Food Friday: The many shades of squash

Summer is not my favorite season. It’s hot and sticky, and I prefer the fall because of the cooler temperatures and watching the leaves change color.

But one thing summer has going for it is the plethora of fresh produce that’s available.

I usually go to a farmers’ market once a week during the summer to stock up on fresh cucumbers, melons, squash and tomatoes.

Last weekend, I stumbled across an orange variety of squash.

I was excited to try this new variety, along with my favorites—yellow squash and zucchini.

During the summer, we use our grill to cook most of our meals, and lately we’ve really enjoyed grilling squash. Here’s a quick and easy recipe.

Ingredients:

Yellow summer squash or zucchini, any variety

olive oil for drizzling

salt

pepper

Directions:

Slice the squash; I prefer to slice them thin, but if you slice them thicker, they won’t burn as easily.

Put slices in a bowl, drizzle with enough olive oil to coat them, and stir.

Add salt and pepper to your liking; I prefer more pepper and less salt.

Stir to incorporate, and then place the squash on aluminum foil.

Wrap the squash in the foil and put on the grill (If you have a grill basket for cooking vegetables, feel free to use that instead and skip these steps). Flip the foil packet over every few minutes until your squash is at the desired crispness.

My husband is our primary griller, and he said once he hears the zucchini start to sizzle, he knows it is ready. The orange squash tasted very similar to zucchini.

Happy grilling!

Trying to find my green thumb: Part 2

Here’s an update of my raised bed garden project in photos.

Week of July 1:

The plants haven’t grown too much since my June 26 post at this point.

 The cucumber plants are starting to go a little wild.

 Week of July 8:

Look how much the cucumber plants have grown now!

All the plants appear to have grown a lot this week. I draped the cucumber plants over the sides of the box so they will stop attaching to the nearby pepper and tomato plants.

The tomato plants (top) are starting to develop buds, and so are
the cucumber (bottom) and pepper plants (not pictured.)

  

Week of July 15 (this week):

The plants are continuing to grow!

Look at that pepper!

So as you can see, my garden is growing. There’s nothing too exciting going on, except for the pepper growth and cucumber plants’ tremendous growth. I should have remembered how much cucumber plants grow, based on my experiences last year.

See how big the cucumber plant grew in the water jug? And that photo was taken early in the growing season.

Now I’m wondering if I should transplant the cucumber plants or if they’ll be OK in the raised bed, but draped over the sides. What do you think?

Also, it seems like the tomato plants grew taller last year. Maybe the heat we’ve experienced this year is stunting their growth? Any thoughts?

If you know the answers to my questions, please respond in the comments section.

How is your garden growing? Feel free to share photos of your gardening adventures on Virginia Farm Bureau Federation’s Facebook page.

Happy gardening! See you in a few weeks with hopefully a more exciting update, and some more fruit on the vine!

Food Friday: Beans, beans, they’re good for … cookouts

(Photo by Kathy Dixon)

We’ve heard it before: “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart.”

But are they really?

It turns out that beans are good for your heart!

And July is National Baked Bean Month, so why not celebrate by making a healthy helping for your next cookout?

According to the American Heart Association, eating beans may reduce blood cholesterol, a leading cause of heart disease. Beans also are a good source of protein, have no cholesterol, little fat and are high in minerals and fiber.

The AHA recommends buying no-salt-added beans or at least draining canned beans in a colander and rinsing them with water to remove some of the salt.

When I make baked beans, I use a wide variety of legumes, including black, cannellini, garbanzo, kidney, lima and navy beans. I think the flavor is better with a mixture. I also add onion and garlic, finely diced green and red peppers, tomato sauce and tomato paste, brown sugar, molasses, mustard, cider vinegar and a little bit of crushed red pepper flakes and cumin. And as long as none of my guests are vegetarians, I add real bacon bits. Yum.

Since I don’t have a recipe for my beans, I searched for “healthy” versions of baked beans and I found this one from the Mayo Clinic:

Ingredients

2 cups dried small, white beans (navy beans), picked over and rinsed, soaked overnight and drained

4 cups water

2 bay leaves

¾ teaspoon salt

1 yellow onion, chopped

½ cup light molasses

1½ tablespoons dry mustard

3 strips thick-cut bacon, cut into ½" pieces

Directions

In a large, ovenproof pot with a tight-fitting lid, combine the beans, water, bay leaves and ½ teaspoon of the salt over high heat. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover partially and simmer until the beans have softened but are still firm, 65 to 75 minutes. Remove from the heat and discard the bay leaves. Don't drain the beans.

