Thursday, July 2, 2015

Squash Season

Travis in the Garden

Question asked in late May: Would four yellow squash plants be enough? Would I regret not planting more come July?

July's answer: Four yellow squash plants is three plants too many. We will never run out of yellow squash. Not ever. So what to do with all this squash? As far as I can tell there are only three existing yellow squash recipes in the world. Sauteed squash. Squash gratin. Squash in spaghetti sauce. That's it.

Now zucchini recipes are everywhere. Stuff your zucchini! Julienne your zucchini! Make some delicious zucchini bread. And don't forget to roast it, bake it, and/or cover it in breadcrumbs and fry it! Zucchini is fabulous with mozzarella. Yellow squash? Not so much.



Well, let me add a fourth yellow squash recipe, one that I came up with by accident. I caramelized some onions the other night for a dinner of sirloin steak tips, broccoli and--you guessed it--sauted squash. What I discovered is that if you mix up your sauted squash with your caramelized onions, you've got quite a taste treat on your hands.

You're welcome.

The rest of the garden is coming along. The blueberry bushes are three years old this summer and finally bearing fruit--one berry at a time. We have twelve bushes, and every day I pick twelve berries. Aren't they supposed to all turn blue at the same time? How am I ever going to make jam?

We have three sections of corn this year. This is the Man's doing. He is going to be the Corn King of the Suburbs. If you would like me to mail you a few ears, just leave your address in the comments section. We will have plenty to share.

 A Kingdom of Corn
 

The summer is coming along. We spent last week on Ocracoke Island, frolicking in the exact same spot where a man was bit by a shark yesterday. We're having a bit of a shark problem in general on the NC coast. The Man has decided that next summer we'll take our vacation at a lakeside resort. In the mountains. He saw Jaws at an impressionable age. We'll never go to the beach again.

I'm trying to do some writing and some quilting. I'm reading Seamus Heaney's selected poems, Opened Ground. A poetry teacher I had once said you should adopt a poet every season. I do this periodically. I've done it with William Carlos Williams and Philip Levine. It's quite a wonderful project. You go deep. Usually I go wide.

That's it for now. Hope to see you again soon! Do let me know if you'd like me to mail you some corn.