Life Lessons at the Iowa State Fair

I have spent the summer teaching my children how to garden and cook.  To see where their food comes from.  The Iowa State Fair is also trying to teach the same lessons.  We got to see two swine in labor.  And a baby ostrich. And a couch sized watermelon.  The highlight was Little Hands on the Farm.  We got to follow a winding sidewalk where the kids picked plastic vegetables out of buckets and plastic apples off of trees.  They were handed bags of corn and wool.  Then at the end they sorted all their goods into more buckets and were given some play money.  The play money bought real stuff!  Popsicles, muffins, a loaf of bread!  I think they wished that real life at our house were more like that.  Here they get to weed, sweating with the mosquitos, in order to eat zucchini.  I too have moments when I wish the zucchini would turn into a popsicle. 

Pesto Linguine with Chicken and Zucchini--Amelia age 7

Posing for a picture.

While the pasta boils over. 

And the chicken burns. 

It wasn't so green in real life.

Finished Product.  

Amelia's Take:  The sauce tasted kind of familiar.  Which was weird since it looked so strange.

Amy's Take:  Amelia wanted pasta tonight and found a box of linguini.  So, of course, I googled "linguini chicken zucchini"  and got Pesto Linguini with Chicken and Zucchini.  I decided that we should make it.  I had a few snags.  Mostly that I had linguini and chicken and zucchini and not much else.  So,I started with some homemade pesto (since we didn't have storebought) and we had fresh basil and olive oil and garlic, but I put in almonds instead of pinenuts (close enough, right?) and then got to the last ingredient--parmesan cheese.  We didn't have any.  I was going to throw in some Pepper Jack slices from the fridge, but it was moldy.  And what can you really use as a substitute for cheese?  Nothing .  I did add some salt. 
After that there was no use referring to the recipe anymore.  I cooked the chicken and deglazed the pan with some water and added that to my pesto that was still in the blender.  It was still lacking some so I put in a few ripe tomatoes too.  I blended that all up and poured it on top of the cooked chicken and zucchini.  It was actually great.  Really great. 

Other opinions:
Eric:  It was just fine. 

Zucchini Cookie Wars--Smith age 3 and Lucy age 2

Contestant #1 

Contestant #2

Amy's Take: School started this week. The kitchen was mine again. I made peach galette, peach cream pie and mock apple pie (made with zucchini, of course, and amazingly like apple pie) all in one day just to reclaim my territory. That was a bit much pie.We still have some left. 
Smith and Lucy are still home, of course, and haven't figured out that I have any territory that is off limits to them. So, they helped me out this week to try two zucchini cookie recipes. The first was Zucchini Cookies with Lemon Glaze. We didn't have a lemon so we used a lime. I  figured that the lime zest in the cookie dough kind of hid the green bits of zucchini.  I used the lime juice in the glaze and put in one drop of yellow and one drop of green food coloring.  They looked like froggy cookies.  Maybe we could put faces on them somehow?  The recipe made a couple dozen cookies and the kids ate them after school until they were gone.  That was because they were totally wonderfully delicious. 
The second cookies were Zucchini Cookies with Chocolate Chips and Dried Cranberries..  Smith was all excited to make cookies with me, ran into the kitchen and saw me grating more zucchini.  "Mom! No more zucchini muffins or zucchini cookies or zucchini bread!  This is wrong."  So, we didn't start out on the right track, really.  Plus we didn't have any chocolate chips since NO GROCERY SHOPPING MONTH is almost over.  Maybe they would have been WAY BETTER with chocolate chips.  But then everything is WAY BETTER with chocolate chips.  Everything is WAY BETTER with CAPITAL LETTERS too.  Just so you know.  Anyway, these cookies are still in the cookie jar.  That's how good they were.
Conclusion:  #1 is obviously the less healthy cookie.  But it is obviously worlds better than cookie #2.  Should cookies be healthy anyway?  That is a philosophical question for another day. 

Thai Zucchini Salad--Sandra age 10 with Amy

Making the rice. 

Thai inspired zucchini salad. 

Trying to take a self portrait with the food. 

