rub a little olive oil on your salmon fillets.
4. Cook fillets over medium-hot heat for a 3 minutes on the non-skin side, putting meat directly on the grill grate.
5. Flip the fish over skin side down on a piece of foil for the rest of the grilling.
6. Top each fillet with your pineapple-barbecue combo.
7. Close grill lid and cook on medium-high until done to your preference.

The foil is used so the fish doesn’t stick to the grill as the BBQ-pineapple sauce will carmelize and drip off the side (yum!). So for the long cooking portion, we put the fillets on sheets of foil and then put the pile of pineapple BBQ sauce on top. And then when cooked to perfection, you can use a thin metal spatula or fork to remove the fillet from the skin (which will probably be carmelized and stuck to the foil) and serve this gorgeous salmon dish!

Here is my mushroom patch. It is in the rubbermaid bin to keep spores from dirtying the carpet. The mister bottle is to the right. The plastic beyond the mister bottle is a humidity tent, and the skewers in the patch help hold the tent up. You can see a new mushroom at the right of the far end of the patch.

Here is one shiitake mushroom that I clipped from the patch.

The kit came with a number of recipes, but so far I've just been sauteeing the mushrooms in a bit of oil or butter. It's delicious.

I have read that the stems get too tough for cooking, so I boil the stems for soup stock. I then freeze the stock for future use.

Here’s my shitake cooking recipe so far.

Ingredients

• fresh shiitake mushrooms
• oil or butter

Directions

• Wash the mushrooms
• Cut off their stalks, save for boiling in water to make soup stock
• Slice caps in half, then cut into sections
• Heat oil or butter in pan on medium-low
• Add mushrooms
• Sautee until done.  The color will change and they will cook down.
• Serve hot

Mmmmmmm…..

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water or vegetable broth (vegetable broth will add more flavor)
• 1 tsp very thinly sliced red onion
• 1/2 cup chopped bell peppers (red, green, yellow)
• 1/4 cup chopped tomato
• 1 cup fresh baby spinach (or chopped regular spinach)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 tsp cumin (Be forewarned, this salad is generous on cumin. If you’re not a fan, you can scale it back.)
• juice of 1 lime
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Rinse quinoa and remove any debris or discolored grains.
2. Add quinoa plus liquid (either water or broth) to pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer for approx 15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.
3. Meanwhile, combine olive oil, lime juice, cumin, peppers, onion and tomato and set aside. (This is all the ingredients except the spinach.)
4. After quinoa is cooked, move to colander and set aside to cool.
5. Combine warm quinoa, bowl of spices and veggies and spinach. Mix well.

Note: Let the quinoa cool based on your preference for crisp spinach or wilted spinach or somewhere in between. I like my spinach ever so slightly wilted, and I let the quinoa cool for about 7-8 minutes before combining with the spinach, so the heat from the quinoa can soften it up just a little.

Stock Ingredients

• 1 turkey drumstick
• 1 small onion, quartered
• 2 carrots chopped in halves or quarters
• 3 stalks celery cut in half
• lots of water

The drumstick went right in a large pot covered with water, and I added water as it cooked when the water level dipped below the top of the drumstick. I made the stock over the course of about three hours, skimming off the funk on top periodically. Then, I strained the stock, discarded the vegetables, and set aside some choice meat from the turkey leg.

Soup Ingredients

• 6-8 cups stock
• 1/4 onion thinly sliced and chopped
• 1 carrot thinly sliced
• 1 stalk celery thinly sliced
• 2 tbs fresh parsley
• turkey pulled from drumstick

I combined the above ingredients. I didn’t have any white meat turkey on hand, but would definitely recommend it, if you make your own turkey soup.

Dumplings

• 1 egg
• generous 1 cup flour
• cold water

Finally, I kneaded the above ingredients into an ever so slightly sticky dough ball. When the turkey soup was hot (but not boiling), I dropped in chunks of dough. After about 3 or 4 minutes, the dough was cooked and turkey soup was served!

First off, he checked out the boisenberries can, and lo and behold there was a recipe on the label, so he decided that was totally the way to go.

Next, he headed down to our local grocery store to buy a pie crust. He came back with a no-bake graham cracker crust. He was sad when I said it might not work out, but went back to the store and got a frozen pie crust instead. Phew.

Moving on, he made the pie filling. Somehow, he didn’t notice that it said TWO cans of pie filling for a 9″ pie. So he used the one can we had, but used the full amount of sugar and butter, and poured it into the pie shell where it only filled about halfway up the crust. Retrospectively, he said it did look a little flat, but he was hoping it would rise.

He also forgot to read the part where it said “lattice top” or “double crust” for the top of the pie. So he popped it into the oven as-is.

Despite disregard for the directions, the pie was tasty. As he said, “you can’t really mess up berries, sugar and butter!” It was more like a “fruit tart”. And as you see in the picture, we were down to the last piece, which we happily ate as soon as I took the picture.

I asked where such a beautiful shimmering cake could come from, and then I heard about the Denver Cake Nazi (a la Seinfeld’s “soup nazi”). If you are interested in a one-of-a-kind, rare, special, cake like this one, you must know: He only selectively calls people back, you have to “know somebody”. He doesn’t take cake requests, he tells you what kind of cake you’ll get. You must pay cash. And finally, be ready to meet in a parking lot to receive the cake. (It’s probably best to keep this article hush-hush…)

Dough Ingredients:

• Flour (3 cups)
• Egg (2 eggs)
• Water (2 tbs+ until you get right consistency)

Filling Ingredients:

• Cooked ground beef + onions
• Cooked mashed potato and soft cheese
• Cooked mashed potato and cabbage
• Cooked mashed potato and sauteed onion

Preparation:

1. First cook up your filling ingredients and set aside to cool. All fillings should be smooth, if they’re lumpy, they’re harder to put into the pierogi.
2. Prepare your dough. Mix flour and beaten eggs. Add cold water a little at a time until a dough consistency is achieved. You want the dough to stick together, and not have any dry spots, but you don’t want the dough to be wet-sticky and get stuck to your hands.
3. Roll out the dough about 1/4″ thick.
4. Use a round cookie cutter or large glass to make circles in the dough.
5. Place 1 tsp – 1 tbs of filling on half of the dough circle.
6. Dip your finger in water, and run it around the edge of the dough circle.
7. Carefully, fold over half of the dough circle, and pinch the edges together. Use your fingers to keep all the insides in the center (if they get pushed out the edges, the dough won’t seal).

Cooking – Slovak Style:

1. Place pierogi in gently boiling water.
2. Remove with a slotted spoon when pierogi rise to the surface.

Cooking – Polish Style:

1. Pan fry in butter (or olive oil) until golden brown.
2. Serve with fried onion bits, sour cream, or sweet & sour cabbage.