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Stir the onion, molasses, mustard, bacon and the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt into the beans. Cover and bake until the beans are tender and coated with a light syrup, 4½ to 5 hours. Check periodically to make sure the beans don't dry out, stirring and adding hot water as needed.

Farm Bureau says ‘no’ to false representation

(Photo courtesy of Virginia Farm Bureau)

It’s not every day that organizations stand up for their core beliefs. A lot of times, decisions are driven by margins and profits, not principles.

But the American Farm Bureau Federation, of which Virginia Farm Bureau is a state affiliate, recently made a decision to discontinue its Budget car and truck rental discount program. You see, Budget had hired actress Wendy Malick as a celebrity spokesperson. Ms. Malick is also a spokesperson for the Humane Society of the United States.

HSUS is an organization that, on the surface, seems interested in helping dogs and cats, but really works to eliminate animal agriculture, hunting, fishing, circuses, zoos and many other animal-related activities. Therefore, Farm Bureau is at odds with HSUS because of their differing missions.

When Budget began using Ms. Malick as a spokesperson, it put Farm Bureau in the difficult position of encouraging its members to engage in commerce with a company that also employs the spokesperson of Farm Bureau’s opponent on very sensitive animal agriculture issues.

So AFBF announced that it cannot support a company whose spokesperson stands behind an organization that wants to put farmers out of business.

I applaud AFBF for its decision. And I’m proud to be part of an organization that stands by its principles.

Food Friday: For when the cucumbers won’t quit

(Photos by Pam Wiley, Virginia Farm Bureau)

We’ve hit that point in the year where my husband and I are trying to eat at least one cucumber a day, just to keep up with the garden. But even with that quota, and taking them to my father and offering them to friends (Why do I know so many people who don’t eat cucumbers?), we’re up to our necks in cukes.

This is a recipe we’ve used exclusively in the summer for as long as we’ve had a garden. I honestly don’t recall where we found it, but we’ve changed the Asian-inspired original so much since then that it probably doesn’t matter. We’ve added chicken, we’ve added heat, we’ve tried all different kinds of pasta—and you’re welcome to make your own alterations.

Cucumbers & Pasta

Ingredients

Pasta:

8 ounces uncooked angel hair pasta OR herbed fettuccine OR sesame noodles

Sauce:

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

⅓ cup smooth peanut butter

¼ cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons lime juice

1 tablespoon molasses

dash of hot sauce (such as Sriracha) OR a dab of Szechuan chili paste

Chicken:

1 pound boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1” pieces

peanut oil for frying

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Toppings:

3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped

½ cup sliced green onions

¼ cup chopped peanuts

2 tablespoons ribbon-cut regular, purple or Thai basil

Directions

Process all sauce ingredients in a blender or food processor until smooth (Those mini-choppers are good for this). Set aside.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and return to pan.

In a wok or nonstick skillet with hot peanut oil, sauté garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes briefly, then add chicken and stir-fry. Add sauce to cooked chicken, and then stir in cooked pasta.

Arrange chicken/pasta mixture on a large serving platter, and top with chopped cucumbers, green onions, chopped peanuts and basil.

Serves 4.

They’re farming and we (all) know it

This video was kind of hard to miss when it started getting attention last week. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t share it, just the same.

Musician Greg Peterson and his brothers Nathan and Kendal parodied LMFAO’s hit “I’m Sexy And I Know It” as “I’m Farming and I Grow It,” taping a video in the family’s Saline County, Kan., farm fields (and kitchen, and local grocery store). They look like they had a blast putting it together, and people in agricultural circles nationwide seemed to get just as big a kick out of watching it.

As of this morning, the video had more than 2.8 million views on YouTube, and the Peterson brothers' new Facebook page had about 8,400 likes. They traveled to New York this past weekend to appear on “Fox and Friends.”

The photos from that trip that they posted on Facebook prompted numerous comments, among them:

• “Y’all clean up real nice”;
• “Which one is single?”; and
• “My 5-year-old had to watch ‘I’m Farming and I Grow It’ several times before he would go to bed last night. He also sings it while taking care of his calf and pig. My 10- and 8-year-old daughers also have been singing it while they wash their heifers in preparation for the county fair.”