Makes you wish I was wearing a hairnet while I cooked. 

I am so good at self-portraiture. 

I gave up.  Here is the finished product.  With Smith.  In a paper bag. 

Amy's Take:  Sandra was bored this afternoon.  I told her to cook.  She made amazingly tough lemon bars.  The same texture as my shoes.  I was grateful because then I had dessert to use as a bribe to get kids to try dinner.  Sandra started the salad too, but then she had to go to 5th Grade Orientation with Eric.  So, I finished everything.  And this was my favorite use of zucchini EVER.  It is very loosely based on a recipe from the Holy Cow Vegan Blog.  My version is below.   I have to confess--I broke my no grocery store diet and bought a mango.  For the salad.  And while I feel a little guilty, it was totally worth it.   We served it with Thai Basil Chicken--recipe here  and rice.  I am going to make that salad every single day until the 17 zucchini on my counter (plus the 400+) that will be produced in my garden in the coming weeks are all gone. 

Other takes:
Amelia:  Why do you always make food I hate?
Amy:  You don't know that you hate this food.  You've never had it. 
Amelia:  Well, I hate fruit salad.
Amy:  It's not fruit.  It's zucchini.
Amelia:  I hate cooked zucchini.
Amy:  It's not cooked.  It's raw.
Amelia:  I hate cheese in my zucchini salad.
Amy:  It's not cheese--it's mango.
ad nauseum for 25 minutes.  Much longer than it took to eat dinner.   



Thai Inspired Zucchini Salad
3 smallish zucchini, cut in matchsticks
8 baby carrots, cut in matchsticks
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 mango, cut into small chunks
1/4 cup chopped peanuts or sesame seeds
Put all this stuff in bowl and toss.

In a blender, put
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp sesame oil
Blend up and add some water until it is pouring consistency. 
Pour the dressing over the salad and mix.  You can add 10-12 chopped up basil leaves if you want.  I didn't since I was already serving basil chicken. 

Pigs in Green Blankets---Sandra age 10 and Smith age 3

The Green Dough.  This idea should be worth something. 

Wrapping up the sausages. 

The piggies (as Eric calls them).

Finished Product.  And happy about it. 

Sandra's Take:  These were like extra special pigs in blankets.  Pigs with green spots.  That's what I told Smith.

Amy's Take:  I am a woman obsessed.  With zucchini.  I had a zucchini omelet and zucchini muffin for breakfast, a zucchini sope for lunch (really), but tonight I thought I'd hit my limit. I didn't think I could eat one more bite of the green stuff.  But I'd done some research and found that adding zucchini to everything we eat is actually adding some good vitamins and even more important--I learned that a cup of zucchini has like 20 calories--so that has got to be a good filler for muffins and cakes and stir fry and such.  It  means that everything we eat these days is total spa food.  So, I attacked my pile of zucchini and added a cup of it to my pizza dough (and put some extra flour in to balance it out), rolled it out and Sandra and Smith rolled the dough around Lil' Smokie sausages to make pigs in blankets.  Pigs in green blankets, that is.  The zucchini in the dough  cancels out the fat in the sausage--right?  We served them with a side dish of zucchini.

Other Opinions:
Molly:  You put zucchini in this too?!
Eric:  Everything in this meal is zucchini?
Amelia:  Zucchini again??

Stay tuned for pumpkin recipes....

A pumpkin seven feet up in the willow tree. 

One of 12 or 13 vines from our one pumpkin. 

Garlic Chicken Zucchini Stir Fry--Molly age 12

Slicing tomatoes with the witch. 

The main dish. 

Finished Product. 

Molly's take:  I used way too much zucchini.  It was okay.

Amy's take:  My only hope for this dish was that it would use up more zucchini.  It did do that.  It was also very, very tasty.  And it smelled really good.  Molly used a recipe from Food.com that you can find here. She didn't even need my help, so I was out in the backyard while she was cooking, checking out the large pumpkin growing seven feet up in our willow tree.  This pumpkin vine really is taking over our yard.  Eric has been having dreams that it will, at some point, decide to come after him. 

