On the other end of gardening... question;

[nao57]

So... with us at our household one of the biggest arguments against gardening and food storage in the past has been, "Why should we can all that stuff, if you guys aren't going to eat it?" or, "Why do it if no one eats it?"

This argument has been used against both gardening and canning the food grown in the gardening.

So here's what you can do;

You make tempura vegetables. You can do this with squash, zucchini, pumpkins... those are the hard ones to figure out what to do with. The zucchini cooks fast and you have to be careful of it not being soggy or thin. I thought tempura pumpkin stuff was pretty good. You can do this with carrots also. All of that helps you find ways to USE it.

So I hope you can use what you grow. Especially since its basically an extra educational step.

1) Learn how to grow it.
2) Learn how to store/can it...
3) Learn how to use it and cook it (both for the raw phase and post canning);

Now there were a couple questions I had, to hope that others might help me with this;

What else can I make that's good to cook with especially zucchini, squash, and pumpkins? Ideally you'd need to be able to juggle 2 or 3 good recipes, that are simple back and forth. You don't want complex stuff because the way the economy is going in the future, you might not always have the complex recipe ingredients. And you want to keep it simple to economize, thus simple recipes and simple # of items you rotate on. (And hopefully stuff that tastes good. I have a hard time with just boiled vegetables because they don't taste salty enough...)

I ask this about recipes also because... I can't eat tempura everyday. Sure its good but... yeah doesn't feel like it could be eaten everyday. Also I think some meat to complement the tempura would go better. This time around I was just trying to show and prove to myself that I could use the stuff I grow so it was all vegetable tempura. But I think you need meat and salty stuff to complement the vegetables for your palette needs. Plus tempura can be stressful to make because you have some fire risk with it. Another reason to look at other recipes.

Also a tempura question; when you listen to people teaching tempura cooking they quote you need to heat it to like 320 degrees Fahrenheit. Does this mean heating the pan's inside oil to 320 degrees? Or the actual burner? Why I ask, is tempura is very temperamental. If you don't get the heat right then the vegetables get soggy. But if you get it too hot its actually stressful to cook worrying about the oil combusting. For this reason also I wouldn't reccomend people to let kids cook tempura, or someone not responsible if you have people in your house that are reckless. Several times cooking this stuff on open burner, the little drops of oil outright ignited in flame when they got dripped on the burner... that would be problematic for some households.

(Anyway, it probably would minimize some stress with an air fryer... but still)

So when I was cooking this I used a temperature laser and the actual burner said over 500 degrees, but the oil in the fryer pan and the pan itself only said like late 200s temperatures... this surprised me why there was such a big difference? And this is why I asked about this? Do you target the pan being that hot or just the burner?

 

[Happy hen lover]

What else can I make that's good to cook with especially zucchini, squash, and pumpkins? Ideally you'd need to be able to juggle 2 or 3 good recipes, that are simple back and forth. You don't want complex stuff because the way the economy is going in the future, you might not always have the complex recipe ingredients. And you want to keep it simple to economize, thus simple recipes and simple # of items you rotate on. (And hopefully stuff that tastes good. I have a hard time with just boiled vegetables because they don't taste salty enough...)

I have a favorite recipe for zucchinis
saute onions, zucchini, diced tomatoes or (Rotel if spicy preferred) and some corn kernels at the end. Don't overcook can add shredded cheese to top if desired.
I'm going to make mock apple crisp from zucchini next week.
I have also used zucchini instead of pasta noodles in keto lasagne.
Pumpkin make quick bread with.
I love to bake tho.
I also tried canned dilly green beans this year with garden beans and it was a big hit.

 

[saysfaa]

...

What else can I make that's good to cook with especially zucchini, squash, and pumpkins?

Zucchini: pick zucchinis before the seeds form (about when the blossom falls off), slice in half lengthwise, place in pan with a little butter or avocado oil or chicken broth or water (just a skim - enough so it doesn't stick. Sprinkle with Mrs Dash table blend and black pepper. Cover the pan, or not. Heat until done as much as you like. I like it barely softened; dh likes mush. How hot you cook it doesn't matter much other than how closely you need to watch it.

This method evolved from: buy the smallest zucchinis in the store, peel, slice in rounds as thin as possible, dip in milk or egg, dip in flour, sprinkle with Mrs Dash, black pepper, and salt. Saute in butter until it has that skim of brown crispiness on each side.

I'm not sure how different what we started with is from tempura but this might help your family transition to an alternative. If it helps: we stopped peeling first, then sliced lengthwise instead of in rounds, then sliced planks instead of thin slices, then dropped the egg/milk/flour, then dropped the butter (sometimes), then stopped bothering to slice any of the skin off. Each step was a noticeable change but not enough difference to be worth the work of it. We now like the current version as much as we ever liked the original version.

Like, Happy Hen Lover, we like zucchini as lasagne noodles.

