so much food - zucchini brownies

Every time we go down to the garden, we walk away with TONS of food! I seriously do not even go into the produce section too much at the grocery store these days...


We have mountains of zucchini, so I have been coming up with some yummy ways to use it up.

My favorite thing so far? Brownies! Yup! - ooyie, gooey, yumminess, loaded with garden fresh zucchini.


I found some recipes online and have been playing around with them a bit. Here is what I've come up with that is making us happy:

Zucchini Brownies

1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups shredded zuchinni

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 11" pan and "flour" with cocoa powder. Mix the butter and sugar together. In a seperate bowl, mix up the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add the dry mixture into the butter + sugar mix. Fold in the zucchini. Dump into your prepared pan. It will be dry, don't worry - it WILL turn out! Bake for 25 -30 minutes. Cool and eat!

More goodies from the garden:

My Little Helper

Anyone have other good ideas for using up our zucchini mountain? Help us, please!

garden goodies

Oh, my! Our garden is out of control! We have hardly even been down there that past few weeks because of all the rain and wow! Everything is now so big (well, most everything), especially the weeds! We are bad at keeping up with the weeds, mainly because we have been busy and it is a bit of a production packing up the crew and keeping them happy at the garden for a long weeding session.

Which is funny, because I LOVE weeding! I so enjoy plopping myself right on the ground, getting all dirty and giving the garden some love. It is so relaxing and calming. I am craving having our own house where we can garden right out are front door just so I can go out and weed everyday. It's therapeutic.

We did do some work on the weeds over the weekend, but we really need to get back down there sometime this week.

Here are some of the treats we had waiting for us this past weekend...

A few peas.. I think this is all we are going to get :( but they were really yummy! Enrique ate them right there in the garden.

A little tiny broccoli flower!
Promises of future deliciousness!
Crazy amounts of basil...

Here is a little of what we brought home...
Swiss chard, lettuce, carrots, beets, and some gigantic zucchini!

We should keep getting some lettuce and chard for a bit here unless the heat really kicks in. The green beans, peas, watermelon, and cauliflower are not doing too hot. There are lots of beets and carrots still and we are looking forward to tomatoes, broccoli, corn, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers (though the cukes are not as abundant as we have had in the past).

All in all, it is SO exciting and yummy eating food we grew with our own hands. I'm feeling pretty happy about the whole thing.

growing

The garden is super happy these days because we have been getting SO MUCH rain! The weeds are happy too! Every time I go down there it looks like a different place, so many changes and growth...

Our lettuce is ready, which means we have been eating LOTS of salad, it is so good!


Carrots...

Tomatoes...

Broccoli...

Swiss Chard will be on the menu this week...

Corn...

Green Beans and Beets...

And, really, I think the whole reason for this blog post is to show you this cute picture!


Ok, off to make a salad for lunch!

garden report

Well, we have everything in the ground and most everything peeking out of the soil!

Swiss Chard...


Peas...


Corn...


Cucumber...


Broccoli...


Beets...


Pumpkin (or could be another squash)...


Carrots...


Watermelon or Zucchini (I know it helps to label everything! Whoops!)


Lettuce.. the first thing I get to leave off my grocery list when I go shopping this week! Yay!


We also have some green beans, herbs, cauliflower, LOTS of tomato plants and some peppers. But they were camera shy this week!

I am totally digging growing stuff...It is alot of fun! Made even more cool by the excitement of getting to EAT our first goodies this week!

garden watching and waiting

Well, it is finally looking like we may actually get some food out of our garden! Yay!

It is so strange to read blogs from around the country and to watch people already harvesting crops when all we have are little sprouts. Gardening in Colorado is just not the same.

But, we ARE growing stuff! I think that is so cool.

Here you go..




We have sprouts on the cauliflower, beets, beans, broccoli, swiss chard and lettuce. Maybe a few carrots, but we seem to have bad luck with carrots. The carrots failed on our last garden. We shall have to wait and see...