Other takes:
Smith:  It was good and yummy.  I got dessert because I ate my food. 

Scrambled Eggs--Lucy age 2

Making Dinner.  Making Faces. 

                                                 "Eggy, eggy, eggy, eggy, eggy, eggy, eggy eggy."

Finished Product. 

Amy's Take:  Lucy helped me make scrambled eggs.  She is pretty good at breaking eggs.  She bangs them really hard on the counter and then hands them to me to figure things out.  I don't think there were any eggshells in the eggs.  We were pretty lucky with that.  At least she enjoyed herself.  We had the eggs with some more zucchini bread and cantaloupe. 

Roasted Tomato Sauce--Smith age 3 and Lucy age 2

Lucy has been closing her eyes every time I try to take a picture of her. 

So all of her pictures look a little (maybe a lot) goofy. 

Chopped up tomatoes.

Baked Tomatoes.

Finished Product. With a glare.  

Smith's Take:  It was yummy to cut up the tomatoes.  My knife worked good.

Amy's Take:  I was going to do some cooking without my kids yesterday.  I had lots of extra tomatoes from the garden to take care of and I wanted to get it done quick.  Smith and Lucy didn't think that was right.  So, we all chopped tomatoes up (For the record--it takes longer with butter knives--but at least no one got hurt).

This is what I do with extra tomatoes from my garden--taught to me by the wife of Eric's boss a few years back who I only met twice and whose name I do not remember.  I do know she was a food critic for a newspaper.  And a great cook.   I take all my extra tomatoes--any variety, color, size and chop them into similar size pieces (or not so similar sizes if Smith and Lucy are helping).  I put them on a cookie sheet with sides and bake at 350 until they are roasted good--and a lot of the liquid has evaporated.  Yesterday it took about 40 minutes, but it really depends on how juicy your tomatoes are and how deep the cookie sheet is piled up.  You just let them keep cooking until they look like the picture above.  Or something like that.   Then I let them cool, scrape all the goop up off the cookie sheet,  puree them in the blender and pour into a sandwich sized freezer bag.  Label and freeze.  You could squeeze all of the seeds out first and take the skins off too, but I don't bother.  It was a lot of work to grow those seeds darn it and I'm not wasting them. This is the best tasting tomato sauce EVER.  I use it on pizza, spaghetti, enchiladas--whatever I need tomato sauce for.  Eric's boss's wife said that she mixed it with some cream to make a pasta sauce.  And now I have some in my freezer. 

Sopes--Amelia age 7

Sopes.

Tomatoes.

Sopes with fillings. 

Finished Product. 

Amelia's Take:  Good and yummy.  A little hard to make.  Actually, a lot hard to make. 

Amy's Take:  Last month at the library I taught a class to children on how to make corn tortillas.  Because I am such an expert.  I bought a big bag (only size available) of Maseca Instand Corn Masa Flour.  We used four cups at the class and most of it was left.  On the side was a recipe for "Sopes Maseca."  I checked Maseca's website  and couldn't find this particular recipe.  I did find picture of their sopes--which are WAY more attractive than ours.  You should go and look at them so you know what they are supposed to look like.  Anyway, a sope seems to be a thick  corn tortilla that you turn the edges up on (when it is still way hot) and then fry to make a crispy crust.  This makes a cup for filling.  Ours had refried beans, shredded chicken, cheddar cheese, chopped tomatoes and lettuce.  We didn't use the anejo cheese or crema Mexicana that the recipe called for because this is still NO SHOPPING MONTH and we didn't happen to have those on hand.  Amelia helped me roll out the sopes and cut up the tomatoes.  And set the table.  And had a good conversation with me during which she finally decided to be happy about taking piano lessons this fall.  As in, she could say the word, Piano, without screaming.  And for the record, although I ate it for breakfast and lunch today, this meal did not contain zucchini.  I betcha you could do something with sopes and zucchini though.  YES, I just googled it and found this recipe for Zucchini Corn Sopes.  Now we know what we are eating tomorrow. 
 
Other opinions:
Molly:  They were really, really, really good and I want to try and make them some time.  I ate so many that I couldn't eat any ice cream for dessert. 

