Joy in the Kitchen!

  Our little garden is producing!  We didn't plant most of it until Father's Day weekend due to weather and crazy schedules but it is on now!   When we moved to this home, we left a large garden plot and a slightly warmer climate.  Gardening really helped us feed our large family on a budget.  I remember several years canning close to 100 quarts of green beans, freezing 50-75 3 cup packages of corn, canning several quarts of tomatoes and up to 30 quarts of salsa in a year.  Whew!  I had several children at home so along with many mouths to feed, we had many hands to help!   The garden at our current home has a small garden plot with several raised beds on the side.  This is enough for just a few of us and I don't miss the busy days of canning until the wee hours of the morning when the house was cooler.   We had a fabulous red raspberry crop this year.  I have no idea how many we ate fresh (as we picked), but we weigh...

  It has been cold and snowy white as far as the eye can see where I live!  This week the temperatures are supposed to be above freezing for the first time in several weeks!  I mean high 30's!  Absolutely balmy!  When we're this far into winter, I'm always ready for some peeks into spring.  Though we are several weeks away from the snow melting enough to see the ground, I enjoy including this colorful, fresh salad in my menu!  It's a lovely reminder of the garden harvest I'll enjoy this summer.  This is more of a throw-it-together sort of dish rather than one needing exact measurements, but I have some guidelines I use as the base of this dish.   I make it in this quantity for myself for lunch, or I leave the garbanzo beans out and add another cucumber and a little more olive oil and lemon and use it as a side dish for the family at dinnertime.   I've never been a fan of vinegar and oil dressing on salads, but I love, love, L...

At the beginning of zucchini season we love, love, LOVE, zucchini fried in butter or olive oil.  We could eat it every day with dinner!  However, by the middle of zucchini season we're pretty ready to let our zucchini taste buds branch out with new zucchini recipes! Here are 5 of our favorite ways to use zucchini fresh off of the plant!  (or frozen if it's winter and you've wisely planned ahead!) 1.  By far our favorite.... Ooey-Gooey Zucchini Brownies !  I could easily eat 5 servings of vegetables THIS way! 2.  A healthy snack of .....   Zucchini Bread !   I like nuts in this but my kids don't so one of these days when they've all left home I'm making this and adding EXTRA nuts.  In the meantime I see no reason to waste a good thing on someone who can't appreciate it. :) 3.   Zucchini Frittata can make a simple dinner, delicious lunch, or even a savory breakfast!   I love freshly picked tomatoes diced on th...

Dinner meals when I was a child most often consisted of four items on the dinner plate; meat, potato, vegetable, and a salad.  Very seldom did we have casseroles or dishes like spaghetti or rice.  (My Dad ate a LOT of rice while he was in the Navy during WWII and Mom rarely cooked it because of that.)  Mom made meals from things we had on hand, meat that we raised or vegetables that we grew. Sometimes cream, butter, and eggs that were produced at home were available to use as well. This vegetable dish, Green Bean Spanish, was a fun accompaniment for the meat, potato and salad that was so common. I was going through my recipe cupboard a few weeks ago and came across a newspaper article I had saved that featured my Aunt Lois's "best recipes".   She had included this recipe of Green Bean Spanish with those.  Though she called it String Bean Spanish. Rumor has it, that this recipe was handed down from my great-grandfather who lived in Mexico for a while as...