Easy blueberry lemon muffins

Simple to make, moist and fluffy.

I finally decided to take those month-old overripe bananas out of the freezer make banana chocolate chip muffins. I chose a simple recipe from a cookbook circa 1991 and marveled at how beautiful they turned out. Fluffy, moist and golden brown. They were still warm when I took a bite. I could taste the bananas and chocolate chips and…baking soda. Yuck! They were gross. The aftertaste was awful. I looked at the recipe again. There must have been a typo. Definitely too much baking soda. The entire batch was a waste. What a disappointment.

It was time for Plan B. When blueberries went on sale in grocery stores in July, I bought cartons, put them on cookie sheets (so they don’t freeze into one big clump) and into the freezer until they were solid. Packing the frozen berries in freezer bags saves space, and it’s easy to take out as many as needed for my favorite recipes. Blueberry muffins would soothe my palette and some lemon zest for added flavor. This recipe has never failed me.

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Blueberry lemon muffins

Makes 12 medium sized muffins
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup white or raw sugar
3 tsp baking powder
Zest of one lemon
1 cup milk
½ cup melted butter
1 egg
¼ tsp salt
1 cup frozen blueberries

Stir dry ingredients together, and then add frozen blueberries and lemon zest. Stir the dry ingredients together.

Combine egg, milk and melted butter together. Fold into flour-blueberry mixture until everything is mixed well and moistened. Pre-heat oven to 375°F.

Using non-stick muffin pans, fill each muffin cup with equal amounts of batter.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Turn out muffins onto baking racks until cooled. Enjoy!

Orzo medley with Parmesan cheese and basil

Orzo pasta with fresh veggies.

Many types of food bring back fond childhood memories. Our family was fortunate to have great neighbors, including several Italian families on our block. I will always remember helping our next door neighbor, Anna, who was also our landlady, prepare meals for her family. Often our family was invited, too. There was always room at their dinner table for anyone who dropped by.

I think I was first introduced to orzo (a type of pasta) when I was in kindergarten. For most of my life, I thought that orzo was rice. Anna made all kinds of dishes with the pasta, including soups. This recipe is dedicated to Anna and all of the wonderful Italian neighbors who have shared their love of food, family and friendship with us.

You can also use freshly grated Parmesan and your own chicken stock.

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Serves 6

2 cups dry orzo pasta
2.5 cups chicken stock
3 scallion onions chopped
½ cup each of chopped: red pepper, yellow pepper, green pepper, mushrooms
4 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp fresh basil chopped
3 tbsp Parmesan cheese grated

Chop veggies and set aside.

On medium heat, melt butter in deep skillet then add orzo and stir often until lightly browned. Carefully add stock to the pan and stir often so orzo doesn’t stick to the pan.

Lower heat to simmer. Stir in chopped veggies and stir well. Put lid on pan.

Simmer and stir often until orzo is tender, normally about 10-15 minutes. You can add more stock, if desired, a little at a time to prevent the orzo from burning.

Remove from heat. Add Parmesan cheese and stir. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with freshly chopped basil.

Fresh basil is wonderful with this dish.

Buon appetito!

Harvesting and ripening tomatoes

Tomatoes ripening on window sill.

The greener they are, the longer they will take to ripen in the sun.

Is this a familiar sight in your house? You know it’s late summer/early fall when the nighttime temperatures are cool and the tomatoes still aren’t ripening as quickly as you’d like them to. One thing I love about tomatoes is that you can pick them when they're green and eventually they will ripen. Practically every window sill in our house is lined with unripe fruit.

I planted five varieties: Tiny Tim, Big Beef, Bush Beefsteak, La Roma and Health Kick, similar in size to Roma but has large amounts of the antioxidant lycopene, which is helps to reduce the risks of heart disease and cancer. Lycopene is also good for your skin and is often found in anti-aging creams and lotions.

I planted five varieties of tomatoes.

However, this time last year, I was already canning like mad making tomato sauces, salsas and stewed tomatoes. So far, I have only made four jars of plum tomatoes. The greenhouse plants are heavy with fruit, but the tomatoes are still pretty green. A critter has been munching on some of them, though, so I decided to pick a batch and bring them indoors where they’d be safe from the "greenhouse gobbler". I left a dozen damaged fruit around the plants as an offering to the pests.

Determined to save as many as possible, I sprinkled baby powder on the plants and fruit, including the cantaloupe and butternut squash that the mysterious critter has been snacking on. I’m guessing it’s a vole (field mouse) or maybe a slug/snail. I wonder if garter snakes snack on tomatoes?

Now, what to do with all of these unripe tomatoes? It’s a good thing that we have many windows in our house with deep sills, perfect for setting tomatoes to ripen in the sun. For the two dozen or so that are still green, I follow my grandmother’s advice about wrapping each piece in newspaper and setting them in a cool place until they ripen, anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on the tomato size. She always had fantastic tomatoes.

