Vassarette?

Tonight we had such a beautiful dinner! The summer season is really starting to roll (finally!) and even though my vegetable garden is woefully stunted from this crazy cold June, my mom lives only minutes away...but deep in a valley...and her warm days are routinely 20 degrees hotter than mine (cold days are much colder, too!). So, her veggies went in at the end of April (instead of the beginning of June *cough*) and they've benefited from some hot-hot-hot days!

(Don't worry about me though! I may be wrong, and you may find me in coming months bemoaning my horrible veggie production, but if past performance is any indicator I've got no reason to believe that my wee garden won't catch up in the next 5 or 6 weeks, and then produce well into fall...you'll find me canning tomatoes on Halloween, I'm hopeful!)

Speaking of which...I regrettably used the last jar of tomato sauce from last summer! Less unfortunately, it made a very tasty topping to the whole wheat penne pasta we had for dinner.

Now...grow please!




Speaking of Mom's garden, I got a big bag o' green and some more fresh eggs last night! My mom is a great harvester. A bag of greens from her is like looking for Easter Eggs...you just never know what little treasures you'll find. Here, I was excited to get the first of the green beans, more zucchini, and a very large, very disfigured cucumber (come on, tomatoes, once again I implore you to grow, as my very favorite summer salad is cucumber, tomato, and onion!). Oh, and look! A tiny green pepper! He's adorable! And what's this? Who are you, my friend?

Let's go in for closer inspection...an unexpected guest...?









Oh, of course! It's a tag. To a bra. What the what? That woman is crazy. How the tag to her bra ended up in a bag of vegetables...the mind boggles. Frankly, I'm eating them regardless, so I'm happy not to speculate.






I went ahead and started with the zucchini. I sliced it, drizzled olive oil over the top, and sprinkled it with paprika and tiny bit of black pepper. I roasted them in the oven at 415 degrees F. I had sliced them fairly thin, so I only let them cook for about 6 minutes. Then I sprinkled a bit of grated parmesan cheese for another minute or so.

(I added the parmesan because of the Italian tip on the dinner, but without the cheese, it's by far my favorite, most simple way of cooking asparagus, eggplant, and any kind of squash you're hankering for.)


It was yummy!

But my mom is crazy.