After peering into my refrigerator and seeing piles of spicy garlic asparagus pickles, pickled broccoli and garlic scapes, key lime preserves, ginger radish pickles, mango rum jam, garlic snow pea pickles, and sweet watermelon rind pickles... I knew something had to give. I don't like to do large batches of pickles, mostly because I love to experiment with flavors. The amounts of random veggies I get in my CSA also lend themselves to single batches and help me work through a full CSA share.
Although I had initially thought of processing large batches, but I decided against doing that until I have a tried and true recipe. For example, next year when asparagus is in season, I am going to hunt down a farmer's stand on the Eastern Shore and buy 20 pounds of asparagus (its $2 a pound at the stand, half the price of the Farmers Market and Whole Foods even when it is in season) and do a huge batch of pickled asparagus. Because I learned this year that pickled asparagus is simply amazing. And I only have 2 jars left. Sniffle. And I'm a cheapskate so I refuse to pay full price at the grocery store.
Anyway, all my small batches of refrigerator pickles are starting to pile up, and even though I love pickles nearly to a fault, and even though I have a big refrigerator, this is getting ridiculous (oh, and I have grand plans of pickling beets this week, too, so well, *sigh*).
My freezer, on the other hand, is pretty empty. I don't buy frozen meals, or meat in bulk (although I loved my grass-fed beef share, it was too big and too much and I don't eat it enough... I ended up gifting a lot of it away), or frozen veggies or frozen fruit (that happens in the winter occassionally, although this year I plan to freeze my own). What goes in the freezer are my homemade items such as chicken stock, leftovers, sofrito, the occassional Farmers Market meat purchase that is waiting for just the right moment (and which came to me frozen... like my massive pork ribs).
My CSA share is growing week-by-week, and while the first couple of weeks were manageable, even without much help from Boy, the veggie takeover in my fridge is going a little nuts as my garden starts contributing to the veggie jungle. I woefully looked at big heads of broccoli, 2 big zucchinis, and 2 big yellow zucchinis, along with the massive amount of greens and other veggies. My first thought was to pickle them, but well, yea. My second thought was zucchini bread. Except I am trying to stay away from making too many sweet baked goods (aka the "Extra Pound Lesson Learned From Rhubarb Weeks").
After some research, I settled on a redesigned version of Savory Zucchini Muffins that to rid myself of two of my zucchinis. They aren't pretty, but are a delicious change from the typical zucchini-pretending-to-be-pumpkin-bread type of recipe. These have a nice kick and the savory flavors blend together perfectly. The muffin itself is moist and satisfying.
Saute 3 cloves minced garlic and 1/4 cup chopped oil packed sun-dried tomatoes in about 1 TBSP of the olive oil the sun-dried tomatoes were packed in. Then dump that into a bowl with with 2 medium zucchinis shredded (I just used a cheese grater, but if you have a food processor, that will go much faster), and 1/3 cup chopped roasted red pepper. Then I incorporated 1/2 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup greek yogurt, 2 TBSP sugar, 2 eggs, 1 TBSP olive oil, 1/2 tsp hot sauce (I used some Killin' Me Man Sauce I brought back from Panama) and 1/2 cup milk together, and then dumped into the veggie mix and mixed again. In a separate bowl, I mixed together 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup cornmeal, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper, 1 tsp dried basil, and 1 tsp dried oregano. Integrate the wet stuff with the dry stuff, slop into a greased muffin tin, sprinkle some grated parmesan on top of each muffin and bake at 375 for 35 minutes.
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