Sopes Maseca
2 cups instant corn masa flour
1 1/4 cups water (I felt like I needed more like 1 1/2 cups--but this is what Maseca says)
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups refried beans
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
3 ounces anejo cheese, crumbled (may substitute feta)
1 cup romaine lettuce, finely shredded
Red or green hot sauce
Crema Mexicana (or sour cream)
Oil for frying
Combine masa flour, water and salt.  mix thoroughly for about 2 minutes to form soft dough.  If dough feels dry, add more water (one tablespoon at a time).  Divide masa into 20 portions and roll into balls.  Cover with plastic wrap to prevent drying.  Preheat ungreased griddle to high temperature (450-475).  Place a ball between two sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap.  Roll out or flatten ball to form a 2 1/2 to 3 inch diameter circle, about 3/8" thick.  Cook sope for one minute on the preheated griddle.  Turn and cook on second side until lightly browned. 
Carefully remove from heat, on the first cooked side, pinch the edges to form a raised rim about 1/4 inch high.  Sopes will be hot!  Repeat with all remaining sopes.  Keep sopes covered with a cloth napkin. 
Heat 3/4 inch of oil in a frying pan to 360 and fry sopes until lightly golden.  Drain on paper towels.  Heat beans and spread on tablespoon on each sope.  Top with chicken, tomato, onion, cheese, lettuce and crema Mexicana.  Serve with your favorite hot sauce. 
Yield:  20 sopes

Snickerdoodles--Smith age 3

Smith is one fierce cookie. 

Making the dough. 

Smooshing the cookies. 

Finished Product. 

Amy's Take:  I was gone most of the day  to an Iowa Art Quilters Meeting.  Eric was home with the kids.  When I got home, three of my kids ran to me saying "I'm hungry!!!"  even though I am pretty sure Eric fed them while I was gone.  The hardest thing on this no-shopping diet that I'm on this month is snacks.  My kids are ok with the occasional fresh tomato, but turn up their noses at a bunch of basil or a monster zucchini.  So, I've done a lot of baking lately.  We are almost half way through this month of no shopping and we are low on some things--namely chocolate and sugar.  And even raisins.  That limits our baking potential.  And the amount of joy in our household.  But you can pretty much always scrounge up the stuff to make snickerdoodles (at least this week we can--maybe not next week).  The recipe can be found here. 
         So, Smith helped me.  We had two bowls--a small blue one and a large red one.  We were putting the cinnamon-sugar mixture in the blue one and the cookie dough in the red one.  Several times he dumped things in the wrong bowl and we had to fish them out and put them in the right bowl.  Every time he would laugh and say "Oh, Well."  He has obviously not learned much yet about the value of following the recipe.  Or maybe he is right on, since they turned out just fine anyway. 

Zucchini Yeast Bread--Amy

The Bread.

Amy's Take:  I was wondering this morning, as I mixed another recipe of this, just how many of you are also struggling with zucchini overload?  So, I thought I'd share my recipe. 
Zucchini Yeast Bread
1 cup grated zucchini
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp yeast
1 egg
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups white flour plus a little extra for dusting
Mix zucchini, salt, yeast, egg, water and sugar in a bowl with a sturdy whisk.  Stir in whole wheat flour.  Add white flour one cup at a time until it gets hard to mix.  Take dough out of bowl and knead on counter, adding more flour until the dough is still soft, but not sticky.  Wash your bowl, dry it, and spray with cooking spray.  Put dough in bowl and roll it around so that the top of the dough gets greased.  Cover bowl with cloth and let raise an hour or two until the dough is doubled in size.  Punch the dough down, knead a bit more and divide in two.  Shape into loaves and put in two greased bread pans.  Let raise for another hour until doubled in size again.  Bake on 375 for 25 minutes.  Serve warm  with butter and jam.  Freeze leftovers as it gets stale quick, but it does make pretty decent french toast.

