Early August Garden & Stuffed Zucchini

Green Beans, Zucchini, and Wishes- that is what we have been harvesting in our garden this last week. The veggie garden is in full swing- which we love. Everyday before dinner we go out to the garden and pick a large bunch of vegetables for dinner.

The green beans are wonderful, we pick a big bowl and between the four of us eat all of them at dinner. Steamed and served with a drizzle of melted butter.







The zucchini is also doing very well, we pick the small ones for eating, steamed with a drizzle of butter as a side dish. We also let some get nice and big. I like to shred these for zucchini breads and cakes, as well as zucchini fritters. Here's a link to my Zucchini Fritter Post. http://aprilshomemaking.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Here are the zucchini I picked today.

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Another of my favorite recipes for extra large zucchini is stuffed zucchini. This was our dinner tonight.

Here is the recipe:

Stuffed Zucchini

1 Large Zucchini
1 lbs ground meat (hamburger, turkey or sausage, vegetarian meat substitute)
2 1/2 cups of cooked rice
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese
1 large can 28 oz. crushed tomatoes
1 can 14.5 oz. stewed chopped tomatoes with Italian seasoning
1-2 cups chopped mushrooms
1 medium chopped onion

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds with a spoon. Set both halves in a large roasting pan.









Brown meat along with chopped onions, drain. Then stir in mushrooms and cook with sausage and onion for 5 minutes, stir in cooked rice, and can of stewed tomatoes and half the cheese. Fill zucchini with mixture, top with the rest of the cheese, pour can of crushed tomatoes around base of zucchini along with 1 cup of water.



Cover with foil and bake at 400 F. For 1 hour or until zucchini is tender and cooked. Slice and serve with some fresh sourdough bread. This can be made without meat or meat substitute - just use a little more rice and mushrooms. Great way to use those zucchinis.



The rest of the garden is doing well, the jalapenos are just about ready to pick as well as a few of my other pepper plants.



Here is a picture of our little sugar pumpkins growing. One has climbed up the garden fence and is happily growing there.




The cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen, here is a picture of my Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes, this is our favorite cherry tomato.


Our early girl tomatoes are a little behind this year due to the cool summer we have been having, the temperatures have been up though, so I am hoping they will still do okay.

Our rose bush suffered from puppy damage earlier this year, but we finally got a very pretty rose to bloom!


Our Nasturtiums are beautiful growing up a blueberry branch.



Here is our small little corn patch- I normally plant a full raised bed of corn, but this year I wanted more room for squash and pumpkins, but I still like to see a little corn growing in the yard come fall- so I planted some in a tub, and considering the small space it is doing as well as I thought it would. We might get a couple ears of corn, but even if we don't we will still have our little fall patch of corn stalks.



And lastly the Big Weed update- The beautiful thistle that we have been following all summer long has gone to seed. Here's a link to a previous post about our "Big Weed" if you want to see what it looked like when it was fully grown.
http://aprilshomemaking.blogspot.com/2011/07/blueberries-thistle.html .

"Wishes" are all over the ground.



Here is a "wish" in the sky.



The bees love it!




One last look before it is time to dig it out. :(



Thinking our neighbors may not appreciate this beautiful weed as much as we have, we have decided that it is time to take it out. So tonight after the bees mostly went to sleep, Gary tackled removing this beautiful giant plant.





Goodbye Big Weed- we really enjoyed watching you grow all summer long!



Gary got this giant thistle all chopped down and into the can.

Before we removed our thistle, every time the wind blew, it picked up a wish or two- I used to love wishes as a child, I would run around our yard to catch one and make my wish and release it back out into the sky. I love watching them float through the air. We each made one wish before Gary dug out our thistle weed. We saved a whole bag full of "wishes" for later.

All the wishes flying around here have got an old Mother Goose nursery rhyme stuck in my head, I grew up learning lots of nursery rhymes, I will leave you with this fun little rhyme.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
If turnips were watches, I would wear one by my side.
And if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans,
There'd be no work for tinkers!