Romeo and Juliet

Last night the family went to see the Ohio Shakespeare Festival's Romeo and Juliet. I really enjoy their traditional Shakespeare, with an outdoor stage under the stars on the lush grounds of Stan Hywet Hall.Photographs are prohibited during the play, but I did get a snapshot of the traveling minstrels coming towards the stage. About a half hour before the show, the cast, parades to the stage playing instruments and singing.
They treated us to three songs and some banter which included an actor uttering the name of the Scottish play (Gasp!!!) which then necessitated a quick parody of that same Scottish play to be performed. My favorite part of the parody was the commercial for "Damn Spot Remover." Well done, folks!

Some friends joined us, making the evening even more fun.The Artist and Engineer on the Japanese bridge in the gardens.

Sad

I was sad for the Engineer when the Cleveland Indians traded his favorite player, Mark DeRosa, in June. Today I'm sad for both of us as Cliff Lee was traded.

I don't even know what we got for him, as I didn't have the heart to listen. Lee is the only thing Tribe fans had pulling them into the stadium this year. His story as a come back kid over the last couple of seasons made him the heart of the team.

You take hard knocks when you're in the cellar.

Stuffed Zucchini

This is my favorite zucchini meal. Mom used to make it, but not very often as my brother was not a fan. I do not make it often, because it is best made with some of the mid-size home grown zucchinis, not the little skinny ones stacked in mounds in the produce markets.

I don't know the weight of these zucchini, but here is how they look on a 10-inch dinner plate. Once prepared, these will serve four for lunch. For dinner I'd probably make a side dish to accompany.
Preheat oven to 350 ºF. Wash the zucchini and cut off the ends. Cook whole in boiling salted water about 5 minutes.
Remove zucchini from water and cool till you can handle it. Slice in half lengthwise. With a spoon (I use a grapefruit spoon so the serrations help me) remove the meat from the shells. I leave about a quarter inch of flesh on the skins to make the shell.
The meat and seeds that have been removed are then chopped, grated, pureed, or otherwise processed into tiny pieces. To the zucchini meat add 3 beaten eggs, fresh herbs such as parsley, rosemary, 2 cups breadcrumbs, 1/3 cup minced onion, a little garlic, and one cup of grated cheese. For the cheese, cheddar and Swiss work, but Parmesan is best in my opinion. Today I used cheddar. This mixture is then piled into the zucchini shells. The look like little canoes heaped with treasure to me. Lightly grease a baking pan and arrange the shells inside. Bake, uncovered for about 30 minutes, until the tops are browned.The kids and I enjoy these when Rick is not home. The Engineer and the Artist give this meal a thumbs up and an "It's good."

The Wait Is Over!

At long last, my sweet tooth is assuaged. Last time the local specialty candy shop had Black Jack and Clove chewing gum in stock I missed it. No problem, except they can only order it every three years.

There is nothing like these big bold flavors for gum chewers.

Grilled Zucchini

Today I tried a recipe I found at Kalyn's Kitchen. When I say I tired a recipe, be advised -- I did not print it out and follow it. I read it, and a couple of days later I worked with what I remembered.

I slices into ovals first. Then put them in a ziplock with some Italian dressing, crushed rosemary, and some fresh garlic put through the press. The zucchini and the dressing had been kept in the fridge, so I let them marinate on the counter top for about three hours, giving the vegetable a chance to come to room temperature.
Once the grilling started, these smelled so incredible -- I couldn't wait to taste them.

As Presbytera mentioned yesterday, cutting the slices too thick would be a problem. I ran into that with a couple of my slices.

I think I had a slight disadvantage by using an indoor electric grill too. They would have cooked faster on the gas grill. In general things that are great on the outdoor grill are pretty good on the indoor grill. The indoor grill gives me better control than the broiler and it doesn't heat up the house the way the broiler does.
These grilled zucchini slices were served to my family and a visitor. My son gave them two thumbs up. My daughter thinks it is nice, and said it reminds her of something she drank once (I've no idea what that means!). Our guest declined to try it. Rick didn't get home to taste it until after I posted!

