Squash Madness Season

It's that time of year, those few weeks where we desperately try to fit summer squash and zucchini into every meal. Where we beg random neighbors passing by to "Please take some home!" It's glorious, and by the end of July I will be thoroughly sick of squash.

This is squash harvest #2. On Friday we picked 6 or 8 squash. I picked 14 of them today, including that behemoth zucchini on the left there. There were at least 3 more in the garden that were ready to pick, but were small enough to leave on the vine for one more day.

Some of these will be going into work with the husband, in the hopes of pawning them off on his co-workers. Some of them will be dinner tonight, as Zucchini and Corn Tacos. (Which will go really well with icy cold Basil Gimlets.) As for the rest, I'm not sure yet. Any ideas?

Dinner: A Preview

Pulled from the garden two minutes ago, right before it started to rain. Aaaaahhhhhhhh.

The Glories of Autumn - a Tale of an Underrated Nut

I was working odd days at the day job this week, so my apologies for not posting the usual Hump Day Happiness post yesterday. Today I hope to partially make up for it with my extreme excitement about acorns.

Yes, acorns. We plan to eat them!

Today after getting home from work, my husband and I collected 4 pounds of white oak acorns from our front lawn. Well we collected more like 8 pounds, but discarded half due to insect damage and/or sprouting.

Our booty:


All 8 pounds were gleaned from casually picking up a few nuts here and there under about a quarter of our one white oak tree's canopy. Ol' Bessie is producing a bumper crop this year - there will be plenty left over for the squirrels. Though I think I need to come up with a better tree name than "Ol' Bessie" - any suggestions?

The good nuts are drying in the oven AS I TYPE and I'm pretty darn excited about it. Maybe I'll make some acorn burgers. I'm dreaming big.

To learn more about harvesting, preparing, and eating acorns, check out this website.