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tis the season for giant squash, and i’m going old school for my zucchini bread. This recipe is from “The Eighties” section of A Century of Canadian Home Cooking. Let’s all just turn a blind eye to the fat and sugar content and focus on the important stuff – 2 cups of grated zucchini folks! That’s a big zucchini used up, right there.
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins
Directions:
Beat the eggs with a whisk, add sugar, oil and vanilla and beat until smooth. Stir in zucchini. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. I like to add a dash of grated nutmeg as well. Some people also like to add 1/2 cup chopped nuts, but I find the unexpected crunchiness disturbing. Your call.
Stir dry ingredients into wet, but only enough to mix them – the less you mix the better.
Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven for 50-60 minutes, until your toothpick comes out clean.
You could freeze it, but it disappears pretty quickly around here. If you are besieged by zucchini, a reliable source tells me you can pre-grate and freeze it in readiness for baking at a later date.
Healthy Redux
I’m working on a zora-ified version – swapping out half the vegetable oil for yogurt, adding some ground flax seed, swapping white flour for whole wheat. Anyone have suggestions for reducing the sugar?
I just can’t help myself. I have an all-encompassing love for this kind of pared-down (but not simple!) curvy wooden seat. Something in the shape beckons – come sit!
Why do certain objects resonate with one person and not another? Hans Wegner designed any number of chairs, and his Wishbone is in far wider circulation. But it doesn’t do anything for me. You can educate and evolve your design eye, but does your basic set of preferences ever change? Like I was thinking this morning about why Madonna can’t act. It’s a bit of a conundrum. She has been the master of evolving her public image over time through any number of iterations. But the only good acting job she has ever done (in Desperately Seeking Susan) is, arguably, playing herself. Is she so firmly set in her own set of preferences (however expressed) that she is unable to fully immerse herself in a role?
I think I’m like Madonna that way. My preferences have gotten more sophisticated over time, but I grew up in a house with Danish teak and a red carpet, and I still really like those shapes and that colour. I will never embrace chintz!
Ahem. From all reports, the Hans Wegner Shell Chair is a comfortable seat, although far from elegant to arise from (instructions consist of grasp the front edge to lever yourself upwards). Three legs. $700 a leg. You do the math.
My own plans for a front yard garden haven’t panned out (this year), but i’ve been scoping out the neighbourhood for inspiration. I passed this glorious front yard garden on Tuesday – check it out.
glorious rows of chard and lettuce backed by teepees of beans.
The front path is edged by by tomatoes in pots and a lot of squash.
i have garden envy.
Designed by Doug Garofalo, the FireOrb hangs suspended from the ceiling. Groovy, non?
I like the unexpected curviness of this fireplace – it challenges the staid square fireplace-with-a-marble-mantle-centered-on-the-wall expectation. You can sweep under it! It rotates in a circle – a full 360°! I suspect that cleaning it out might be a bit messy (could you dustbust the ashes?), and I wonder if the outside gets hot to touch (bad with kids and pets), but i still want one. It comes in black ($5800) and stainless steel ($6900) versions.
On our recent trip to the Okanagan, we stayed for a few days in Penticton. In between countless rounds of miniature golf (on the most landscaped course I have ever seen), i walked through this little japanese garden on the lakefront.
It’s quite pretty. actually, all of Penticton is lovely – it’s bordered by two lakes with gorgeous sandy beaches. The lakes are connected by a channel that people float down on innertubes. There is a thriving mini-industry in airbeds and floating beer coolers. Everyone wanders around in bathing suits and sandy feet, enjoying the sun.
Penticton is famous for (among other things), an Ironman triathlon that is held every August. There are throngs of very fit people running and biking and swimming at all hours of the day and night. Every morning around 6:30, I counted at least 20 people in wetsuits out swimming around the buoys in the lake. The city is populated by sun-wrinkled faces and fierce bodies.
I feel like I’m writing one of those back-to-school essays, “On My Summer Vacation…” My daughter had an unfortunate smash-up on the way out from Vancouver when we stopped at a playground in Princeton (amid signs saying “Please Do Not Feed the Marmots”) and she fell off a teeter-totter.
Luckily, she was already missing her two front teeth.
Shark bark.
happy summer!
i’ll admit, i was nervous about going on vacation. would i come back only to find shriveled remnants of my formerly thriving vegetable jungle? as we got closer and closer to home, i could feel that pit of dread opening up in my stomach. the car stopped and we burst out the doors and ran to the backyard (i could see that the house was still standing, which is all i needed to know about that).
yay! garden still growing! things still green and ripening! witness:
cherry tomatoes galore.
i have overcome my squash curse, and managed to nurture a few (in my absence) past the size of a plum. maybe i should go away more often?
purple beans growing like crazy (they turn green when you cook them). i think this may be the year of the purple vegetable.
i didn’t know this before i grew them, but brussel sprouts grow off the stem, just above the leaf junction. at the rate they are growing, i will have bushels of these.
not yet the size of a baseball bat, but due to be picked.
and finally, the pretty. i grew lobelia from seed!
now, i’m off to water my poor neglected jungle, and maybe do a spot of weeding…
