Eggs and veggies

Today was another egg-less day but we did have a lot of vegetables to pick from the garden, I filled up my bucket to the top!

Here are all the veggies spread out, Swiss Chard, Yellow Beans, Zucchini, Squash, Egg Plant, Grape Tomatoes, Cucumber and Strawberries (oops, we ate those before I took this pic)

We added some of those cucumbers and tomatoes to our mezza meal. It was a nice middle-eastern brunch with hot tea. We had some fresh mint and oregano from the garden with the meal as well.

Garden Stuff

We enjoyed our first garden cucumber of 2013, it was delicious. I think garden cucumbers taste so much better then store bought! We had 3 squash and 2 cucumbers in the garden from yesterday afternoon to today. I have a drawer full of squash and zucchini now in the frig so I have to get creative with my recipes now to include more squash and zucchini, if all else fails just cooking them in olive oil in a frying pan with a little salt and pepper works out well.

I made a dish yesterday with squash, zucchini, brown rice, onions and chicken broth. I chopped up the onions, squash and zucchini into cubes and put them in the bottom of a large pot. I added the brown rice and then the chicken broth instead of the water. I sprinkled a lot of allspice and garlic on top and a little salt and some cinnamon. I boiled it and then covered it and cooked it until the rice was done. It was really good. I served it with a salad that was dressed with a little olive oil, lemon and salt. It was a good meatless meal.

Next time I need to remember to leave out about a half a cup of the broth or water since the rice also soaks up the liquid from the vegetables, so it took a lot longer to cook then I thought. (Although, not truly vegetarian because of the chicken broth.) After it was done, I took the pot and flipped it onto a big serving pan. It was kind of another version of a Arabic dish called "upside down", which is made similar but uses beef, eggplant, onions and rice.

I have lots and lots of green tomatoes in the garden now. I am just waiting for them to ripen up. We'll have grape, cherry and a variety of large ones ripening soon.

I love gardening, it is hard work but so worth the pay off of fresh fruits and veggies! Plus, I really enjoy getting my hands dirty and being a little self sufficient. I know exactly what went into the growing process of my produce too and I know that it is safe for my family to eat.

First Garden Harvest! SQUASH!

Here is a picture of the very first veggies from our garden this year picked this morning. We will probably have them with some salad and salmon. Should be good!!! Of course, I'll have to saute some onions with them too!

One of the squash looks a little bumpy, but I am sure it will taste good!

I found some grass fed ground beef at Costco and we had burgers last night with sauteed onions and salad. The salad was loaded with 3 colors of peppers, tomatoes and lettuce. I sprinkled a little lemon and olive oil on top with a little salt and garlic powder. Also, mint added to the salad adds a unique flavor too. I use dried mint or freshly chopped mint from my garden.

and just because I have this picture too, here is a picture of one of our Arabic breakfasts. It consists of foul (which is a bean dip) and labne (yogurt cheese) and fruits and pita bread. We also had hot tea with metamea  (which is sage) in it. I grow sage in my garden too. It was delicious. The labne is decorated with mint, tomatoes and olives.

I love middle-eastern food, it is delicious and healthy!

Since I mentioned the salmon and eating the yellow squash, I had to put a picture of the meal we had tonight. We found fresh raspberries and cherries at Costco so we had those with dinner. I made a pan seared salmon and we had sauteed veggies with the squash added in. It was really yummy. We are also trying to lose some weight and bring down our cholesterol so we are trying hard to cut out a lot of carbohydrates and stay as close to natural as we can. It is so not easy to stick to this plan, but it does get easier each day. 

Hopefully I'll be adding those free range organic eggs to our diets soon too.