Baked Squash Casserole, food from my garden

Come, join us for dinner.

Squash casserole is one of my favorite comfort food dishes.
When I was a teenager, my Mother and I would go to a restaurant called “The Black-eyed Pea” and order veggie plates. Plates full of broccoli rice casserole, fried okra, cheese-y broccoli soup and the most amazing squash casserole.
It was one of our favorite dinner spots, and one of my favorite teenaged memory clusters.
Once I was all-growed up (yes, I said growed up) I began trying to replicate the squash casserole.
Years and years ago I found a copy-kat recipe that I have altered until I was happy with it.

Baked Squash Casserole

• 5 -6 medium size Yellow Squash
• 1 cup Bread Crumbs plus additional 1-2 tablespoons for topping
• 1 stick Butter or margarine (melted) *I use light butter, and I usually use less than a whole stick*
• 1/4 cup of Brown Sugar
• 1/4 cup of Onion (chopped)
• 2 eggs (beaten)
• 1 teaspoon of Black Pepper
• 1 teaspoon of Salt
• 1 teaspoon of tarragon

Cut the ends off squash and cut each squash into 4 or more pieces.

Place the squash into a pot of boiling water, use enough water to cover the squash. Reduce heat and cook until tender. I cooked my squash fir about 12 minutes. Drain and mash.

While the squash is cooking, mix the beaten eggs, 1-cup breadcrumbs, melted butter, sugar, salt, onion, tarragon and pepper together in a bowl.

Combine the mashed squash with the crumb mixture.

Place the mixture into a casserole dish that has been lightly sprayed with a non-stick baking spray.

Sprinkle the top with the 2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned.
I used the broiler at 500 deg. For the last 5 minutes to give the top a nice crust.

I have Phun with iPhone Photos!

Garden Gab, week 2, 3 and….

Happy Friday the 13th Peeps! may your day be nothing like the long running horror movie series.

Meh. It’s been a while since I’ve posted a regular garden update. Surgery can do that to a girl.

Here are some pictures of my garden’s progress.

The raised bed garden is doing much better than the in ground beds. Only issue with the raised bed? Munchy, hungry bugs.

My small side garden has been under a different sort of attack. Feral cats decided it was a wonderful litter box.
I disagreed.

Here are pictures of the in ground beds. As you can see, some things are growing….other things.

Not. So. Much.

The tomato plants are happy.

Beets.

Pepper plants. Half are bell peppers and half are jalapeño peppers.

Since my seed markers blew away in the storms…I think these are watermelon plants.

Squash, and a lot of seeds that refused to sprout.

Corn.

This is either more squash or cantaloupe. Heh. Time will tell.

If you’re gardening, how’s your garden growing?

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Rainy Day Garden Gab

The wind blew away most of my seed markers.

Welcome to rain-apocalypse 2012

at least that is how the weather team on T.V. is treating it.   It’s  been raining here for a little over 12 hours.  Storming, wind howling, thunder booming, lightning flashing, big, cold drops of rain falling.

Since we just planted the garden, this is a blessing and a curse.   Water is great, a good soaking rain is great.

Puddles, not so much.

Yesterday we had high wind, crazy wind.  Crazy blowing away most of my seed markers wind.  This year the garden will be a little but of a surprise…. I can not remember where I planted everything. Ha!

Seeds are all about snorkeling, right?

Clearly we have some high and low areas....

Below the garden is a swamp....

My swamp.

These strawberries are survivors from last summer. They laugh at the water, they are already planning strawberry-topia 2

The raised bed is protected from much of the rain. The cats and birds are another story though.

There is no real update on my Grandmother, she is still hospitalized, they believe the mental confusion is due to a slight bladder infection.  She is fighting her treatment.  She keeps removing her I.V.

If you’re a prayer sort of person, I’d appreciate your prayers for her.

Caramelized Onion Relish

This week is the 4th week in the canning link-up Allie and I are hosting.

I almost made brandied cherries…next time….maybe.

I had a busy cooking weekend.  I bought a small army of onions and jalapenos on Saturday.   I made more Jalapeno Relish and Candied Jalapenos.  I also made Slow-Cooker Caramelized Onions via Andrea- From the Bookshelf-’s recipe.

15 small jars of jalapeno-ey goodness

Busy, busy and boy did my eyes water a lot over the weekend with all the onion and jalapeno slicing.

Since I had more onions than I needed to make the Slow Cooker Caramelized Onions (which I separated into 4 meal sized serving portions and froze).

