If you’re growing zucchini right now, you’re probably wondering how you’re going to use this abundant summer staple. Even seasoned zucchini growers start running out of ideas, recipes, and bewildered friends and neighbors willing to take home boat-sized zukes.
Recently, I had the pleasure of dining at Mother Sacramento for the first time and decided to try the Avocado and Summer Squash Salad (V, GF). It was mind-blowingly delicious. Zucchini can be a bland “vegetable” (actually a fruit), and can quickly turn soft when cooked. Slicing it thinly and serving it raw in a salad maintains some of its natural crispness and allows the dressing to infuse each slice with incredible flavor.
I’d never had the pleasure of eating zucchini this way and it was fantastic. Brilliant, actually.
I’ve since done some “zucchini salad with avocado” Googling and have come across several promising-looking recipes. Some of them instruct you to slice the zucchini into ribbons, others spiralize it, and a few tell you to dice it. I think thinner is better for salads, so I’m gravitating toward ribbons, potato-chip thin discs and spirals.
Zucchini Ribbon Salad with Sweet Corn & Avocado recipe from Maria and Josh’s Two Peas & Their Pod blog looks pretty close to what I enjoyed at Mother and it’s the recipe I plan to make. I’ll be using the ripe garden zucchini I just harvested. Just waiting for a lovely looking store-bought avocado to ripen. Sweet corn is readily available right now and I need to pinch back my basil plant, so I may add basil to the recipe below… just like Mother does. I’ll probably skip the cilantro and the queso fresco.
Zucchini Ribbon Salad with Sweet Corn & Avocado
Author: Angela@DiggingBliss
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4-6
I found this delicious looking recipe on the Two Peas & Their Pod blog. http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/zucchini-ribbon-salad-with-sweet-corn-avocado/
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 medium zucchini
2 medium yellow squash
2 ears cooked sweet corn
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 red onion, sliced
2 medium ripe avocados, peeled, pitted, and sliced
1/2 cup queso fresco (optional)
Instructions
In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil and lime juice together. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Trim the ends of the zucchini and yellow squash. With a vegetable peeler, shave lengthwise into long, wide strips about 1/16 inch thick.
Put the zucchini and yellow squash ribbons in a large bowl. Cut the sweet corn kernels off of the cob, cutting close to the cob. Discard cobs. Add sweet corn, cilantro, red onion, and avocado slices to the squash ribbons. Pour olive oil and lime dressing over salad and toss until coated.
Crumble queso fresco over the top of the salad and season with salt and pepper, to taste. (Angela’s note: I will probably skip the cheese since I’m avoiding dairy most days.)
I enjoyed this article by Don Shor about planting for pollinators. It’s good reminder for me to plant a few more varieties that are especially good at drawing bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to the garden. By taking a few simple steps to provide habitat, food, water and nectar sources and avoiding pesticide use, I’ll be rewarded with a beautiful garden that is buzzing with life.
As of right now, I have ordered plenty of milkweed for the nursery, but I haven’t planted any at the home. And closer to Fall when natives are more readily available, I need to be on the lookout for native pipevine (Aristolochia californica). I’ve got lavender, Dicliptera, CA poppies, Echium… a birdbath… hummingbird feeder… and some untouched areas where nature can do its thing.
I’d also like to add a native bee house. It’s all about working with nature, not against it.
It was 104 degrees in Sacramento yesterday, which made it a great day to get out of Dodge! I recently purchased two cycling books in an effort to burn more calories while seeing new sights. Kim and I chose a fun (i.e. brisk, but not death-defying) bike ride around Tiburon, CA.
Northern California is a staggeringly beautiful place and I’m way behind in exploring it. What I (and poor Kim) hadn’t anticipated was all the braking we’d be doing for flowers and succulents. You have to be a gazillionaire in order to live in a place like Tiburon, but all you need is a bicycle and a smart phone camera in order to enjoy its flora. Doable!
This 10.5-mile ride came from Moon Bay Area Biking: 60 of the Best Rides for Road and Mountain Biking (Moon Outdoors). With an elevation gain of 700 feet, the “Tiburon and Belvedere Loop” is described as “easy riding with stunning bay views”. It delivers even more to the gardener’s eye as you cruise by colorful front yard gardens, hanging baskets, overflowing window boxes, super-saturated flower colors you see only along the coast, whimsical mailboxes (is that a thing here?) and liberal use of succulents in the landscape. We ended up doing two loops… about 20 miles.
Just saw the Bee headline, Sacramento City council may OK ‘cash for grass’ program. “Cash for Grass” incentives are an intriguing idea, but they have to be well thought out. You’ll give me money if I rip out my lawn and plant… what? Veggies? Ivy? Irish moss? Roses? Hydrangeas? Or can I only plant plants the City deems drought-tolerant, like rosemary and Mexican feather grass?
Will my tony neighbors a few blocks down in the Fab 40s, with their sweeping rows of tulips and grass and thirsty edging plants have to rip it all out or face stiff fines? Or will we all just start watering at night, which we know is bad for plants.
Will we have the Plant Palette Police cruising our streets by day? Will gardeners holding watering cans have to dive into the nearest bush to avoid scrutiny? And what if my front yard is a crispy salute to all things Mediterranean while my private backyard is a sloshing frenzy of grass, fountains, a pool, leaky faucets and frequent hose fights and slip-n-slide fests? Water is water.
Apparently, front yard warnings are already being issued. And what about tiny yards with thirsty plants? And what about my irrigation system? A leaky drip system is no better than sprinklers that run a couple times a week watering a less-thirsty dwarf Fescue lawn.
I’ll bet my lawn uses a gazillion times less water than the new downtown arena’s Farm to Fork display will. Proceed with caution, City of Sacramento. Some of us are pretty fed up with you right now.
Let’s keep an eye on this, Sacramento gardeners. A decision from the Sacramento City Council is expected tomorrow.
Look what I unearthed from under a pile of leaves today! Tulips! Since we seem to be getting farther and farther away from freezing temps and finally had a decent rain after a record-breakingly dry winter, suddenly there’s life in the garden! Within just a few days, my tulips burst out of the ground. It’s exciting, and I still have blooms to look forward to!
The weather has been so funky lately (said the spoiled Californian)… with a winter freeze that turned my magnificent blooming Cupheas and Princess bush into crinkly beige sticks and many grey days without sufficient rainfall. I kept telling myself, “Jeez, I need to water.” It was an adorable notion, because the irrigation curse that had been placed on this house long before I moved is still in full force. I turned on the water and nothing happened. Dry silence. The next morning, however, we awoke to a flooded front lawn, with water seeping up from below quite spookily, and a flooding gutter.
A pipe had cracked, so Kim heroically threw on his sweats began digging in the cold, wet muck before heading off to work. All is good now, but we will need to gut the existing irrigation system at some point. On that note, our plans to re-landscape and fix up the kitchen have evolved into the possibility that we may add on a second story. Yup!
At my aunt’s urging, we had consulted her architect about how to approach a kitchen remodel. During our consultation, he made an eye-opening observation about the fact that no matter how much we spend on a new kitchen, the house will still be under 800 square feet. So in order to do a smart kitchen remodel, we may be increasing our house size.
At this point, we’re waiting to see the architect’s sketched ideas and then we’ll decide how to proceed. There’s a backyard re-landscape in our future, but we’re not sure when it will happen since we’ve shifted gears. What we’ve learned from all of this house and yard stuff is that, like planting tulips, it’s a process, and sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to end up with until you’ve done some of the work.
