I was laughing at myself just now, looking through the photos, trying to see what I should blog about next. Photo after photo of food! It’s pretty funny how much we appreciate nice-looking food. Restaurant food usually looks best.
I got a message on my phone one Saturday morning from a co-worker I had not talked to for years. She and her son were desperate for help unloading a moving van in Vancouver, Washington, after the person who said he would help, bailed out at the last minute. She offered to pay. Normally, I wouldn’t take payment to help a friend, but it was an hour drive just to get there, and we aren’t that close of friends, we worked hard in the hot weather, and it was last minute. I accepted her payment and after the van was unloaded, we went right over to Amaro’s Table in East Vancouver to spend it all on a fabulous lunch. The food was amazing!! Totally worth blowing our Saturday to help someone move.
We are fortunate to have so many good things to eat right on our property. This is the first full year with a squirrel-proof strawberry bed and there were so many berries! They are delicious when you can grow them at home, and we never collected enough to make anything out of them. We simply ate them. After Jupyter completed her inspection duties, of course.
Pedro and I both detest meal planning and we both get irritated by evening meal preparations because for both of us, early evening is often right when we are in the middle of something. So we take turns. Pedro takes the 1st-15th of each month, and I take the 16th to the end. The one who cooks also does the grocery shopping, because they know what they want. The one who doesn’t, does dishes and cleans up the kitchen. We have both become better cooks this way, because we work hard to make nutritious meals that are also beautiful. Pedro is a much better cook than me, let’s just get that out of the way. But I am so pleased to have taught myself twenty or thirty new things to cook – from curry to wontons to cauliflower parmesan. Pedro’s staples now include stuffed portobello mushroom and shrimp ceviche.
Speaking of zucchini, there is no better way to say INUNDATED than to simply show you.
All the photos above are taken on different days. Those calabacitas double in size overnight! One day I put nine of them into a bag and began walking the neighborhood, knocking on doors, until they were all gone. We have given them away to our kids. I took three in my suitcase to Massachusetts. I froze a bunch, until the freezer filled. Now I just give the giant ones to the chickens, ha ha!
People will be tempted to report their favourite zucchini recipe, to help us. It is not for lack of recipes that I despair. It is for lack of desire to eat zucchini for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for months on end.
Mom never taught me to make jam – this is entirely on me. I had no interest to copy her life of slaving away at the kitchen stove on hot summer days. But having a surplus of fruit made me realize why people would want to can. The food comes at you all at once, and there is no way to eat it fast enough. So I boiled down one day’s worth of blueberries, some lemon, and sugar, and then scooped the piping hot concoction into sterilized jars. To my surprise, the lids began popping closed, to indicate a seal. I remember that from when Mom canned. It was a surprise, since I wasn’t following a recipe and didn’t know what I was doing. I took a jar to Massachusetts recently, and when I made biscuits for my friends one morning they insisted on opening the jar. So I got to taste it, and it’s SO DELICIOUS. What luck.
Pedro searched out a recipe on the Interwebs and voila! That evening we had a jar of pickles in an old peanut butter jar I found for him. We waited three days for them to brew, then began eating them and they were delicious!
What we don’t grow, we pick up from the farmer’s markets. Especially root crops, since voles in our garden will eat anything we try to grow. With our new raised beds, I am hoping to have a safe place for roots to grow. We still have not solved the corn problem: the weather and soil are great but the squirrels give us no peace. I think the corn solution will be our goal for Garden 2027!
Conscious Engagement 
I coming to live at your place 😋 The rule of one cooks, or has a helper and the rest wash up worked in my house. It was the rule of the share houses I lived in in my 20’s as well.
You are quite amazing with the garden and using what you have. I do the find a recipe, buy the ingredients and cook. Most times it’s just throw something together and I get surprised at how ell some meals turn out. I often exclaim during a meal, “boy, I’m a good cook!” Cooking for just myself, there’s always leftovers too 😁
I belong to that group of people that LOVE leftovers. Some things even taste better the next day. Brian, you are welcome to come on over. You should choose a day when Pedro’s cooking though. I am great at baking, but he is great at meals. His salmon, steak, and roasts are always cooked to perfection. This is the first time I have lived in a one cooks, one cleans situation, and I think it’s a great plan.
That’s OK. If you bake, I’ll have an apple crumble or a rhubarb crumble or even an apple and rhubarb crumble.
The only downside is a messy cook who uses too many pot and pans and knives and utensils AND doesn’t rinse stuff at least.
A friends daughter was like that. Worse thing is thought, the meals were ever so good, no chance for leftovers. Some were midnight snack worthy 😁
No doubt the chief inspector was waiting for you to realize that it was time to get something she wanted to eat. Soon! After all, that inspecting is hard work and makes you hungry.
Lou, I can see your four-legged kids have you well trained. Yes, we always hold a piece of dinner aside when we think Jupyter would want some. She is a weirdo kitten and likes stuff like arugula and bread. We definitely share that with her. But all the meats are an option too. We hold aside choice bits and serve her when we serve ourselves. It both feeds her, pays her for services, and keeps her out of our hair when we are trying to dish up our plates, ha ha.
This was a really fun post. Imagining you walking around giving away zucchini to neighbors just brought a huge smile. Is that a zucchini fairy?
I also like how you and Pedro rotate the meal planning and prep. It seems like it works very well. And so glad your jam came out just wish I could taste some virtually.
The Zucchini Fairy!! I love that. The blueberries turned out delicious. It was especially great since I was just following instincts and not a recipe. I had no idea how it would turn out.
You have a fine division of culinary labour – and everything else of course
It works for us! Neither of us wants to be dinner maker, but we both have a highly developed sense of fairness, so this is a great solution. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks are all on our own though.
You guys are ever so much more the gourmet cooks than Peggy and me! Congrats! And all that fresh food. Wow. Jupyter looks snazzy.
To be honest, Curt, I do believe there is a fair amount of friendly competition happening. I don’t think we would admit it to each other, but we do try to make great food for each other, ha ha.
Laughing. Nothing wrong with a little competition, Crystal! I could use more, considering I do most of the cooking. Grin.
The key to any great recipe is quality ingredients. I suspect that those learning to grow their food will be especially happy in the years to come when we see more and more food deserts. Lovely garden, lovely share here. Maybe I’ll be inspired next year!
Just come over here. We will share! Need any tomatoes? Cucumbers? Apples?
Fantastic! I have given up on cooking, I just don’t enjoy it. But you are inspiring! Gorgeous produce!