Zucchini Attack!

So, I went out to the garden to pick one zucchini I knew was going to be ready today and look what I found!

There are also, of course, more forming. If you have never planted zucchini before, believe every story you have ever heard about them. You know the ones where people are giving their neighbors so much zucchini that the neighbors stop answering the door? Things like that...

Last year, our plants were attacked by squash borers towards the beginning of the season, but it is my hope that we will soon be dragging truckloads of zucchini to the food pantry.

Today is a good start! One of these small babies will be sampled by husband and I tonight and the rest will go to the pantry later this week along with cucumbers and hopefully greens, beets, and lettuce as well.

What's Growing Today?

There are many fruits forming in the garden!

'Cocozelle' zucchini

Big tomatoes of mysterious variety

'Gold of Bacau' pole beans

Cucumber

The last of the 'Sugar Snap' peas

Fully grown sweet banana peppers

Green cherry tomatoes are everywhere!

Tomatillos

Pesto for all (or most)!

The First Church garden is really great at growing basil. The plants may fear being squashed by jungles of tomatoes, but it still does well (and we've planted a lot of it!) Last summer I began my search for a great pesto recipe that would suit our nut-free and vegan bent. I tried replacing the cheese and nuts with various things with okay results, but it was obvious that something wasn't quite right.

Now I think I've found the secret. If you add a little lemon juice, you will no longer be disappointed when the pesto doesn't taste like cheese and nuts. I'm hoping many of you were able to sample some of this recipe last week at coffee hour. It's adapted from this strange blog and goes like this:

Lemony Basil Pesto

2 c basil leaves
2-6 cloves of garlic (I actually used about 10 garlic scapes this time instead.)
2 T nutritional yeast (Sold in the bulk section of Harvest)
2 T sunflower seeds (hulled and preferably raw)
2 T lemon juice
2-6 T extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
maybe some pepper too

Roughly chop basil leaves, garlic, nutritional yeast, and sunflower seeds in the food processor. Add lemon juice and 2 T of olive oil and process until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste and thin with more olive oil if you'd like to put it on pasta or prefer a thinner pesto.

Feeding the Body

Our harvests are getting bigger and bigger! This week I pulled our first beets out of the ground. They are such big, beautiful specimens. I also harvested lots of kale, collards, chard, lettuce, and parsley and brought them over to the East End House in East Cambridge (Project SOUP was mysteriously closed). The food pantry there was about to give away their weekly delivery of rescued food from Food for Free and the staff were overjoyed to be have such fresh, local veggies to distribute as well.

Here's some more pictures of this week's veggies:

'Early Wonder Tall Top' and 'Touchstone Gold' beets

Swiss chard and collards

Kale!