An easy way to speed up the ripening process.

Recycle clean newspaper by wrapping your tomatoes.

I remember going into back porch of her house and seeing dozens of newspaper balls in cardboard boxes, crates and on tables, ledges and anywhere else a wrapped tomato could fit. I wrapped my tomatoes in newspaper and placed them in a laundry basket in the basement in a high and dry area.

Keep wrapped tomatoes in a laundry basket in a cool place.

Maybe if I keep them in a laundry basket near the freezer, I’ll remember to check them often, not like last fall when I totally forgot about a dozen wrapped tomatoes in a cardboard box. They were discovered several months later – not a pretty sight.

I want to savor as many as possible this year, so a few dozen whole tomatoes are already in the freezer (in large freezer bags), to thaw them and make sauces, salsas, stews and chili during the next couple of months. I have a feeling that later this month, I’ll be canning like crazy. Must get more jars…and baby powder.

Country living and wildlife

A squirrel finds its breakfast.

It’s 6:30 am and the sun is just starting to rise above the trees. Last night was chilly, about 6°F with heavy dew. Just a few weeks ago, we were dealing with sweltering temperatures and trying to stay cool in our non-air conditioned house while outside reached more than 130°F. Now, I’m shivering in my sweatshirt and sweatpants, cupping my mug of coffee trying to keep my hands warm. The thermostat reads 58°F in the house. I will not turn on the furnace. No way. Put on thicker socks and slippers. Huddle under the electric blanket. Have another cup of steaming java. Do not adjust the thermostat. It’s only September and the forecast says temps will be in the low to mid 20s for the next few days.

School started this week. I remember those days, anxious to see my friends, meet new teachers and try to remember where my locker was, let alone the combination. I find myself saying to my husband, “Remember when we were kids…” as if we’re a couple of old folks reminiscing in our rocking chairs.

I recall going to school in early September wearing our fall jackets. Sometimes there was frost already on the ground. It’s not that cold this morning, but chilly enough to wear a light jacket or sweatshirt. I’ll have to check the forecast daily to ensure that the garden and greenhouse plants are protected. A freak frost, which can happen at any time, will hurt the squash and tomatoes. It may be time to pull out the frost blankets, just in case. I’ve noticed around the yard this week that animals of all sizes are very busy all day until sunset. They’re getting ready for winter.

Barred owl

I’ve never been a morning person, but I am finding that rising at 5:30 am is great. I’m sipping my first cup of coffee before any birds have opened their eyes. I love listening to the dozens of different songs and sounds each species makes in the early morning. It’s also prime time to see wildlife emerging from their slumber, stretching their legs and foraging for food. There wasn’t much to look forward to in the city, so rising this early on a daily basis was pointless unless there was really something pressing to do.

Blue Jay

Here in the country, the sights and sounds of wildlife motivate me to rise with the sun and take in all of the splendors of Nature. There’s so much activity around me every day. The days are getting shorter as fall creeps upon us; it would be a shame to miss the daily comings and goings of creatures big and small.

Fox digging in dirt pile for toads.

The fox digging in the dirt pile looking for toads. The squirrel gathering nuts. The birds drinking dew from the grass and catching grasshoppers. The Blue Jays chattering at each other. The barred owl looking down from tree tops hunting voles.

Northern Flicker woodpecker

The Northern Flicker (a type of woodpecker) hopping along the ground picking up insects. The robins gobbling worms from the clay. The deer cautiously grazing on crab apples and clover.

White tailed deer fawn.

Who needs TV when there’s entertainment all around me!?

Gardening passion

Fresh organic veggies

If you’re a gardener, you know how much planning, expense and fretting are invested in your venture. Whether it’s a hobby or a business, creating a successful garden that yields results is hard work. You fuss over which plants go where, which plants grow well together and which ones don’t, when and how to sow seeds, how to protect your plants from the elements, pests and predators. The list goes on and on.

Fresh picked spinach.

I dream about gardening all year long. When the first snow falls, I start planning my garden, flipping through dozens of magazines for layout and watering ideas, making a list of seeds and seedlings to order, researching growing methods and plant types. There’s so much to learn; it’s endless. I love it.

When torrential rain and hail pour down or a freak snow storm blankets the garden, I want to run outside with a gigantic tarp and protect my “babies”. If it doesn’t rain for a couple of days, I give everyone a deep, thorough watering and layer mulch around their tender stems to protect the roots from exposure. Weeding is a necessary, but arduous task that somebody has to do, despite the mosquitoes and black flies.

Garden broccoli.

When a pest threatens my “kids”, I spring into protective mode. Cutworms – I will find and destroy you. Potato beetles - beware of the underside of my rubber boots! Raccoons – you’d better relocate.

