Here are a couple of my tasty zucchini recipes for those of you with extra on your hands…
Sorry I don’t have fancy cookbook photos. I’ll add some once the little zucchinis are available again.
Zucchini sticks
Start by making a breadcrumb mix, the finer the crumbs the better. I like to use crumbs, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and parmesan cheese. Adding crushed up nuts or wheat germ is also good. If you’re not into making your own, I bet Shake ‘n’ Bake would work just fine.
Cut the zucchini into sticks the size of thick french fries. Melt 1-2 tablespoons of butter (depending on how much zucchini you have cut up), pour it over the sticks, and mix well to coat the sticks. Thoroughly cover the sticks with breadcrumbs - I put the crumbs in a bag, add a few sticks at a time, and shake it around. Transfer the coated sticks to a cookie sheet.
Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes, or until the breadcrumbs start to brown.
Zucchini with cherry tomatoes and garlic
Love love love this one.
This pretty much requires little zucchinis.
Cut the zucchinis in half long ways, and dig out the seedy part in the middle, so you have little boats. Mix olive oil and crushed fresh garlic to the side, and then spread this over the scraped out parts of the zucchini. Next, take some cherry tomatoes, halve them, and put them face up in a row in the little boat part of the zucchini. Add a little more olive oil if you like, plus some salt and pepper to taste. Top with shredded mozzarella cheese (I’m a cheese fiend, but I recommend only a little cheese - the rest of the flavors are too good to cover up) Bake for about 10-15 minutes at 400 or until the zucchinis are cooked but firm.
I’ve done some big things to the house, which have sparked some interesting blog posts (including the Saga of Cabinet Guy). However, I had help from professionals with those projects. When I was thinking about what to post for the Look What I Did contest over at Houseblogs, I decided the thing I’d put the most time into was the living room/entry/stairway. So here we go.
There was a lot of yellow paint that extended up the stairs to the landing and around into the living room.
As you can see, there was also some NASTY pink carpet on the stairs and upstairs landing. My first house project ever was to rip out that carpet with my fabulous sister in law Michelle. I should get bonus points for this because I NEARLY DIED. The POs had a cat which rubbed itself all over that carpet, and I am deathly allergic. We also pulled out approximately 5,000 staples that held that carpet to the floor.There was hardwood underneath, but the upstairs landing needed serious refinishing.
I refinished and added quarter round. This was my first time finishing something, and also my first time using a mitre saw. It turned out pretty good.
The most dramatic change was to paint over the yellow with a carefully chosen blue. Sometimes the painting was a bit dangerous…
But it made a huge difference:Before
After
The next step was to decorate. I got the only real piece of art in the house: William Tell’s Dog. I also added a candle holder to the fireplace.
With the help of my Wonderful Brother Tom, we tackled two projects. First, we added a light to the entry way - not replaced, but added. We drilled holes, did some electrical work, caused some big sparks, but it ended up looking great.
And then we mounted the TV on the wall…
And I added back lighting!
Wow. After writing all that, I’m impressed with how much work that was! I’ll end with my favorite view in the house, from the red dining room to the red front door.
I’ve discussed my bug phobia on my blog before, but I have another weird one. I get panicky when I see things grossly out of scale. Really giant things and very very tiny things trigger this - like seeing the big windmills up close. I don’t know where this phobia came from, but I do remember having a dream as a little kid that is the first time I remember experiencing it. The dream was sort of like that Powers of Ten movie. I was in space and then zoomed in really close on these hands trying to push up out of the earth. It was very weird - I had the flu at the time and my mom gave me apple juice when I woke up from it and was all freaked out.
ANYWAY, I don’t experience this phobia too often, but I did when I got home this weekend after 10 days away and looked at my zucchini plant. I had told my nice neighbors that they were welcome to pick anything from the garden, but they didn’t. Here are two of the grossly oversized zucchini and a couple of cucumbers that were there. I let out a scared gasp when I saw the zucchini. For reference, I have included my size 10 shoe.
They were crushing some normal sized zucchini which had become all moldy. There were lots of ants. It wad a mess. I had to dig out my machete to chop off all the zucchinis and trim back the plant a bit.
Edit: I’ve been eating zucchini off this plant for weeks now, and I’ve been picking them when they were only about 6 inches long and an inch or two in diameter. Those were tasty. Tonight, I actually cooked one of these giant zucchinis with a very tasty recipe I had, but they didn’t taste like anything. The middles were spongy, too. I do not recommend monster zucchini.
Last we heard from Cabinet Guy, my doors were guaranteed to arrive on July 7th, but they didn’t show up. This was allegedly because the warehouse had been closed the week before, but he was sure they would appear later that week.(”The week of July 7th,” he insisted, “I meant the week of the 7th”).
I sent him a couple messages this week, inquiring as to whether or not they really came in. Today he finally got back to me and said they should be in next Monday (though he will be out of town - that dude takes a lot of vacations!).
So much for guaranteed delivery the week of the 7th. As for arrival on Monday, I told him that I’d believe it when I see it.
Then, he tells me the discount will be 40%. I’m pushed Cabinet Guy a bit on that to get him to commit to a price because it wasn’t hard to see him him trying to argue that the 40% was off the insanely high initial quote he gave me. That’s was not going to happen. And, indeed, he warbled around on it but I got him to commit to 40% off the number that I wanted.
I proposed a date for installation and am waiting to hear back.