I was a little nervous about our tomatoes, they did not seem to be doing too well. My sister asked if I planted them DEEP.. uh, no?! Well, apparently they like that. But, I think they are starting to recover.. again, a waiting game.

Enrique is excited about everything growing and getting to water his OWN plants!

Lots of mamas claim that having kids grow their own food inspires them to want to eat it. The only vegetable my son will eat these days is carrots and rarely that. I am hopeful that he will want to eat his own home-grown veggies here soon!

Lately I have been tricking him to eat his greens.. spinach and apple juice popsicles anyone?


Both the kids really like them, but the beet ones seem to be their favorite.

Next up in our gardening adventure is planting the rest our our seeds. That's on the calendar for next Sunday...

little sprouts :: a garden report

Well, we FINALLY have some little sprouts in our garden!


I think all that rain really helped, but it did manage to make a mess of things! We had to spend quite a bit of time "repairing" our garden, cleaning up what looked like a bit of a flood that washed our little sprouts all over the place.

And, thanks to the generosity of a couple of our friends, we now have some tomatoes and peppers in the ground waiting to grow big!


So great to have nice people around us! I got emails from 2 different people asking if we wanted some extra plants that they had started. And since we have this HUGE plot, both thought we might want to take them..

Heck, yeah! On our to do list was to go get some tomato starts and now we don't have to! totally cool. I love it when life lends a hand like that...


Some protection from the wind until these little dudes can hold their own...


And what did we do with the kids while we fixed things, pulled weeds and spent way more time down at the garden than we had planned?

Why, make a big, huge mud puddle of course!!!


By the end of this morning, Enrique was running around naked, introducing himself to little girls - "do you like my underwear?", Anabel looked like a mud monster and my car now resembles a pond... ahh, good times!

sowing seeds

We have officially begun planting in our garden! I know it is a silly thing, but this makes me SOOO dang happy! This is my first ever garden- EVER. We did one 2 summers ago, but I was really pregnant with Anabel, so the only thing I did was put a few seeds in the ground. Don did all the rest. It was his garden. So this is year my first "official" experience with growing my own food.



Food is a big thing for us. Especially where it comes from and how it is grown. Even though we live on a super tight budget, eating well is very important to me. Having our own garden is a way for us to be really connected to our food, to walk the talk. I am also loving the chance to teach our kids about how our food arrives on our dinner plate each night.

Enrique is super duper excited about all of this! Everyday he asks to go to the garden to check on his vegetables. He has a few rows that are HIS. He chose carrots and broccoli as his crops.

What else we have planned for this year:

-swiss chard
-brussel sprouts (yum!)
-kale
-cauliflower
-peas
-corn
-beans
-cucumbers
-beets
-a few different lettuces
-spinach
-melons
-tomatoes
-peppers
-zucchini
-squash
-pumpkins
-and lots of fresh herbs

Wow! Listing it out like that feels a bit ambitious, but it's all a big experiment anyway. We don't really know what we're doing.. Fake it till you make it, I say!

let me introduce you to..

Our garden!!!



Since gardening up here at our house would be a big ol' pain in the you know what because of bears and deer, we decided to become apart of our local community garden.



We went down there yesterday to start getting it ready, because in case you didn't know, you can't really plant much here in Colorado before Mother's Day.




So here it is, a 20' by 40' plot that is all ours! So much we can grow in there and let me tell you, we are going for it!



I am really excited to grow our own food this year, to teach E (and myself) about where our food comes from. And I am already eager to EAT all the goods!

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day with Chubbas.. he was just in SUCH A MOOD! We had to cancel art day even because he was just no fun to be around. We then decided a good cure for grumpiness would be to go dig in the earth. Which, helped so much!



I am ever amazed by how connecting with nature and the earth is so grounding and calming. All night long our little dude kept talking about all the vegetables he is growing in the garden. The question remains if he will actually eat them!