Apr8

A post about food! And flowers–not all of them edible.

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A post about food! And flowers–not all of them edible.
This flower looks like it wants to eat ME. Any guesses?

Y’all remember how I used to frequently find zucchini on my windshield after Taekwondo? There was also that one library incident.

Since I don’t see Sensei any more, the zucchini well has dried.

Or has it?

Hubby and I are not great gardeners, but everyone talked about how, once you grow zucchini, you’re always growing zucchini–like it or not.

What the hey? I thought. I relieved a Sensei zucchini of a few seeds several months back and threw them in the ground, not bothering to check the proper growing season schedule. Four plants started growing. From the first, I got this bad boy.

Daughter demonstrating its diameter. (Duh.)

At least a half dozen others like it are still growing. But so is a weird phenomenon.

This… thing.

Hubby concluded a recessive gene was in the seed mix. No matter. I’d chop it up and fry it like the others, expecting the usual white interior.

But no, my friends. And this was no easy squash to slice either. It seemed more like…

Am I frying an oblong pumpkin?

That is what it looked, smelled, and tasted like. How it wound up in our garden with the zucchini remains a mystery. But it, like everything fried in bacon grease, was delicious.

It was also a lot, so I put the last bit in a pan with a little water and steamed it until soft. Then I mashed it with ease and saved it for later baking.

If you’ve been here a while, you know my baking typically goes haywire, so when the oven is on, I stay out of the kitchen.

My daughter had friends over for her birthday and decided to bake brownies in mini-cupcake wrappers.

For a weird change of pace, no last minute grocery-runs needed to made for these brownie cupcakes.

Or did they?

As it turns out, the only oil we have is olive and coconut. My daughter hates coconut, so she used olive. To say these olive brownies were gross is an understatement. They went in the trash.

So, you guessed it, Hubby did a late-night store run for vegetable oil and a fresh box of brownie mix. The re-creation tasted much better, but stuck to the wrappers. We learned two lessons here: don’t bake with olive oil! Also, brownies don’t belong in cupcake wrappers.

The next month was my oldest daughter’s birthday. She works at a bakery, so she literally got paid to make her own cake. Then she bought it. (We paid her back.)

So much for not bringing her work home with her.

She also had several friends over for dinner, on a beautiful day, so we ate outdoors. Birthday Daughter decorated the tables with flowers harvested from our yard.

You want close-ups? I’ll get you close-ups.

I was so impressed by her use of greenery on this one. She’s a natural at floral decor, frosting or otherwise.
Even dandelions had their place for a splash of color.

My contribution was hanging this wreath on the door.

I know, I know. It was a challenge, but I persevered. Please, hold your applause.

I’m months overdue to show you the salsa chicken we made from Diane’s recipe. Her blog is a treasure and has been indispensable in using zucchini.

Easy to make and incredibly delicious.

All of you long-time readers, this nexy picture is for you.

This bag is saying, “I’m back, baby!”

It just wasn’t as good as in the old days, however.

My last food-related item has to do with when I went to coffee with friends and needed to decide, with others waiting, what I should order. In all tough, life-or-death situations such as this, I thought, “What would Andrew do?”

A delicious raspberry latte for the win! (Thanks for the inspo, buddy.)

I hope you’re all having a delicious, baking-disaster-free spring!

Naturally, I had to comb through my trivia book for something food related. Huzzah when I came to a page labeled “Recipes”! The first one fits the bill quite well too.

What do these ingredients construct:

Spaghetti, olive oil, onion, garlic, eggs, bacon, parmesan, pepper, and parsley.

[P.S. I asked you for a vote last time. I’ll get back to that in my next post. Probably. No one ever knows what’s going to happen on this blog.]

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69 responses »

  1. That first picture is a Triffid, right?

    “olive and coconut. My daughter hates coconut, so she used olive. To say these olive brownies were gross is an understatement. They went in the trash.“
    Hahahahahahaha! That sounds like something Mrs B would do. Good times, good times 😀

    I have zero idea about the trivia. But it sounds interesting, so I’m hoping someone else answers it easily.

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  2. Your daughter has a talent for creating beauty! 👌🌟

    Too funny: When I ran a poetry pulishing house and held readings, one of my poets had a piece titled, “Advice to the Backyard Gardener.”

    That poem was so funny! It began, “Never grow zucchini in your garden. If you grow zucchini in your garden ~ you will be sorry…”

    It goes on to detail how the little sprout rapidly takes over your whole garden, producing innumerable vegetables, which then must be used.