I am such a huge fan of the dog stuff at Orvis. One item I’d really like to get for the dining room is this box for their food. It comes in black, to match the rest of the dining room furniture, and would be a nice addition to their swanky eating situation.
Why is it that dog beds generally come in only plaid and other rustic designs? Some of us dog owners are chic, or at least design inclined. My dogs have beds that they use when the mood suits them. They are memory foam and designed for older arthritic dogs, which pi is. However, they do not match my red-and-blue living room. Here is one:
I didn’t want to replace these or even buy new covers, because I have to buy so much else for the house. However, I did have an old red flannel duvet cover that I wasn’t using. I almost threw it out when I moved. It now has new life! I chopped it up, put my sewing machine back together, and made two covers for the beds. I even reused the buttoning closure for the bottom. These still need to be broken in, and it’s not the most beautiful solution, but it works. The color is better, the covers are washable, and now the beds match the decor.
True, it’s not the ultra fancy Pottery Barn Dog Cabana, but it works!
I do love the way people marvel at my stories of the possessed fan and the sound of footsteps on the stairs of my house. I also find that the creeking and occasional bangs add character to the house, whether they are from a ghost, or just because the place is old. However, they make it difficult to hear if something much more worldly is creeping around my house at night.
This, combined with the fact that I travel a lot (102 days on the road in 2007, though I’m cutting way back this year), makes me nervous. Though I live in a good neighborhood where I don’t worry about leaving the door unlocked when I run to the store, I worry about a lot of things . What happens to the girls if there is a fire when I’m gone? I worry about someone breaking into the basement windows. I don’t have much to steal, but if someone stole the dogs I would be devastated and I would stop feeling safe in the house. If someone broke in and tried to attack me, I’m sure part of me would feel bad about kicking them in the head and breaking their legs (so don’t even think about trying, Theoretical Creepy Blog Stalker Guy - I have a black belt).
Thus, this week I bit the bullet, shelled out a big chunk of cash in what will hopefully be my last big expenditure for a long time, and got the whole house secured. Doors, windows, motion detectors, panic buttons, smoke alarms, two-way voice communication through the keypad, keyfobs, etc. Here, we can see my fancy new panel:
And here is the sign for my new security system with my primary security system standing at the door looking at us
No one voted in the poll for the option that the cabinets would show up and be installed on time on July 7th. You were all right!! The top vote getter was Cabinet Guy is Evil, and he’s living up to that.
I called cabinet guy Monday and left him a few messages before he called me back. He said “I just found out today that the factory was closed last week, so there was no shipment today.” I asked, “Didn’t they mention this to you when they guaranteed you that they would be in on July 7th?” He was unable to directly answer this question, just reverting to “I just found out about it.”
Frankly, I think Cabinet Guy is getting a little too comfortable with this. He didn’t really act like this was such a big deal. While I hate his excuses, he should at least be acting like this is a bad thing, instead of coming off like this is all ok.
I followed your advice and asked for the number of the distributor, but I could tell that he thought this was great because then *I* could bug them about the discount instead of him. That way, if it didn’t work out, he could blame me. Well this was not ok with me, so I called him again today to check on this. And here’s a shock - HE ANSWERED THE PHONE!! I think he thought he could do that since he figured everything was on hold and he I didn’t have anything new to complain about. I asked about the discount and he said basically he won’t know until he gets the invoice. I asked when that would be and he said “with the shipment”.
Wait - I’m not going to know how much this costs UNTIL THEY SHOW UP? They don’t tell you ahead of time how much you’re being charged?! This is doubly unprofessional. (1) *I* am not being told how much it’s going to cost until they show up and (2) I believe him that he really doesn’t know, which means he is running a business where he doesn’t know how much things will cost until they show up. How can you operate like that? I can’t even imagine grocery shopping like that! In fact, the only time I’ve operated that way was once back in 1997 when I ordered lobster at “market price” off the menu, and when the bill came, that did not turn out too well*.
So, it’s looking like no doors until August for me, and I don’t know what I’m going to pay for them. That means it will be at least 3 months from the time everything was supposed to be done.
Stupid Cabinet Guy. Grrr.
*I believe that was a $60 lobster or something. I was shocked as was my poor college student budget. I promise this is not the event that turned me into a vegetarian, though I’ve never had tofu cost that much…
When MOM came to visit me, we got some Ortho Home Defense and sprayed the outside of the house. It worked really well. The ants had really stepped it up that weekend, and within a day every one was gone. That was in May, and until 2 days ago I hadn’t seen another ant in the house. There were tons of dead ones outside though:
I must admit that I was a little worried to see one in the house on Saturday and another on Sunday. This morning, I went to clean the kitchen and saw an ant. Then another one. And then like in a movie my brain zoomed out and saw them all over the floor. They were surrounding the old terro liquid I had down. They were crawling everywhere over the floor. They formed a obvious line along the wall from the kitchen into the dining room where I had seen them massing behind the curtain before. Sure enough, there were a hundred or so back there.
Even though the Home Defense is safe for inside, I was hesitant to do that the first time. No more. I got that stuff right out and did the whole inside perimeter. I didn’t see any coming in through the windows, so I am guessing there must be a source inside the house somewhere. I put a big old dose of the stuff along the wall where I saw them seem to originate.
In the meantime, the girls are hanging out in the yard (looking bored) while I wait for it to dry.
(End Note: Today is July 7th, meaning a cabinet guy update will be coming soon!!!)
