Summer Retrospective

It’s the end of summer, and I’m a little sad. Little Ava just started kindergarten. I changed jobs recently, and I’ll be going back to work full time. So I feel like my future as a “punk rock homesteader” or “hip homemaker” doesn’t seem as relevant anymore. lol. We usually try to cram in a lot of summer fun during the last few weeks of summer. But for the past few weeks, it just hasn’t felt like summer at all. Temps in the 70s and relentless rain.

But truly, life has been good – even if the tomatoes haven’t been:) And while I haven’t been active on the blog, I still have done plenty of gardening and shopping locally this summer.

The garden produced quite a lot of zucchini at the beginning of the summer. Just look at the size of this one in contrast with a bunch of bananas!

I cooked zucchini at least six different ways including: sauteed with Japanese eggplant and vidalia onions; oven baked zucchini fries, grilled zucchini, zucchini quiche, zucchini oven fries, and zucchini fritters. The zucchini fritters were one of those repeater recipes – I made the fritters at least three times. Local zucchini is still plentiful, so I urge you to try this dish! Get the recipe here.

Japanese eggplant and cucumbers did well in the garden.

Patty Pan squash did exceptionally well. Aren’t these little guys cute?

They remind me of little Pac Man ghosts, no?

I also think Dumb Donald’s hat of Fat Albert must have been inspired by patty pan squash:)

O.k. enough of the not-so-clever 1980s pop cultural references. Back to the garden.The fact that we were able to grow corn in our little garden just blows my mind.We had our share of worms, though. One day I microwaved an ear of corn in its husk and cooked an ear worm along with it.

But when I get a little freaked out by the ear worm and Japanese beetle assault on our garden, I remind myself of the lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi:

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!

Ava really enjoyed the corn this year. Although, I’d prefer that she eat less starchier, more nutritious vegetables, I did not discourage her consumption of corn. I’d like to think that corn is a gateway vegetable – a kind of bridge to healthier vegetables:)We did outsource for some of our corn supply this season. While visiting my parents camping in Surry, we stopped by College Run Farms.

We went to pick blueberries…

…but I couldn’t resist trying their “whiteout corn” after another patron raved about it.

Ava was not interested in picking blueberries in the heat, so she stayed back at the farm stand with my mom and got busy shucking the corn we had purchased. At least she was working for her food!

I also bought some cantaloupe, because the beetles destroyed so many of ours in the garden.

My mom wanted to share some blueberry pie with me.(I did not mind at all:)

I purchased this book for Ava…Poor kid has a mom with an agenda I’m afraid.

The “whiteout corn” was delicious, as were the blueberries and the cantaloupe. After going home that night I paired the cantaloupe and the blueberries together in really simple way.

I drizzled some local honey from Horseshoe Point Honeyin Suffolk on this thingy, and it was delicious!To close, I thought I’d leave you with a few images from our summer garden.

By now, we’ve pulled up the tomato plants, squash plants and melon vines. It’s bittersweet, but we have a full garden planted for the fall. After all, eating locally isn’t just a summer fling!

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