The recipe gives instructions about how to get the grill lines just right. I was not too interested in perfect grill lines. But if you'd like to see showcase photos of the finished product there are some nice ones at the recipe link.

Easy Zucchini Recipe

An excellent suggestion from Barb the Evil Genius, Why don't I share some recipes for those who are dubious about zucchini?

A good suggestion, because I have some people close to me who would rather pass the vegetable by. One of them still does not eat the stuff, unless it comes as part of his entree and he cannot make a vegetable exchange. Another resents that he was tricked into eating it years ago.

I have not done a lot of research on the subject, but I know some folks get around the texture of cooked zucchini, which seems to be a good part of the food's unpopularity, by breading and deep frying the slices. I've eaten it that way, but never prepared it that way.

The most frequent way I prepare it at home is sauteed with garlic and olive oil, and sprinkled liberally with Parmesan cheese once it is in the serving dish.

First I slice the zucchini into rounds about a quarter inch thick, or even slightly thicker. Heat some olive oil in a saute pan. Be sure to use a large enough pan that most of the slices can lie on the bottom. I don't use a lot of oil, maybe even less than a tablespoon. I just film the bottom of the pan.

With a spatula, I keep turning the rounds in the pan. I want them to be lightly seared on at least one side, browning, not blackening.

Near the end of the saute time, I'll put some paper thin slices of garlic (a couple of cloves) in on top of the zucchini, or a single clove crushed through the press. I also add some salt and fresh pepper. I'll get that thoroughly mixed in and then transfer the rounds to a serving dish, one spatula full at a time. I like Parmesan cheese, so I layer the slices of zucchini in their serving dish with the cheese.

My kids enjoy this recipe with me. Sometimes we use it with zucchini alone, and sometimes with yellow summer squash.

I also love zucchini bread, stuffed zucchini and I plan to try grilling zucchini for the first time this week. Zucchini bread recipes abound on line and I've never had a bad one. It makes an attractive looking cakey bread. Tomorrow I'll post about the stuffed zucchini my mom used to make.

Zucchini Success

Five, or maybe more, years ago I tried to grow zucchini. I had a beautiful, robust looking plant that bloomed well and developed some fruit. However, the little zucchinis all suffered blossom end rot, beginning when they were about four inches long. I never got to harvest even one.

That was depressing. I gave up on zucchinis for a while. Then the deer discovered my kitchen garden and I gave up on almost everything else for a few years. Although I was not planting anything but lettuces, I still added calcium, compost and other nutrients to the soil in hopes of having a nice garden again some day in the future.

Today is the day I'm cooking the first garden zucchini. As I write this it is sauteing in olive oil and garlic, soon to be joined by a light blanket of Parmesan cheese.

Happily, there are more healthy fruits on there and the plant continues copiously blooming. I dream of stuffed zucchini and zucchini bread!

Salad Days Again

We planted more than just lettuce in the garden this year, but we got off to a late start. So far we have beans, peas and zucchini that looks like they will be good producers.The kohlrabi looks good but the leaves are being eaten by caterpillars and the Artist (she planted the kohlrabi in her rows) is not too interested in picking worms. She planted some banana peppers too, and they took more than a month to sprout, so they are now making an appearance mixed among some kohlrabi plants in one of her rows.

The Engineer's spinach never came up at all, and the beets he planted have given poor showing, with only four plants sprouting and they are still too small to tell whether they will survive or not.

The best producer, though is the lettuce. The Engineer planted one row, and I planted three rows. Next year, I think I can have a total of three rows, rather than four, or delay the planting of a couple of rows until late July so we can enjoy it longer into the autumn. Here one morning's harvest filled the smaller basin in my sink. After washing it would fill three gallon-size ziplock bags. I'm glad we all enjoy it, and our nearby relatives have shared in the salad too.

Borders Book Update

The Artist received her pre-order of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Wednesday. She was feeling quite poorly on Wednesday, but the book still brought a smile.

