Zucchini, beans, pumpkins and cucumbers (today was a bit cool and overcast - a very welcome change)
When I looked up the word ‘prudence’, here’s what I found:
caution in practical affairs; discretion or circumspection
care taken in the management of one's resources
consideration for one's own interests
I think this sums up what I wanted to talk about in this article…how to manage your ‘resources’. Most of the produce I mention was grown here, but some was grown locally by others, and two items probably came from far away.
I have today off, but will be working the next 6 days straight; so, I thought it would be prudent to deal with all the extra fruit and veg coming out of the garden and hanging around in the fridge. First of all, I need pre-made meals to get me through this week and second, I need to deal with all this excess produce before I feel overwhelmed by it.
The first thing I did was take inventory of all the items that needed to be cooked/preserved/fermented, then I grouped things together to create the dishes I want to cook for the week. In the kitchen and garden I found:
LOTS of zucchini
very ripe grapefruit
a butternut squash/pumpkin
eggplant
ripe avocados
a bell pepper/capsicum that desperately needed to be cooked
half a head of cabbage from Christmas
last season’s garlic
fresh eggs
local corn-on-the-cob
tomatoes
green beans
cucumbers
various varieties of basil
cauliflower that was getting a bit rubbery
I had also defrosted a kilogram (2.2lbs) of beef mice/ground beef from a local farmer a couple days ago which also needed to be used. I love meatballs cooked in bacon fat, so I fried up a pack of bacon first. I figured this could be added to breakfasts this week.
Once I started to look at all this produce I could see different recipes that would work well to incorporate them:
Sicilian Caponata (eggplant, garlic, zucchini, capsicum, tomatoes)
meatballs (beef, zucchini, garlic)
Bolognaise (beef, more zucchini, garlic, tomatoes) sauce
slow-braised zucchini with basil and feta (I was determned to use up all the zuc’s)
avocado chocolate mousse
grapefruit juice
roast veggies (cauliflower and root vegetables I found in the pantry)
frittata (eggs, zucchini, tomatoes)
steamed corn-on-the-cob for dinner tonight
My fridge after I was finished for the day….I try to store everything in glass, but today I ran out so had to resort to old plastic yogurt and almond butter containers (the bottom shelf which you cannot see is full of both fermented vegetables and food for the dog - fish, veggies cooked in bone broth, yogurt and bones; the top sheft is fermented sodas like tepache and rhubarb fizz, lemon juice and cold brew coffee)
I also tend to grate any extra zucchini (or when I find a huge zucchini in the garden that I missed the day before - oops) and store it in the freezer to add to homemade dog food. This amounted to only one container of grated zucchini today as I was so good at incorporating zucchini into EVERYTHING else!
Speaking of the freezer - it was pretty full, so I had to take somethings out in order to make space for new items (think of a game of Tetris). There were two containers of chopped-up rhubarb which I felt I should cook with strawberries, rose water, orange juice and a cinnamon stick so that we could enjoy some this week with yogurt and also to condense the rest into a smaller container to be returned to the freezer - that worked well. There were chicken bones in the freezer, too, from Christmas dinner, which I throw into the slow-cooker with onion and carrot scraps, peppercorns and a bay leaf - I thought I could use this broth for the pumpkin soup (and in the dog’s food).
I froze the grapefruit juice and the caponata. The chicken stock and roast pumpkin went into the fridge for later in the week when we run out of meatballs, Bolognaise and roasted veggies. I will eat the frittata for breakfast over the next few days. The sauerkraut will be ready in about a week - once it’s had time to ferment on the bench. As for the avocado chocolate mousse (avocado, coconut milk, vanilla, chia seeds, shredded coconut and a dash of honey mixed well in the food processor), we will either eat that for snacks or for dessert with berries.
As for the cucumbers, I left them to accumulate for the next week. I will make a batch of pickles on my next day off when there is enough for that kind of project. I have eaten so many green beans lately that I couldn’t bring myself to eat them this week. I will just cut, blanch and freeze them as they come out of the garden. This way I have enough for the rest of the year by the end of the Summer. I may also pressure can them so save space in the freezer.
This is generally what harvesting in Summer/Autumn looks like around here.
Generally, I bake fresh sourdough bread each week along with a sweet - today I made tahini brownies because I love them! The bread was just a plain loaf so my daughter can use it for breakfast with eggs or for lunch as ‘little pizzas’, which she quite fancies. Kefir milk is made fresh daily here, too, for us and the animals. Most weeks I make yogurt as well and fermented drinks (but those were already done yesterday).
I know this sounds like a lot (there were several batches of dishes washed throughout the morning), but it only took about four hours to prep and now the last of it is in the oven and I’m writing to you (while eating my lunch and thinking about how nice that brownie is going to taste once it comes out of the oven). When I do need more food I will just take the caponata, etc. out of the freezer to defrost in the morning before I leave for work. In theory, I could actually go a week and a half without cooking again, although I may need to prep some things here and there.
This is what I mean by prudence….care taken in the management of one's resources - not just foodstuff, but one’s time and energy, too!
N x