    The word “zucchini” itself appears in the poem so often that its own intrinsic comicality is felt along with that of the rest of the story.

    “All your neighbors,” it went on, “seem to be mysteriously not at home when you visit carrying your gift of zucchini…”

    The poem lists all the unlikely foods in which zucchini may be used.

    Finally, “You see a good friend coming up for a visit! She is carrying… a large basket of zucchini…” 🤣

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  4. You can never go wrong with a raspberry latte. The only way to make a raspberry latte better is to have a chocolate croissant with it. yum … oh and just so you know the raspberry counteracts the chocolate in the croissant and the two cancel each other out so there are no calories in this combination (follow me for more diet tips).

    That flower is hungry and about to eat you — which is my basic advice for all foods: Eat it before it eats you.

    If I recall, those things would make a kind of carbonara. Not sure. I’m more on the eating side of the kitchen rather than the cooking side. I mean, no one has died from my cooking, but there have been … er … complaints … no charges filed.

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  9. I think frying in bacon grease rather negates the healthy reward of fresh veggies, but I’m sure it tasted great. 😉
    I made the baking with olive oil mistake once. Never yo be repeated. It’s amazing how awful that was.
    Loving that candy cane colored rose on your table. Wow!
    And that professional cake? Stunning.

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    • There’s another blogger who swears by the health benefits of animal fat, so who knows what to believe? All I know is, it tasted terrific.

      Wish we’d known sooner about the olive oil. So much waste. 😦

      I was told that particular rose is called ‘fire and ice.’ Cool name, right?

      And, yes, my daughter did a nice job on her cake. The butterflies were a fun addition. 🙂

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  10. Chex Mix is back!! Be still my heart. It’s like I stepped into a time machine and was spat out in 2021.

    Thank you for teaching us that all cooking oil is not created equally.

    Yep, carbonara for sure. Let’s just pretend I was first for a change.

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    • If anyone was going to appreciate the CM, it was you, Mark. I’m so glad you did. Thinking about it now, I believe the obsession actually began in 2019! I’m remembering the CMG transferring to a new store… {thinking} at the end of 2020. Then my neighbor and I saw him at that store… yes, in 2021, at which time I bought some [not so good] Chex Mix. Yes! You win! Wow. Memory roller coaster.

      Olive oil is strong in large quantities, apparently. It’s weird because we haven’t had regular vegetable oil for a long time and were doing just fine. Pancakes, crepes, frying stuff, no problem. The amount needed for brownies, however, is too much, apparently. This is how we learn.

      Pretending you were the first! 😉

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  11. Mmmm…carbonara pasta! Yum! And thanks for the LOL moment…the Ziploc baggie with the questionable contents…including a question mark…too funny! I could’ve used some clues like that when we spelunked in my mom’s freezer once upon a time…😜❤️😜

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  12. The birthday cake! Um, you’re killing me here. For a sweet tooth like myself, how am I supposed to go back to work now? Looks amazing. Congrats to your daughter. If my sons or daughter brought cakes like that home … I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t get anything done. Also brownies in wrappers? How is that a bad thing. I think I could make that work … somehow! Ha ha.

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  15. Happy birthday to your daughter! The cake looks amazing.

    I also love the surprise from your garden. Did you check to see if a giant beanstalk grew in your garden too? Everything fried in bacon grease sounds yum!

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  16. “Delicious” post, Ilsa (esp. that leadoff birthday cake – oh my), and I love that instantly knew the meaning of “What would Andrew do?” at the tail end. You are talking about carbonara in the trivia. But more importantly I had a couple of “I spy” moments with your photos. In your table close-up I notice a cool glass butter dish. Where’d you get that? Even better, I REALLY like the design of the fan of glass at the top of your (front?) door. Very classy. Er, glassy. Er, you get my drift.

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    • “Glassy.” Ha! I like our front door, too, but mainly the blue. We painted that ourselves. Well done knowing the Andrew trivia! More impressive than knowing the trivia-trivia. 🙂 The butter dish trivia is a tough one for me. We’ve had that forever. Maybe it was a wedding gift? Maybe it came from Crate and Barrel? That was over two decades ago now, though, so… ??

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    • Yes! We used to make zucchini bread a lot with those early zukes. Now I get lazy and just chop and fry the buggers. The stuff in the bag I froze will likely become bread. Maybe with chocolate chips. 🙂

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