She lamented that she waited so very long for it, and when it finally came she was too sick to enjoy it, but I saw that she read a good hundred fifty pages on Wednesday anyway.

Imagine my surprise when the postman brought a package from Borders on Thursday. "This must be the refund/gift card that they told me was coming when they accidentally canceled the Artist's order and were unable to reinstate the order without me paying for the book again,"I thought.

Nope. It was a book. Specifically, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now we had two. A call to Borders customer service informed me that all the accidentally canceled orders were reinstated.

This, remember, is what I originally requested of Borders. But I was told that was not possible without placing a new order and paying for the book again. The impossible happened, it seems.

Now I wanted to be sure I could get this book back to the store and not pay shipping for their error, and make sure the gift card reimbursement they told me was impossible to stop from coming, was indeed coming. That is probably as confusing for you to read as it was for me to type.

I learned that nobody knows whether my reimbursement gift card was actually sent out or not (not sure I believe that). For my trouble, the customer service rep would reimburse my credit card for the price of the book and I could keep the duplicate book. What a novel idea! Pity they could not do that last week.

As for the reimbursement gift card, still, no one knows if it is on its way to me or if it is only an incommunicado electrical impulse in a microchip in a Borders server room somewhere. If it comes, Stephanie the Customer Service Rep said I can keep it.

Thwump!

This makes for a loud and surprising sound when I'm working on the flower bed behind the garage and I don't know what the kids are doing! They enjoyed their simultaneous solo games of pitch and catch.

July 3rd Tea Party

We began our celebration of Independence Day a little early with a tea party. We went to the Cleveland Tea Party at Willard Park in downtown Cleveland. That's the park, ironically, that has the somewhat ridiculous sculpture of a giant "Free" stamp.
We heard several speakers on the stage and lots of vocal tax protesters in the crowd. Ben Franklin spoke first! Here he is making his way to the stage.That was kind of fun, especially for the kids because we happen to be listening to his autobiography as a book on tape at home this week.

One media outlet announced there were about 2500 people there. I think that was about right. It was definitely smaller than the April 15th Cleveland Tea Party. Today, there are several area suburbs that have local tea parties going. I have a feeling they will be better attended, as they are on the fourth of July.

Tom Ganley, candidate for senate, spoke to the group too. I very much enjoyed hearing him! It is a shame he is running as a Republican. The Ohio Republican party will not support him because he did not lick their boots. The crowd, full of all political parties who are angry at the taxation and socialism coming from Washington DC were eager to hear him and received his message very well.

As always, there were many poignant signs from a variety of protesters. Here are just a few. Both parties are being broomed in this one.

Lilies

The tiger lilies showed their full colors last week, a full three weeks behind their normal appearance.

This morning the first of the Easter lilies have opened their buds to greet a dismal morning.
This picture was taken on a warm T-ball day, but today the Engineer's T-ball team will be shivering in the outfield and on the bench.
They may be using one of their rain dates, or everyone will be quite damp when today's session is over. And the moms and siblings will be waiting in their cars or huddled in sweaters and blankets. Does anyone in northeast Ohio remember July temps in the low 60ºs before?

Breads

I've had a sourdough starter going for about a year now, but the frequency with which I use it has dropped off.

Recently I got a book from the library (Thanks for recommending it, Barb!) called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The initial time is more like 15 minutes, but that happens once a week -- or every other week if you have a larger dough container than I have.

The daily prep on baking day is just five minutes, and I'm busy doing other things during rise time and bake time.
To eliminate one of these containers in my fridge, I plan to slowly incorporate the sourdough starter into future batches of the yeast dough until it is all gone. Perhaps a table spoon at a time.

Old techniques (to bakers) that are new to me (in practice) helped make this the best loaf of bread I've made in a long while. Baking on a stone, and using steam in the oven help give the perfect texture to the crust and protect the soft inside.

The bread machine I received for Christmas will not be unemployed, however. That will allow me to have bread baking while I'm out and about!