I decided to look for an onion canning recipe.  Easier said than done.    Onions and canning can be tricky business.  Without something acidic in the recipe (like vinegar) you need to pressure can the onions.  Pressure canning is not something I have ventured into yet.  The pressure canning cook times are LONG, and I am concerned about the issue of Botulism.

I wanted to do something a little different this week.  Something with wine, something with onions.

I decided on a sweet, savory onion relish.

Since this relish has balsamic vinegar in it, it is water bath can-able.

To see our canning link up from previous weeks… Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3

I’ve had Onion relish as an appetizer.  It’s great on burgers or with steaks.  According to My Pantry Shelf  (where the recipe I used came from) it is great on pizza too.

adapted from My Pantry Shelf and The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving

My adaptions are in purple

Here is what you will need to make Caramelized Onion Relish:

4 large red (I used yellow) onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon of celery seed

1/2 teaspoon of turmeric

1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice

2 cups dry red wine

6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper (or to taste)

Place the onions in a pot, over a medium heat.  Add the sugar, celery seed, turmeric and pumpkin pie spice.  Stir the sugar and spices into the onions.

         

Cook the onions for 30 minutes or until onions are soft, browning and caramelized. Mine took 45 min to cook down.  My onions were very moist.

Once the onions are cooked down until most of the liquid has evaporated, add the wine, vinegar, salt and pepper.

  

Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer the mixture for 15-20 minutes until the liquid has reduced and it begins to thicken. Mine took about 40 minutes to reduce and thicken, but I made a double batch, so that might be why it took longer.

Prep your canning jars: sterilize the jars and warm the lids. 

Ladle the relish into the hot jars, making sure to leave 1/2 inch of head-space.

   

Wipe the jar rims and place the lids onto the jars.

Process the jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (for half-pint jars) or 15 minutes (for pint jars).

Allow jars to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing the them from the water bath.  Place the jars on the counter top to rest overnight.

Check the seals on the jars and store them in a cool, dry place for up to 1 year.

Now it’s your turn!  Link up your canning post.  New post, old post it matters not.  Allie and I would love to see what you’ve been canning!

Garden Gab…the end is near.

The MyBlogSpark giveaway has ended. The winner was comment #18

“Good Cooks :

Your banana bread looks very yummy, Thanks Jamie, I would like to try it with oatmeal raisin cookie.”

Say hello to Samah on her blog, Good Cooks.

I will have another giveaway soon, because giveaways are fun!

Anyhoo……Happy Friday my friends. It has been a few weeks since I have updated you on my garden.

See all my earlier Garden Gab posts here.

I’m afraid my gardening is winding down. My raised garden box is sinking-sideways into the earth. The super hot, relentlessly dry summer, combined with water restrictions created large cracks in my backyard. Don’t worry, my house foundation is perfectly fine thanks to soaker hoses.

I tried to show the crazy lean in a picture. I’m not sure I did it justice.

I swear, I'm holding the camera straight. Notice the lean?

Pardon my grass, it needs to be mowed. So, hopefully you can see…my raised garden bed is sinking. My husband is working on my expanded garden space, but it won’t be ready for Fall planting so, I’m probably done gardening until the Spring.

I cut the okra down. Since my garden is sinking I have been removing the plants. The only plants left in the raised garden? The (unexpectedly) hot peppers. The royal purple bean plants. The purple hull peas. And, of course, Strawberrytopia.

The royal purple bean plants are very small still, they flower but have not produced any beans.

The mint plant is still doing well. It has not taken over the side garden. I believe the heat probably stunted its growth.

The carrots are still small-ish, I think maybe I planted them too close together?

Now for the really exciting part. The purple hull peas? Growing lovely little peas. The pea pods start out looking like strange monster claws.

Rawr.....monster claws

The monster claws grow longer and wider, the peas within grow and swell the pods. Then they look like this…

They grow peas that look like this…

There are not enough peas for a meal yet, but I’m very excited about the purple hull peas! They are the only reason that I have not completely gutted the garden box yet.

How is your garden growing? Are you planting this fall?

Don’t forget that Allie and I will have a new set of canning posts for you on Monday. We would LOVE IT if you would link up with us!

Have a super weekend!

My three squashes and the end of summer

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  Here in the United States and Canada, today is a holiday.  It’s Labor Day.

