Tag Archives: gardening

Summer garden is producing!

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Baked Zucchini & Herbs – Recipe Of The Week

 


One of my all-time favorite Reboot recipes is the “Baked Zucchini with Tomatoes and Herbs”. I think it’s a perfect summer dish, when zucchinis and fresh herbs are abundant and at the peak of their season. So when zucchini and tomatoes showed up in my CSA box, I decided to revisit this old favorite.

Fresh and light, yet savory and satisfying, this dish is versatile and can be served hot or cold. It makes a great healthy side for your summer barbecue or a terrific dinner with mixed greens on the side.

It is also easy to substitute ingredients with this dish. For example, this time I used shallots instead of scallions. And any fresh herb will work in place of the celery and basil leaves.

Try this one this summer!


Ingredients
5 small Zucchini
4 Scallions, sliced, white and green parts separated
1 small Onion, chopped
2 Plum Tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp Celery Leaves (from inner stalks), chopped
4 tbsp Basil Leaves, chopped, plus extra for garnish
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1 tsp. Sea Salt
1/2 tsp. fresh ground Black Pepper

Directions
– Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
– Slice the zucchini in half crosswise. Cut each half again lengthwise, and slice each of the halves into 4 equal, ½ inch pieces. They should look like sticks.
– In a bowl, mix together the zucchini sticks with the white parts of the scallions, onion, tomatoes, celery leaves and basil.
– Mix in the olive oil, salt and pepper and toss to combine.
– Pour into a 3 quart baking dish and bake for 20 minutes.
– Garnish with the sliced green tops of the scallions and the extra chopped basil.

Enjoy!

Total Time: 30 minutes
Makes 4 servings

Substitutions:
Onion/Scallion – Shallot
Basil/Celery Leaves – Any Fresh Herb

Hose off your sofa!

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I love these green design alternative furniture pieces. How’d you like to be able to hose off or mow your sofa? I would love to have one of these just to see the look on people’s faces when they saw it. Maybe this is my next task to take on. I could see how you coulb make the sod covered sofa with bales of hay….they soak up moisture so would help the grass. It’s on my “to do” list now!

Clear your land with goat power!

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Lawn Mowing Takes a Cheap and Tasty Turn — for Goats

By Ernest Beck Aug 5th 2010 @ 3:15PM
Gas-guzzling weed-whackers and toxic chemicals are so yesterday when it comes to eco-conscious lawn and garden care, especially when homeowners can now use goats to do the dirty, dangerous work.

A cottage industry of entrepreneurs is flourishing by renting out goats to home warriors battling weeds, prickly underbrush, and other unwanted vegetation — including nasty things like poison oak that you wouldn’t want to get near yourself.

Don’t worry PETA, this won’t hurt the goats: They enjoy a diet of nutrient-dense, broadleaf plants and brush. That’s the idea behind companies like www.rent-a-goat.com, the Goat Lady and Rent a Ruminant LLC, which bring the animals right to your front door or to your overgrown front acreage, as the case may be, where they forage on stuff you want to get rid of with no chemicals and a only a tiny carbon hoofprint. (Sadly, you can’t just buy some goats and keep them in the backyard.)

But how cost-effective and environmentally-friendly is goat weed control?

Prices range from $200 a day for a dozen goats to $1,000 for a larger herd of 1,000 or more. So it depends on how big a spread you have and how much underbrush needs to be cleared.

In a cost-benefit analysis at the Vanderbilt Mansion, a national historic site in Hyde Park, N.Y., the goats’ $900 annual cost is “two-thirds of what hired manpower would be,” thereby saving money on lawn care but perhaps stealing a jobs in the down economy.

As for greening your acres, going with goats will probably keep you and your begonias from contact with all the chemical goop that has been poisoning your neighbor’s poodle. And then there’s the gas saved from not using fuel-inefficient garden machines.

The $24-billion lawn and garden industry is slowly getting behind the eco-friendly movement with products like organic fertilizers made of alfalfa and kelp meal. While such products are entering the market, it’s still only a fraction of the total, with sales of around $460 million in 2008.

So in the meantime you might want to get some cute, furry goats to save your back — and the environment.

If you live near Malibu and would like to do this with clearing your land there is a guy at Malibu Cyn. and the 101 Freeway that rents his goats….I think it’s brilliant!