Friday, September 05, 2008

Damning Faint Praise

Mmmm, 'Cheesy' Zucchini and Corn Casserole... turned out great and used lots of zucchini!! We'll be making this again, I can tell you!

5 8" zucchini or the equivalent therof, chopped
1 large onion, chopped (we had walla walla's- sweet!)
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 T olive oil (4)
1 can corn, undrained (3)
1 T 'chicken' flavor buillion
1 t oregano, crushed
dash chili garlic sauce or chili powder or cayenne for heat

2 T cornstarch mixed in 1/4 C cold water
1/2 C nutritional yeast
1 t Dijon mustard
1/2 t onion granules
dash salt, pepper to taste
dash turmeric for color

1/2 C breadcrumbs (4) or crushed Ritz

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9" casserole.
Saute onion, garlic, then add zucchini and corn. Stir in oregano and buillion. Cover and simmer until tender, about 20m.
Drain zucchini in a mesh strainer over a bowl, pressing out as much of the liquid as you can. Pour liquid into 2 C measuring cup and top up to make 2 C water (I did not have to add any water).
Set aside drained zucchini in a large bowl.
Pour liquid into a medium sized pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and add cornstarch, whisking all the while. Let sauce simmer and thicken until it is very thick, about 10m.
Add nutritional yeast, Dijon mustard, onion powder and salt and pepper to taste.
Pour over zucchini and mix well.
Pour into greased casserole, top with bread crumbs and bake 20-30m until bubbling and browned.
Here is some Thai basil, we are going to grandpa and grandmas for the weekend, so I should have painstakingly removed each leaf into a ziploc or something, but I just cut the stems, set them in a glass of water and topped it with a ziploc 'dome' over all. This seems to work well for all my herbs and I'm so glad I found this tip! Otherwise all my herbs just wilted away...
Here are some rutabegas, what to do? Our CSA newsletter had a recipe for rutabega pudding, but of course it had eggs in it. We'll see. They keep, so I'll have plenty of time to ponder this.
And we got another salsa pack which I disassembled (what to do with those tomatillos?). Corn! Kale (I will cook it right away this time)! More zucchini! More cucumbers! More green peppers! More paprika peppers! Garlic and onions (which I can never have too many of)! A giant eggplant! More dragon tongue beans!

Still reading Eragon. I'm going to do my review before I finish because I don't think there will be any suprises and I know that this is a series and it always irritates me when the book doesn't wrap up. So I'll do this now. Here is what I truly think. I could not write a book like this. No, wait, that didn't come out like I wanted. I certainly couldn't write a novel, and Christopher Paolini did. I will accept the parts that smack of LOTR as tributes to the master, Tolkein. And I was engaged enough with the protagonist to keep reading, which was enough. So there you have it.

No knitting. Brainstorming about the big red blanket.