It's Almost Time!

There are only eleven days left until my wedding! We are very busy finishing up all the last minute projects. My blogging will be put on hold until after my wedding, honeymoon and moving. When I come back I will be a Mrs.! See ya later.

Zucchini

Anyone that has ever grown zucchini knows that when zucchini comes, it comes! You have zucchini everywhere! We have zucchini growing in our garden, and several friends are growing it too. And since we have a big family, we can eat a lot of zucchini, right? Oh, yeah. This morning we ate zucchini muffins for breakfast, last night we had stuffed zucchini for dinner, and the night before we had stir fried zucchini as a side dish. Sure, we can eat up that zucchini! Here is a recipe that a friend made for a church dinner recently. It was so delicious that I asked her for the recipe! I haven't made it yet, myself, but it looks very simple. This recipe actually calls for yellow squash, but they can generally be used interchangeably in recipes. These recipes that call for grated squash are good for overgrown squash that have lots of seeds in the middle, because you can cut them out before you shred it.

Squash Pie
2 cups grated yellow squash
1 small onion, chopped
3 large eggs
1 cup biscuit mix
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Cavender's all purpose Greek seasoning

Mix all ingredients together. Pour into 10 inch pie plate, buttered or sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350* for about 30 minutes, until set and lightly browned.

A Ridiculous Experiment

Have any of you ever noticed the button on your dashboard where you can change the language? Well today, I saw it again and thought, wouldn't it be neat if I changed the language, just to see what it looked like, and then changed it right back again? Sounds pretty safe, right? So I hit the button, scrolled through the options, and selected Arabic. The letters looked so cool! Then I hit the wrong button and changed the page I was on. Trouble! My blog read in English, but the header was all in Arabic! And I couldn't figure how to get back to my dashboard. I scurried around hitting random buttons, changing pages but I had no idea what I was doing because it was all in Arabic. Ok, I thought, now I'm done for. My blog is in Arabic, and I can't change it back because I can't read it! So I went and told my Mom what I did. She just laughed and shook her head. "Emily, you are too curious!" Abigail suggested e-mailing a friend that can read Arabic and asking her to help me put my blog back in English. I was about to do so, but I thought I would look at my blog one more time in Arabic, and try to figure out for myself what to do. Then I remembered all the buttons along the top of a blog that say sign in, follow blog, etc. I started randomly hitting these. Finally I must have hit the sign in button, because the page looked exactly like the English sign in one, except that everything was in Arabic. Do you know what? Arabic is backwards. All the things that are on the left of your page are on the right on an Arabic page, and vice versa. So I found the sign in page, and signed in. Then I was at my dashboard. Remember, it was all still in Arabic, so I was stumbling around in the dark. But I managed to recognize that language button. I hit it, and scrolled down to where it said English. Hit the button...ahh. I can read it now. I was so relieved! Have any of you out there ever done something like this? Let me tell you--I'm staying away from that language button! Well, I do know how to fix it now...

An Interesting Link

A friend recently sent me this link for a very interesting article on lactose intolerance. You might like to read it.

Fried Grits

Have you ever heard of fried grits? I have heard of them since I was a child, in the books I loved to read about pioneers and frontiers people. But I never tried it until just recently. I was just trying it for an experiment, but guess what? It was actually good! It is the only way I know of to use leftover grits, so it's a frugal recipe as well. I guess that's why the pioneer people in my books ate them--they couldn't afford to let anything go to waste!

Take your leftover grits, while they are still warm and pack them into a square container. If you have a lot of grits, you could use a loaf pan, but we never have that many. Refrigerate grits until they have become solid. Take the container of grits and dump out the block of grits onto a plate. Slice off thick slices. In hot bacon grease or olive oil, fry until brown on one side, flip over, and fry on the other side. We like to eat it with maple syrup drizzled on top. It is also good with milk gravy. The other day we had leftover grits and gravy that we ate for lunch the next day. Yum!

I have heard of frying dollops of fresh grits instead of waiting for them to cool. I have also seen a recipe that said to mix the grits with a bit of beaten egg. Hillbilly Housewife has some fried grits recipes if you are interested. I tried frying leftover oatmeal the same way once. It was not as good as grits, but not too bad.

And on a side note, do you know what GRITS stands for?

Girls
Raised
In
The
South

Have fun! And check out Life As Mom for more frugal ideas.

The Benefits of Mulching

Mulching in the garden is very beneficial. Mulch helps to conserve water, especially in dry, windy climates such as where I live in Texas. I have noticed distinct difference in how well the mulched beds respond to a hot afternoon compared to the ones with bare soil. The mulch will look dry on top, but if you feel underneath it, the soil is moist. Mulch also keeps the fruits clean. Rain and watering often splash mud on the plants. A layer of mulch keeps down the mud so you don't have to clean the fruits quite as much. Another benefit of mulching is that it insulates the soil. This is related to the fact that it conserves water. A mulch will keep the soil cool on hot days. And in the fall or early spring, it will insulate the warmth of the day, and keep the soil a little warmer on cool nights. Finally, mulch improves soil health. By mulching, you are adding organic material that will compost over the year, and when you till it in next spring, the soil will be better for it.



I used to think of mulch as decorative wood chips that you put around your flowers. But mulch in the vegetable or herb garden can be so much more than that! This year we are using bought composted cotton burrs. A friend who was moving away gave them to us. But we have also used leaves, rough compost from our pile out back, or straw.
Some people use black plastic around their plants, but I prefer not to go this route because plastic does nothing for the soil.



Try using a mulch on your garden this year and see how much better your garden grows!