If you’re not from the United States or Canada, here’s a little info on the holiday. This info is via Wikipedia and Answers.com

Labor Day.

The first Monday in September, observed as a holiday in the United States and Canada in honor of working people.

Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer.

In high society, Labor Day is (or was) considered the last day of the year when it is fashionable for women to wear white.

I’m not sure if September will mark an end to the dog days of summer, but it’s supposed to be the end of summer.

 

  That also means, the end or near the end of summer squash, so Friday when I went to the Farmer’s Market I picked up a few varieties of squash.

 

The yellow/green squash are over sized 8-ball squash I think. Think zucchini squash.

The green pumpkin shaped squash is Kabocha squash.  Allie at Forgotten Beast  blogged about this squash last week.  It is a winter squash, not a summer squash.

The white squash are Pattypan squash. Funny little things aren’t they?

Here is a cool resource page for squash.

 

I hope you have a wonderful day!  I’m off to swim and enjoy the holiday!

Garden Gab weeks 22 and 23….and freezer jam

So, it’s hot…Yep a shocker I know!  Last week, instead of Garden Gab on Friday I posted a whole wheat chocolate cake recipe.  I know, the cake was lovely, but it felt strange after 21 weeks of garden posts to not have one last week.  So, to correct that and make myself feel better….This week I have pictures for you from the last two weeks.  It rained here on Thursday, just enough to wet the ground and make it nice and slick to drive on. Heh!  Oh, I’m not being nice, I am sure the rain we got helped the ground a lot, but we’ve been so parched for so long…the rain yesterday was really just a few drops in a really dry bucket.

Without further ado…. my garden pictures.

        

         

         

    

My okra is still blooming beautifully.  The carrots are still very small, but they are still growing.

The royal purple beans are beginning to grow bean pods!  They are a beautiful color, but I was unable to get a good picture of them.  The purple hulls are simply fighting to stay alive.  Poor things!

The strawberries are still in expansion mode, stretching out their little green arms for more and more space.

My poor zucchini plants are still so tiny,  but they are trying to bud.   So tiny, so cute, my little zucchini plants.  I doubt I will get anything fruit from them, but I am not opposed to allowing them to try.

Now on to the freezer jam.

Freezer jam is so easy…so easy. Seriously.  So. Very. Easy.

This freezer jam requires no cooking and very few ingredients.   I have made this jam with fresh strawberries and with frozen strawberries.

It works best with fresh strawberries. The last batch I made was with frozen strawberries, this batch was made with fresh strawberries.

Here’s what you need.  This recipe is adapted from a Ball canning recipe. It was found in the Ball Blue Book of Canning.

• 6 cups of mushed, smashed, crushed strawberries (fresh or frozen)

    

• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 5 TBSP of Ball instant Pectin

The instructions……

• mix the sugar and Pectin together
•  add sugar mixture to the strawberries

•  stir constantly for 3 minutes

• Fill freezer jars (I used the Ball brand plastic jars and 2 freezer safe glass jars)
•  place the lid on the jars
•  Let the jam “set” for 30 minutes on the counter top

• label and freeze         OR
• gobble it up now, pour it on ice cream, roll around in it, have toast for every meal with gobs and gobs of jelly. 
• OR…(what I did) place all but 1 in the freezer. They will “keep” in the fridge for 3 weeks (yeah, like they will last that long), they will keep in the freezer for up to a year.

Enjoy

                   

Don’t forget that Monday Allie of Forgotten Beast and I will be posting canning recipes again and we will also have a Canning Link-up!  We want you to link up your canning posts with ours! Get your canning posts ready (new or previously posted recipes) and join us Monday!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kids ~VS~ Veggies…

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! We had a very nice weekend. School starts today. This is bittersweet. While I am glad to have a little time to myself to chill out, shop or clean…I will miss them. A lot. Since I’ve got kiddo on the brain, I have a kid-centric post for you today.

Do you have picky people to feed? Do you struggle to get your family to eat veggies? I do.

When my son was 5 or 6 he was so averse to eating any green vegetable he would gag, choke, and flail. He told me all green things were evil.

Fun times at dinner.

Ah. Fun times.

He’s 13 now, and while he usually no longer flails he still is not fond of many veggies. A recent gagging episode with rainbow chard reminded me of the not so good old days.

Despite the picture below, Veggies are NOT evil.

Well, except for Brussel-Sprouts. They are pure evil. Little green balls of evil.

Here are a few things I have done to get my kids to try new veggies…….