Why go through all of this? After months of planning, back breaking digging and hoeing, a seedling pops up from the earth; it’s magical. The once bare earth is slowly covered in delicate seedlings struggling to survive. Only the strongest will remain. There’s something satisfying about gardening, to be able to say, “I grew this.” Sure, there are some failures, but the successes drive us to keep doing it year after year. It would be great to live in a climate where we could grow our own food year ‘round, but for now, I’ve got enough to keep me busy, a wonderful harvest so far this year and still a bit of time to enjoy a sunset.

Fava bean fever – from growing to harvesting

Fava beans from my garden.

For more than a year, I’ve been reading a lot about broad beans and their health benefits. Earlier this year I ordered some fava beans online and planned to sow a 4’ x 8’ bed of them in the garden this spring. I had no idea how beneficial these beans are. They contain vitamin B1 or thiamin, iron, copper, phosphorus, potassium and magnesium, dopamine (improves mood), and their high-protein, high-fiber content can help with weight loss. Why don’t all gardeners plant these miracle beans?

It seemed to take forever for signs that the favas would actually grow. The plants’ flowers look like white and purple orchids and were in full bloom for several weeks, attracting many pollinators.

Fava plants have orchid-like flowers.

After impatiently waiting for the fava plants to reach maturity thanks to this summer’s weird weather, I noticed plump pods 5-6 inches long hanging from what used to be flowers.

Anxious to open the pods and try this wondrous bean, I picked most of them right away, propped myself in front of the TV with a couple of 80s movies and started to shell each pod. It took about an hour to shell eight pounds of pods.

Let the shelling begin!

Only three beans per pod? Hmm. But, as I opened larger pods, sure enough, there were four or five beans per pod. Not too shabby, I thought.

Some pods yielded five beans.

  

I bit into one of the beans. Yuck – it was bitter. I re-read a few articles from my gardening magazines for help. Apparently, the bitterness is favored by people of Mediterranean origin. My North American palette didn’t like it. The beans’ casings had to go.

After shelling all of the pods, I ended up with six cups of beans. I put the pods into the fava bed and worked them into the soil as they are rich in nitrogen which is great for the garden and they are a great cover crop. There are still some pods yet to be picked, so I hope to get a few more cups of beans this month since the weather is getting warmer again.

It took about an hour to shell six cups of beans.

Now, I had these delicious looking beans with the bitter tasting outer skin. What to do? The fava preparation process is a hotly debated topic on the Internet. It reminded me of the time that I researched how to stack firewood. Ask 10 people, get 10 different answers, and everyone thinks that his/her way is the best. In the end, I weighed the pros and cons and went with the method that I thought would work best here, given our climate and terrain.

After what seemed an endless amount of reading and wading through online bickering by food enthusiasts, I decided to go with a suggestion in Mother Earth News magazine to blanch the beans in salted boiling water for no more than two minutes, then immersed them in very cold water with ice to stop them from cooking.

After cooled and drained in a strainer, the beans would easily pop out of their bitter casings. Voila! The process worked like a charm! After another 40 or so minutes later, each bean had been released from its casing. I tasted a few – delicious. I am officially hooked on fava beans. Next year, I plan to have at least two beds of them.

Fava beans after removing the outer casing.

I like to lightly sauté fava beans with 1 tbsp olive oil and one clove of minced garlic in a pre-heated pan for about 10 minutes, or steam them for no more than 10 minutes and add to salads, rice, pasta or sauces. Fava beans are a versatile food.

Looks like a lot of waste for a small amount of yield. Incorporate the waste into the garden.

Note that they do not keep for long periods of time in the refrigerator and will normally develop brown spots after a few days. I blanched a few cups of beans, plunged them in ice water, drained them thoroughly, and then packed them in freezer bags, sucking as much as out of the bags as possible with a straw.

I’ve read that they should keep in the freezer for at least a few months, but I find myself dipping into a bag now and then for a handful. Once thawed, they are wonderful in a salad of veggies fresh picked from my garden. One cup of fava beans is less than 200 calories. I think it’s time for a snack. Fava fever!

Stop Thief!

The corn a day after the first raid. Garden hoses sometimes deter pests like deer and crows.

A few days ago, I noticed that six stalks of corn had been ripped out and about seven cobs eaten. The silk, stalks and leaves were scattered nearby, so the culprit stayed to enjoy its meal. There were no footprints anywhere. At first, I suspected an aerial attack by crows. I heard a murder of them early that morning. I cleaned up the damaged plants and had to pull another half a dozen out that had been trampled.

The cobs would have been ready for harvesting next week. So close. Then, I laid pieces of garden hose on the ground. If crows were the culprits, they may mistake the hoses for snakes.  The garden hose pieces seem to deter deer and some claim they also deter crows.

The carnage from the first attack.

