practicality

So I haven't talked about my garden recently - time to change that!

At the beginning of summer, I had my doubts anything was actually going to grow. We had a really long, cold, wet spring, and a lot of the stuff I planted looked all sad and wilted in June. However, we've had some really nice days in the last few weeks, and it's exploded with growth - the downside to this is that it has also exploded with weeds, because I am a lazy slacker :< This year was sort of an experiment, too, as it's the first time I've ever done a garden entirely by myself. I've learned a few things for next summer - more compost in the soil, plant tomatoes farther apart, figure out some way to keep the strawberries off the ground so the ants don't eat them all.

The last two weeks have marked the first major harvests from my garden - I had a few strawberries in July, but less than a handful total. My tomatoes are starting to ripen (and nothing beats home-grown tomatoes picked ripe off the vine), and my zucchini have gotten massive.

Jon and I cooked the one above up today, along with some steak I had in the freezer. We did half of it fried (egg/milk dip then cornmeal/flour/salt and pepper dip), which was tasty, but a little too greasy when paired with the steak. The rest we turned into a sort of baked parmesan zucchini-thing. The topping is breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, oregano, chopped basil (also fresh from the garden!), fresh crushed garlic, and some salt and pepper. They turned out really tasty, even though I added a little too much salt - all the seasoning was a nice complement to the less seasoned steak. Unfortunately the topping is really crumb-y - I was hoping when I baked it the cheese would melt and make it all stick together, but no such luck. I think next time I'm going to add either a more melty cheese, like some mozzarella, or some beaten egg to the mixture to get it to stick better.