We think it doesn't add much to put frozen zucchini in vegetable soups, some kinds of casseroles, or spaghetti sauce but it is a relatively painless (unnoticeable) way to use it. My attempt at freezing it didn't work very well - it was too mushy for even dh to like it.

Winter squash is excellent as a thickener in stews. It is often quite unidentifiable in stews with any sort of gravy type sauce. Just cube the meat of the squash and add near the beginning.

Winter squash is best mashed with a little butter, salt, and pepper. Next best is mashed with a little butter and some maple syrup. Next best is a little butter and some brown sugar. It doesn't matter how you actually cook the squash before you mash it - steam it on the stove or in a covered casserole dish in the oven, microwave it, boil it, roast it - remove the skin before or after cooking it.

Pie is very good too. Winter squash and pumpkin are interchangable. Lol, nearly all of the "pumpkin" in commercial pumpkin pie is squash.

I don't deep fry but my understanding is the temperature given is for the temperature of the oil in the pot. I'm sure it is not meant to be the temperature of the flame (or heating unit if it is electric) under the pot. The temperature of the pot will always be less than the heating unit because the pot radiates heat into the air faster than the heating unit does, especially if the pot is insulating the heating unit.

 

[Acre4Me]

Zucchini ( and summer squash thats yellow):

Dehydrate it with some seasonings on thin slices.

Squash fritters freeze well.

Cake: my recipe for a 9x13 or double layer cake uses 8 C shredded veg per recipe. It gets tossed with some sugar, then drain it for 30 min so excess liquid leaves the veg. This recipe indicates it can be used with sweet potatoes, or apples, or carrots, or zucchini, and I’ll assume butternut type squash would work well.

But, yes, pick the squash when small with undeveloped seeds.

Tempura: temp of Oil is what you monitor. It is important to get the desired result. Hardest thing about home frying is getting it back up to temp before adding next batch to the oil.

 

[Happy hen lover]

Wow 8 c per cake! I bet it's moist . I would to try that recipe please. I like the dehydrated idea too. Good idea for keto chips.

Zucchini ( and summer squash thats yellow):

Dehydrate it with some seasonings on thin slices.

Squash fritters freeze well.

Cake: my recipe for a 9x13 or double layer cake uses 8 C shredded veg per recipe. It gets tossed with some sugar, then drain it for 30 min so excess liquid .

 

[Acre4Me]

Wow 8 c per cake! I bet it's moist . I would to try that recipe please. I like the dehydrated idea too. Good idea for keto chips.

You can pack in the veg bc it is sugared, which draws out the liquid, then drained. So, 8-9 C zucchini then 1 cup sugar, mix it up, then drain in a colander for at least 30 min. It is a cake recipe, so it bakes up best in a cake pan, rather than a loaf pan.

 

[Acre4Me]

Wow 8 c per cake! I bet it's moist . I would to try that recipe please. I like the dehydrated idea too. Good idea for keto chips.

This recipe is “Master Recipe for Carrot Cake”. Cook’s Illustrated Jan/Feb 1998. I tried to find it online, but pay subscription via America’s Test kitchen site.

Here’s my previous post on the cake. I couldn’t link the recipe bc of subscription.

 

[Sally PB]

This question

So... with us at our household one of the biggest arguments against gardening and food storage in the past has been, "Why should we can all that stuff, if you guys aren't going to eat it?" or, "Why do it if no one eats it?"

needs to be asked at the beginning of the season. Grow what you like to eat.

I grow a LOT of tomatoes. I can a LOT of tomatoes. Ditto with garlic, potatoes, onions, but only the tomatoes need to be canned.

There are a lot of yummy meals you can make with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and one or two more ingredients. Eggs, meat of some kind, pasta, herbs, spices, beans. I can buy and store the pasta (I have years old pasta and dried beans in boxes on the shelf, and won't hesitate to use them), we have the eggs via our chickens, and I grow some herbs.

Start at the meal concept: what do you like to eat? Then move on to: What ingredients can we grow/preserve?

I am wondering if I can make tempura with a GF flour... Thanks for the idea!

 

[nao57]

T

This question

needs to be asked at the beginning of the season. Grow what you like to eat.

I grow a LOT of tomatoes. I can a LOT of tomatoes. Ditto with garlic, potatoes, onions, but only the tomatoes need to be canned.

There are a lot of yummy meals you can make with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and one or two more ingredients. Eggs, meat of some kind, pasta, herbs, spices, beans. I can buy and store the pasta (I have years old pasta and dried beans in boxes on the shelf, and won't hesitate to use them), we have the eggs via our chickens, and I grow some herbs.

Start at the meal concept: what do you like to eat? Then move on to: What ingredients can we grow/preserve?

I am wondering if I can make tempura with a GF flour... Thanks for the idea!

Thanks for the reply.

As far as I can tell you can use all kinds of flour. I've tested coconut flour already, mixed with normal flour. And also have used masa (corn) flour. It seems to work with most anything. But frying it is way better than baking it or boiling.