The next evening, I headed to the garden to some much needed watering and noticed that some of the stalks were swaying. There was no wind at all. Strange. I approached slowly and quietly with the hose in hand. Within five feet of the corn beds I saw the culprit – an adult raccoon munching away on a cob. It was enjoying that sweet corn and managed to trample countless others that haven’t matured yet.

At first, it just looked at me, but after I yelled at it, the ‘coon bolted. I found how it got into the fenced garden and tried to fix the security breach. I’ve been told that cayenne pepper is a deterrent for many pests, so I sprinkled about four cups of it on the stalks, cobs and ground around the corn beds. Cayenne pepper sprinkled on and around one of the composters last year eventually deterred a young bear from ripping the composter apart.

Would cayenne save the corn from a determined raccoon?

Nope. This morning the sight was shocking. Eleven stalks ripped out, 15 cobs eaten, 10 stalks damaged. One raccoon did all of this? Unbelievable. I cleaned up the mess; not a fun task given the intense humidity and swarms of mosquitoes. I knew that a garden raider was inevitable, but nonetheless, I was not impressed. Next week, all of that corn would have been ready for picking – by humans!  So close.

Raccoons love corn. I don't love raccoons.

After the second raid, about half of the corn are still standing.

I sprinkled the remaining corn stalks and cobs with baby powder, which some claim deters raccoons. A few hours later, it started to rain and a massive storm system is on the way. So much for testing the baby powder theory.

Some say coyote urine sprayed around the plants is a deterrent, although I don't know if or where that stuff can be bought. Maybe bone meal sprinkled at the base of the stalks? At this point, I'm going to try anything to stop the raccoon from returning. The squash will be ready for picking in a couple of weeks. I have a sinking feeling that this is the beginning of a battle.

Maybe the storm will keep the raccoon home tonight, I hope. In the meantime, hubby is working on a plan to improve the fence and we are bracing for the storm which could bring up to three inches of rain in a few hours. It might be an interesting evening.

Today’s harvest, Blue Birds and monster zucchini

Yikes! It's so hot the thermometer gave up.

Wow - another scorcher today. It’s mid-day and the thermometer has risen past 130F (50C). The humidity isn’t too bad and the house is surprisingly cool. Luckily, I watered the gardens and greenhouse at 6:30 am, then spent another hour harvesting today’s bounty and doing some light weeding. Even with the heavy morning dew, the plants get pretty thirsty dealing with this heat.

Cool morning was perfect for picking.

The birds must have known the heat was coming because they were busy collecting insects and berries early this morning - robins, blue jays, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers, flycatchers, chickadees, nuthatches and blackbirds.

Blue birds are feasting on pesky grasshoppers.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing flocks of Blue Birds around the yard. I had no idea what they were until I found them in my bird book. They’re feasting on grasshoppers on the yard and garden. They, along with a lot of other species of birds, are doing a great job cutting down on the insect problem. I sipped my coffee under the arbor watching the birds. There's never a dull moment around here.

By 10 am it was time to head inside to close all windows and blinds, and get the fans going. After washing this morning’s garden bounty, I decided to whip up some chocolate zucchini bread.

More zucc.

Nearly 15 inches long!

Zucchini and chocolate? I know it sounds weird, but try it. The zucchini makes the bread incredibly moist. Or, omit the coco powder and add some lemon zest. Zucchini is a versatile vegetable; I use it in a lot of recipes like sauces, stews, breads, desserts and pasta dishes.

Chocolate zucchini bread is easy to make and delicious.

Chocolate zucchini bread recipe

Chocolate zucchini bread

Zucchini makes baked goods moist.

This recipe makes two loaves.

3 eggs beaten

1 cup oil

1 cup sugar

2 cups grated zucchini

2 tsp vanilla

3 ½ cups flour

½ tsp salt

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ cup plain or vanilla yogurt

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp baking powder

3 tsp cinnamon

½ cup nuts (optional)

½ dates or raisins (optional)

In a large bowl, mix ingredients in order given above. Divide batter evenly into two greased pans and bake at 350F for one hour.

Tip: Grate extra zucchini and put 2 cups in individual freezer bags so you'll have some on hand to make recipes like this during the winter months.

Look who came by for breakfast

Doe getting breakfast.

There are many white tailed deer in our area, but sometimes we don't see any for weeks. I was talking with my husband the other day, wondering why we haven't seen deer very often this month. The bugs? The heat? Predators? We did see a doe and her fawn running on the front yard last week.

White tailed deer love crab apples.

Just after 7 am today, a lone doe came by to snack on some crab apples about 20 feet from the house. She plucked them from branches and the ground. What a pretty girl. The pictures are a bit grainy because of fog.

Are you looking at me?

I'm off to check out the garden. Someone's been munching on corn. Must investigate.