One Big Zucchini and Other Harvests

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

And Happy first day of fall to you. Fall is a lovely season, my favorite. Good sleeping nights, leaves turning, no mosquitoes,  apples and pumpkins, time to get the garden ready for winter...  

The only tough thing about fall is that it means that winter comes next,especially here in New England, and the winter can just last so long. You just don't know. 

I've been missing from Rain's Art and Dinner Date for the last couple of weeks as my husband and I were traveling. But now that I'm home, I'm back with some food for this week's Harvest Dinner theme.

Before I took off to see a bit of the wild west here in the US, I let this zucchini grow oversized in my garden. I wanted it to grow a little bit bigger than I'd usually let them get  because I wanted to make a mega batch of zucchini bread.

I started with this recipe my mother had sent me many years ago. She found this recipe  in her local newspaper, and it makes a delicious chocolate zucchini bread.

To make my bread, I first had to pull out my food processor to grate the zucchini. I'm including this next photo as I like the pattern it formed. 

I ended up with SO much zucchini, instead of making a couple of loaves,  I used a bundt pan and made a cake sized bread.

And there was enough batter left to make some muffins.

FYI- I added chocolate chips and some chopped walnuts to my batter also.

And still I had zucchini left. Talk about a mega-batch of zucchini bread. And I wasn't yet done.

I made another batch of zucchini bread batter. This time I didn't make the chocolate recipe  but  some cinnamon spice zucchini muffins. I still added the walnuts but added some dried sour cherries. I would have added raisins, but I discovered I didn't have any. The cherries were actually quite yummy, and I will add them again when I ever make my next zucchini bread.

And I also made a loaf too.

I'm not sure all this zucchini bread counts as a harvest dinner, but it does make a good afternoon snack with a cup of tea or even a nice toasted slice for breakfast.

All I can say is that it is a good thing  zucchini bread freezes well. Smile.

And since I've come  home from my wild west adventure, my husband and I stopped at a local orchard and picked some apples.

This was just the other day, so I'm not sure yet what, if anything,  I will make with them. And again, they probably aren't really considered a harvest dinner. However, at least in my humble opinion (smile), an apple is never better than when it's first picked off the tree.

You can bet I've been crunching  and munching on apples this week. 

Thanks for visiting. I hope you have a great Thursday and week ahead.

 

T Stands for Apples, Iced Tea and the Deck Project

 Hi everyone. Happy new week. Since it is time for T day again, happy T day to all you ladies who of the T gang.

Today's post is a mish-mash of this and that going on for me in the past week. I've also included a drink related  photo for T later in this post. This is my entry this week for T over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

The big project at my house is the deck my husband is replacing. The footings are still good, but the floor boards were starting to pop up and curl. The railing tops were also looking a little worse for wear, so my husband got the bug to replace the deck. I've learned that it is better to let the man do what he wants to do because at least then he is more motivated to finish the project quickly.

Of course with him being an engineer means that everything gets done with some designing and that slows the process a bit (smile), so right now my deck is in the under construction phase. Here's a couple of photos from this weekend's work.

He had to build some scaffolding just to get him a few inches off the ground to work on that side of the deck easier. He also had to put in some short support boards along the edges. That's because on our old deck the decking goes straight across from edge to edge, but this time he wants more detail and is putting a picture frame around it. By that I mean there will be a border of wood running around the edge of the deck planks.

Right now there is a big gap, but he put in a solid piece of plywood so we can get on off the deck. Some of you might remember me mentioning in a recent post that this is our most used entrance in and out of the house.

The hubby tells me the project will move faster once he gets all the pre-work done and when he starts laying the decking down.

Most days our weather has been wonderful this past  week. With a few exceptions.

I love days in the 70's (21-26 degrees C), which much of the past week's days have been. There is just a tinge of color starting in the trees.

And there's still lots of mushrooms.

I went out apple picking one day.

The crop is great this year. I made an apple crisp, and I really have the bug to make a cheddar crust apple pie, which has been on my baking bucket list for a few years now. Maybe this week I'll do that.

My ticket for T  this week is this photo from when I met my husband for lunch one day. I had to go to Portsmouth for my allergy shot and allergist appointment, and since he works in the city, it worked out that we could meet.  

I had a grilled cheese with avocado and fries. It was so big I ate half for lunch and brought the other half home for dinner. My drink was some unsweetened ice tea. You can see he had a burger and unsweetened ice tea as well.

That's it for me. Hope everyone has a great new week. And a happy T day too.

Thanks for visiting.

Apple Picking

Another beautiful day on tap. My morning walk was fabulous. And it is Boating day! (Then the bad news for Dave, we need to pull the boat and take it home. Another boating season is over here in NH).

Yesterday was a great day. Got apple picking-finally-and it was such a perfect day to go out into an orchard and pick. Plus last night I made an apple pie-YUMMY! Decided it was too nice to work all day so I lounged on the screen porch in the sun and read my vampire/Anne Rice book. Took a nap too. But then as the afternoon shadows lengthened I came in and did a few cleaning chores...feels good to get them done and didn't take too long either. No studio time...but the weekend isn't over yet and actually, it was too nice to be inside.

These apples are BIG and so YUMMY!

And the picking was FANTASTIC!

And I'll share a card too. Simple, simple, simple, but it works.

I used sanded orange cardstock. I stamped the bat (Inkadinkado) directly onto the card. I did darken the bat with a black Sharpie and then used a clear sparkle Sakura gel pen on the swirls. The EEEK (Martha Stewart) is stamped right on the card and I added some black felt trim.

Et c'est voila.

Hope you are having a great weekend too.