A much needed rain today after 2 weeks of heat

It didn't last long, maybe a good 15-20 minutes, but good ol' rain is always better than city of Austin water.   Since the last time I posted I haven't done much to the homestead.  I re-reused some old plastic gutters.  They were originally on the house but were taken down after some of them were damaged by the hail storm we had a few years back.  I then cut them into 3 ft length pieces and hung them in my classroom to use as bookshelves.  I took them down last year after my students kept leaning on them and ripping them out of the wall.  So now I linked them back together again, drilled some drain holes in the bottom, hung them on the fence and planted some lettuce and cilantro seeds in them.  Lettuce only needs a an inch or so of soil to grow in, so hopefully I will get a nice selection of salad leaves in the next few weeks.

What else is new,  Jennie and I made a batch of zucchini muffins to use up one of the zucchini's we still had and again, they were a huge hit at our church small group... its quite funny what kids will eat when they don't know what the ingredients are.    Last night we made a zucchini gratin and it was really good.  The recipe is from Food Network  (Ina Garten's recipe)

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, plus extra for topping
• 1 pound yellow onions, cut in 1/2 and sliced (3 large)
• 2 pounds zucchini, sliced 1/4-inch thick (4 zucchini)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup hot milk
• 3/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 3/4 cup grated Gruyere

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Melt the butter in a very large (12-inch) saute pan and cook theonions over low heat for 20 minutes, or until tender but not browned. Add the zucchini and cook, covered, for 10 minutes, or until tender. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg and cook uncovered for 5 more minutes. Stir in the flour. Add the hot milk and cook over low heat for a few minutes, until it makes a sauce. Pour the mixture into an 8 by 10-inch baking dish.
Combine the bread crumbs and Gruyere and sprinkle on top of the zucchini mixture. Dot with 1 tablespoon of butter cut into small bits and bake for 20 minutes, or until bubbly and browned.

For lunch one day I decided to grill up some random fruit and veggies that were left over from other meals from earlier in the week.  As you can see, I grilled two ears of corn in the husk (I have found out that this is the best method for grilling corn, because the husk keep all the moisture inside, plus the smell of roasted corn always reminds me of fairgrounds and carnivals.)  I sliced a cucumber up long ways about 1/4 inch thick, threw on half a red onion, a few cherry tomatoes (from the garden) and some pineapple.  After grilling it all for about 10 minutes, I cut up everything but the corn, mixed it together, added some feta cheese, salt and pepper, and a little bit of olive oil. Not a bad way to use some leftovers.

The tomatoes are still going strong, as well as the zucchini.   The cucumbers though, I feel, are not fairing so well.  I did pull up some potatoes to see how they were doing and from one stalk, there was one medium-sized potato and about 5 fingerling sized ones.  I replanted them so that they would get a little bigger.  

Running Total of  Summer 2012 Produce

cucumbers: 22

Tomatoes: 309.17 oz = 19.32 lbs

Zucchini: 5

Peppers: 3

Get dirty and keep on gardening!