• Try to get the kids involved in the veggie choices. I have found that kids are more likely to eat something if they helped pick it out.
• Have the kids help in the cooking process. Just like allowing them to help pick the veggies, allowing them to help in the cooking process will sometimes make them more willing to eat the veggies.
• Introduce the veggies in an unexpected way. The first time my kids tried black-eyed peas was in Texas Caviar. They still are not super fond of eating black-eyed peas unless they are in Texas Caviar, but they will give it a try now. They frequently ask for Texas Caviar and will gobble it up any time I make it.
• Offer a few options, ask them to try a little of each. We have found that they are more open-minded about trying new things when there is a veggie they like on the table too.

A few things that you probably NEVER want to do…….

• Never force your child to eat an entire serving of a veggie that they do not like. It’s frustrating for you both and I have found that they are less open about new veggies if you force one on them.
• Never use a veggie as a punishment threat. Okay, this sounds funny, but I did this.

Picture this, I’m at the grocery store with two wild-things. They are running amuck. I (in the past) have been guilty of picking up a can of beets and telling them if they do not behave the beets are coming home with us. To be a main dinner feature. Yep, I did that. More than once. *sigh* So, it’s no surprise that it has been hard to get my kids to eat beets. You know, because I made them seem like a punishment.

So, don’t make veggies a punishment. Learn from my mistakes. Ha!

How do you get your kids to eat veggies?

Sweet Carrot Pickles

I’m sad to report that the giant carrots seem to be all gone now.  For two weekly visits in a row (last week and this week), I have been unable to find the giant carrots at the Farmer’s Market.   My son thinks they are freaks of nature, he has not been enjoying the über carrots.

What do teens know about carrots?

I really like them, one carrot is usually more than enough for a veggie side. Plus,  I like them thinly sliced and dipped into ranch dressing.   That might be a southern thing though, we like most things dipped in ranch.  If you can deep fry it first, we’re even happier.

Have you ever had a fried pickle?  They are The. Bomb. (dot) Com.

Anyhoo,  from my last large carrot buy I’ve got 2 giant carrots left.  One I plan to shred for carrot-raisin salad.  The other one I’ve diced and I am making sweet carrot pickles.

These sweet, crisp little beauties are wonderful to snack on and great as a side dish.

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in the book “Urban Pantry” by Amy Pennington       *I am so loving this book*

Sweet Carrot Refrigerator Pickles

• 4 carrots (or 1 giant carrot) peeled and then diced or thinly sliced.
• 1-1/2 cups of apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 bulb onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp orange peel
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Place carrots in a non-reactive bowl or a glass canning jar.  Set aside.

In a sauce pan, heat all the ingredients except the carrots over a medium heat until simmering.

       

Once the brine is almost boiling, remove it from the stove and pour the brine over the carrots.

Allow to set on the counter until the mixture is cool, stirring occasionally.

Serve the carrots in the brine. Or refrigerate for up to 3 weeks.

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Pardon my freaky bright pictures.  The lighting was off.

Garden Gab, week 21….a cool down, a loss and a nursery rhyme

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row,
And pretty maids all in a row.

That’s how the nursery rhyme goes, however I was disturbed when I looked up the meaning of the rhyme. It’s about Queen Mary, torture and executions.

While torture would accurately describe the weather here in Texas the last month or so, it does not really describe gardening at all does it?

Or maybe it does.

No, No, No…..I love gardening. I love the beautiful green plants. I love planting a seed and watching it grow into a beautiful plant. I love knowing I am growing things that help to feed my family and friends.

Bugs and heat be damned, I love gardening.

Anyhoo.

My garden is doing well……..

The okra is blooming and blooming. I’ve got tons of little okra-ettes.

The new bean plants are doing very well, green and blooming and lovely.

My mint is surviving the heat.

The carrots are still growing.

I lost my green pepper plant to the extreme heat, but the Hot peppers are doing well.

Strawberrytopia is still expanding. I think the strawberries would be happy to take over the entire raised garden! They don’t produce many strawberries, but they sure do spread quickly.

The squash seedlings are still surviving the heat. I failed to take a picture of them though.

Speaking of heat, it got cooler Thursday. The wind blew. It felt nicer outside.

It smelled like rain.

Best. Smell. Ever.

It did not rain, but it was noticeably cooler. The 102+ degree heat we’ve been experiencing is brutal, so any coolness is exciting to me.

How is your garden growing?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back on Monday!