What to do with garden veggies?!
Find a Conversation
What to do with garden veggies?!
| Mon, 07-12-2004 - 2:46pm |
Does anyone else have a garden? I am growing my first veggie garden this year and I am starting to harvest summer veggies. I am having a hard time coming up with new ideas for an over supply of things like the ubiquitous zucchinni, cucumber, tomatoes etc. I have been giving them away to friends and neighbors too!
What are you growing?
Do you have favorite recipies or new ways to make good use of garden veggies?
I am growing:
Zucchinni
Egg Plant
Cucumbers
Brocoli
Basil
Tomatoes
Carrots
Red and Yellow bell peppers
Jalapenos and other peppers/chilis
Artichoke
Green Beans
Pumpkin

Basil is great on tomato salad: slice up your tomatoes, dribble balsamic vinegar and olive oil over, some garlic if you want, and snip some basil on top. Let sit at room temperature at least an hour before eating. You can add some lf mozzarella slices if you prefer a Capresi salad.
Or else make pesto -- so many uses for it. I love it on top of tomatoes, broiled as in the SBD original book. It's also good on pizza, in tomato sauce, in soup, over pasta (for a bit of a splurge -- ww pasta if you're in P2). I wonder if you could freeze pesto?
Tomatoes obviously you can add to a jar of store-bought low sugar tomato sauce to liven it up, or use in your homemade-from scratch sauce. I love fresh tomatoes on pizza (I use ww tortillas as my base).
Tomatoes are lovely on grilled cheese sandwiches -- use SBD legal bread and LF cheese (this is a P2,3 treat).
Stuffed tomatoes are wonderful! Get creative, with ground turkey substituting for the traditional ground pork and maybe some ww crumbs. You could even put some basil in them.
You can also freeze tomatoes -- I remember freezing individual slices when I was growing up, on baking sheets, then transferring them to plastic bags once they were frozen. That way you can enjoy them in the winter!
Cucumbers are wonderful marinated in some olive or canola oil, vinegar, add a couple packets of sweetener & some sliced vidalia onions. (If the mix gets a bit cloudy in your fridge, just let it warm up a bit). It keeps nicely for several days and is a welcome alternative once in a while to tossed salad.
Make gazpacho! The SBD book has a wonderful recipe, it's perfect for a hot summer day, and it will use cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, green beans. . . I've even thrown leftover gazpacho into the Crockpot Pulled Pork recipe, and it's good.
Zucchini hash browns are great -- do a search for the recipe on these boards (find message about, above). I love zucchini & onions cut into julienne strips and sauteed.
Green beans are really nice over salad -- you can make a salad nicoise with lettuce, tuna fish, some of your peppers & pour some vinaigrette over the beans (cool them under cold water first).
You can also pickle green beans and also peppers -- I don't have a recipe, but maybe you can find one. Another good thing for the winter.
I have a lot of ideas for eggplant -- eggplant lasagna where you use lengthwise strips of eggplant instead of pasta -- cover with sauce you make from your tomatoes & basil (& peppers if you want). For the cheese layer I use LF ricotta + eggbeaters, part skim mozzarella & some parmesan. I also use ground turkey in the tomato sauce but that's optional. When you layer, it works well to begin with sauce, then lay some eggplant, then put the ricotta, then mozzarella -- repeat, and end with cheese.
Eggplant rolantini is nice -- recipe from these boards.
Eggplant & red pepper roasted a la SBD book is one of my favorites.
I've yet to figure out an SBD friendly recipe for moussaka, but I love moussaka!
Grill your veggies -- bring a platter of them to your next potluck dinner for an instant hit. I like to marinate in balsamic vinegar & olive oil. Just cut them thick enough so they don't fall thru, and make sure you keep them on long enough to get pronounced grid marks. I especially like eggplant, and zucchini is nice also.
There's always zucchini bread -- but you'd have to search somewhere for an adaptable recipe, using ww flour and splenda or equal.
I hope I've triggered some ideas for you. As I said, it's a nice problem to have!
Rebecca
And you can make ratatouille -- it will use just about everything you grow. If you can figure out how to can it, that would be good all winter!
I'm sure I'll think of more ideas!
Oh, your garden sounds wonderful.