WIAW: Zucchini Week

I hope everyone is having an excellent summer! The days and nights are cooling off a bit here and it feels great. In the morning I have to reach for a blanket!! Love it.

Let's celebrate summer with food, shall we? I've still been cooking like crazy but not being as diligent about taking pictures and sharing.

If you made some good food this week, you should share too with Jenn at Peas and Crayons.

Breakfast: An easy Lemon Chobani with Chia seeds, pumpkin seeds and lemon-zucchini muffin and instant coffee.

Snack: A green smoothie-spinach, almond milk, banana (pretty basic, but yummy).

 This week has been all about zucchini. My single zucchini plant is not only productive, it's sneaky. I can check my plant one morning and have no zucchini and the next morning I have a giant one ready to be picked. Like this one that's as big as Arson.

So, of course I've been trying to find different ways to prepare it. I will definitely have to freeze some too. Dinner was sliced zucchini grilled up and filled with a mixture of Ricotta cheese, pepperjack, parmesan and pizza sauce baked in the oven. It turned out pretty good considering I just threw it together.

What I have been most intrigued by while searching for innovative ways to use zucchini is the myriad of dessert recipes. 

The first one I tried was a Lemon Loaf with Zucchini which turned out pretty good. It made a huge batch of bread and muffins(most of which are in the freezer). The lemon/zucchini combo was nice and refreshing.

The second was Chocolate Zucchini Muffins from Oh She Glows. I didn't use a few things from her recipe, I left out walnuts and chocolate chips. I also made a Chia egg(I was out of flax).

OMG DELICIOUS. Make these now. Perfect combo of chocolate and zucchini. I decided to frost some as well for a little more chocolate : )

I made my first ever homemade frosting, and I gotta say it is amazing. It will be hard to not devour all these in a few days.

I can't wait to try more zucchini recipes! Let me know if you guys have some tried and true favorites, I'd love to hear them!

In other, exciting news. I got a job!!!

I know I don't talk too much about my education/job life on here. But, I'm just so excited! The position is part time at the nature center where I currently volunteer.

It makes me feel good that my hard work is paying off and my career is moving in the right direction.



Antique Turtles, Owls and Kitchen Paint

It's been awhile! Hopefully, everyone is enjoying this enormous heat wave that's plaguing the country. We finally had some rain here, about five minutes worth before it got all hot and humid again. It's making me incredibly lazy.

Today, I did muster the energy to go to the antique store, thanks to Andrew for encouraging me. I've never antiqued alone. But, I managed to spend money so I figure I did alright.

I saw this owl necklace a while back and loved it but talked myself out of it. I found it again and just had to snag this adorable little guy up. He was $18. I am not sure how antique this necklace is, but it definitely has a vintage feel, plus, it's an owl! With green body parts! It's full of win.

I also happened across this little/big turtle guy. He was only $5 so I had to take him home with me. It also has a vintage feel to it, almost a costume jewelery look and really nice details around it's body. And it's little feet, tail and head swivel around. 

I had to get something practical, so I bought the gallon brown glass for $6. Eventually I will rip off the plastic loop around the lid (but that will require sharp tools). Then I got the green juice/water glass for $9. Pretty sweet, right? They will both hang around our shelves and at some point or another be filled with flowers.

So, I haven't been completely lazy around here. I have started in on the kitchen. It's the last room on the bottom floor that needs painting and our own personal touches. 

We went from lemon meringue to Carrot Stick (Behr). I really like it, Andrew isn't crazy about it so far. But he hasn't seen it in person yet. Obviously, those curtains will be burned...

I know I've said before that I'm picky about curtains. But finding good kitchen curtains is harder than finding curtains for any other room in the house. I'm limited to lace, plaid and cutesy kitchen things. Not exactly what I was going for. I might have to learn how to make my own.

Anyway, work on the kitchen is slow going. I can only paint in the morning before it gets too hot so it might be awhile before there are finished kitchen pictures. 

WIAW: Running Low on Veggies

Mid-Week! More food! What could be better? This past few weeks I've been making some delicious meals. I don't think there's been one thing I've made that I haven't devoured. Ok, maybe I'm bragging a bit. But, it's really hard to mess up fresh vegetables, they're just SO good.



 

Breakfast: Oatmeal with golden raisins and pine nuts. Do you guys like pine nuts? They're like crack to me, and expensive, but so worth it. They have a wonderful piny taste to them.

Lunch: Whole wheat pita stuffed with pinto beans, onion, spinach and a Greek yogurt, horseradish sauce. Green beans, apricots and blueberries on the side.

Snack: Pita chips, hummus, carrots, mushrooms, cherries and Gouda.

First off, I'm not sure there's a better combination then Sabra hummus and Stacy's pita chips. I think the grocery store knows this too because their sales always go together. This week it was 2 for $6 on the hummus and buy one get one free on the pita chips. Score!! And raw carrot in hummus is very, very good.

Are you wondering what I did with those fiddlehead ferns? Well, I sauted them with olive oil and garlic and a bunch of swiss chard. Then added a few of our Chipotle Cheddar Cheese curds. I really liked them, the best way to describe the flavor is... green. They tasted fresh.

Dinner: Pasta tossed with swiss chard, fiddleheads, curds and stuffed eggplant(onion, spinach, zucchini).

Overall, another great week of food. Farmers' markets on Saturday again because my veggies are running low, hopefully I can find something new to try. If not, well, I'm definitely buying more swiss chard. I love that stuff!