Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Vampire Gardener Fries a Zucchini

For those that haven't been following me on Facebook or Twitter, I've been referring to myself as a vampire gardener of late.  With this heat wave going on, it is too darn hot to garden during the day, so I've been waiting until after sunset to head out and getting as much done as I can of the watering, weeding, and harvesting before full dark.

During last night's vampire gardening, I harvested my first zucchini.  Yay!  I'd been watching that one for a while, waiting for it to get a bit bigger on one side, the blossom side before harvesting.  However, last night, much to my sorrow, I noticed that end seemed to have turned a bit yellow and started to rot instead of growing!  I picked it anyway, cut off the bad part and made myself fried zucchini.  Yay!  I know, I know.  It is slightly evil to bread and fry a perfectly good veggie, but I know you'll want to too, so the recipe is below.

Back to the sadnesses of the yellow and blossom end rot.  A itsy-bit of research indicated that the rot is probably due to a lack of calcium in the soil.  Fortunately, I've been hoarding egg shells for that specific purpose, so it looks like I'll be grinding them up today to add to the soil during tonight's vampire gardening session.  It could also be because of watering issues, but I'm going to play it safe (not as safe as if I had the soil tested, but I'm goofy like that) and add the egg shells, since I have them laying around anyway.  Some of the same places (random pages on the internet.  I just googled it) said that the yellowing could be caused by a nitrogen deficiency in the soil and that a treatment for that is to add manure.  I happen to have a bag of composted cow manure in my garage, so I think I'll be mixing the egg shells into that and spreading it around the base of my plants with an apology for mistreating them so. 

And now for the fried zucchini recipe.  This goes great with marinara sauce or ranch dressing.  Don't worry, people that aren't fans of fried vegetables--this is only the first of many zucchini recipes to come!

Fried Zucchini

1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1-2 eggs, beaten
1 zucchini, peeled and sliced or cut into sticks
oil for frying

Preheat oil 1/2 inch deep in a large skillet.  Combine flour and bread crumbs.  Dip egg over zucchini pieces, coat with flour mixture and fry until golden brown, turning as needed for even cooking.  Drain zucchini pieces to remove excess oil and serve.

4 comments:

  1. Egg shells also keep away slugs and some burrowing insects like grubs. They shred their delicate skin, and so they stay far away. So egg shells are like a cure-all for a garden! ;)

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  2. If you like a little bit of a kick to your fried zucchini use,Zataran's fry mix in place of the flour....YUM!

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  3. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Zatarain's contains MSG, so we steer clear of it.

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  4. I love the new webpage colors (sooo green...soooo peaceful). But some of the words are highlighted a bright neon green and I just can't make them out at all. Don't know if I'm the only one experiencing this problem, but I thought you would want to know about it regardless.

    I've never thought about frying zucchini. As I'm trying desperately to lose weight, I'm going to shy away from this one for myself (it's hard to kneel and garden when you are almost 200 lbs. overweight). But I might try it for my kids.

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