Other Opinions:
Sandra:  The bread didn't taste like zucchini.
Amelia:  It's not supposed to.
Sandra:  I ate ten pieces of it.  It's good.  It tastes better than regular bread.
Amelia:  Maybe not better than the  bread at the Farmer's Market that I sampled. 

German? Sausage--Amelia age 7

Thoughtfully washing the potatoes. 

Nice Potatoes. 

Finished Product.  What a feast!

Amelia's Take:  We had to pick lots of things in the garden.  It was hard work to find the potatoes.  The potatoes were a little hard to wash.  I didn't help make the zucchini bread, but the zucchini bread was good.  The sausage was a little greasy, but it was good. We used most of it from our garden.  That's all.   

Amy's Take:  My very favorite kind of meal ever is the kind where most everything comes from the garden.  Last night we had garlic zucchini, sliced tomatoes, boiled new potatoes and a savory yeast zucchini bread--all pretty much from our garden.  We are totally like the little red hen--we planted, weeded, picked and cooked.  But, different from the little red hen, we also share what we make.  As the main course for our feast, we modified a German Sausage recipe.  I have no idea if it is at all authentic (my entire experience with German food comes from my trips to the Amana Colonies) and the original recipe is from a lady on Cooks.com called Phyllis Toy.  You can see her recipe here  Anyway, I only kind of sort of followed it.  I did like it better than plain old smoked sausage.  Here is my recipe:

 

 German? Sausage

1 pound smoked sausage--a big single link--like kielbasa, cut in half inch slices. 
1/2 onion, chopped small
1 tbsp.  brown sugar
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 cup water

Brown sausage  in skillet and remove from pan. Add in onions and cook until soft. Mix brown sugar and cornstarch in pan. Add vinegar and water. Bring to boil and stir together. Return sausages to pan and simmer for a while.  I only cooked it for about 20 minutes, but Phyllis Toy says the longer you cook it the better it will taste. 

Other Takes: 
Sandra:  I like the sausage, but not the sauce.  We have enough zucchini for you to make more bread though. 

Chicken Breast Done Her Way--Sandra age 10

Icky raw meat and Sandra's hand.  They look creepily similar. 

Finished Product. 

Sandra's Take:  I cut up pieces of chicken and sprinkled Italian seasoning on them.  I think I did a good job. 

Amy's Take:  We were without internet for a few days.  The repairman said that the cables in some kind of box a half block away from us were eaten up by squirrels.  I've  thought that Grinnell, Iowa is home to the largest bunch of gluttonous squirrels in the world.  And the fattest.  Really.  Our first year here the squirrels in our yard ate our entire jack-o-lantern off of our front porch.  There was only the base left.  Last year the squirrels ate half my garden--green tomatoes, tiny watermelon, they didn't care.  Now they are eating our internet access. I just need to get up my gumption, reduce the squirrel population and put some variety in our dinner time meats. 
           Sandra made chicken by herself.  I was worn out and grumpy.  I told her to put "whatever you want from the spice cupboard"  on it and to use our handy dandy George Foreman.  She couldn't find anyone to take pictures for her, and so did it herself.  That picture up there of the chicken and her hand makes me even more nervous when I realize that she had a camera in her other hand.  I wondered later if I'd made a mistake by giving her insufficient directions.    But, she just used Italian seasonings and washed her hands sixteen times.   It was fine.  We had sliced tomatoes and stir fried zucchini with it.  Probably our 28th straight meal with zucchini. 

Summer Salad--Amelia age 7 and Smith age 3

Searching for tomatoes among the mad pumpkin vine. 

Lemon peppering the chicken. 

Opening a can of beans. 

The Salad. 

Finished Product. 

Smith's Take:  Floink.  That's what I want to say.  Floink.  I don't know what it means. 

Amy's Take:  One of our favorite summer meals doesn't have a name.  It consists of a couple of chicken breasts, sprinkled with lemon pepper seasoning and cooked on the George Foreman.  We cut them into bite sized pieces and add (in this case) a can of rinsed, drained, white beans, three chopped tomatoes, a head of chopped lettuce, a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, one small sliced zucchini, and a can of sliced olives.  Serve with Ranch dressing.  And macaroni and cheese and banana muffins.