What's For Supper / Nearing the end of August

There is a palatable change in the air. It is always this time in August that the crickets are noticeable, there's a bit of a snap to the morning air, many flowers have faded, while others become dominant. Although I LOVE summer, I actually really like how this time of year feels. Normally, flower beds look bedraggled and crispy, but of course this year with our relentless rain, everything is lush and full. The "snap" of the morning air was closer to "bloody cold" these past couple of mornings. We are supposed to go down to a low of 6 degrees tonight!! (Celsius - have no clue what that is fahrenheit, but 0 is freezing).

Normally, as well, I have a glut of garden produce, but the relentless rain caused a lot of blight, etc. so my glut occurred with my strawberries. I have some beans, some zucchini, quite a few cucumbers. The rabbits continue to trim the peas as soon as they grow a little, and the tomatoes, well let's all just bow our heads and grieve over the loss of the potential tomatoes. I've dug out a few potatoes (like buried treasure!!) but even they show the effect of too much moisture with hollow discoloured centres, although the rest of them are still quite edible.

Recently, blueberries were a very good price in the grocery store, so I bought a giant container. I seemed to be the only one eating them, so I had to decide how to use them before they became a loss. I got out my trusty recipe book.

I love these recipe books (there are three altogether, created by the two sisters pictured on the front cover). They were originally published as low fat recipes, but they are just tasty and fun, regardless of being low fat or not (sugar is the devil, anyway, not fat).

I love the names of their recipes, always with some kind of corny pun involved. I frequently write in my recipe books, with helpful future hints, or even a rating from the family. Obviously this recipe was a winner. So I made it again and indeed it was very good.

This was the oats mixture that gets put on top.

Here are the blueberries mixed with sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice.

This makes a big dish of dessert. I like it served warm with a little milk, but we've had it with vanilla yogurt, or frozen yogurt, or just plain. It does stain the dickens out of your teeth, however, so brush well after eating!


Today I got my hair dealt with, regrowth at the roots dyed and some lowlights dragged through my overly blonde hair. I sincerely hate getting my hair coloured, not because of the chemicals, or the price (although it is pretty pricey), but being captive for almost two hours having to make small talk with someone that I have very little in common with. I'm a fairly private person (who writes a blog... I know, a bit of a contradiction) and I just don't enjoy that constant banter of question / answer that is part of sitting in a hair stylist's chair. I have tried various hairdressers over the years. I know it's just my problem, probably other people think it's a lovely treat, but I just want to be quiet.

Anyway, after getting home, I embarked on something I've been wanting to do for a little while. I was inspired by Mama Pea over at A Homegrown Journal who has written a few times about her stuffed peppers. Now, I do NOT have any mature peppers yet (the poor little things, I don't think they'll ever see full maturity before we get frost!), but I have been harbouring a few zucchini in the crispers for a little while now. So, I looked up a some recipes for stuffed zucchini, had a look at what I had in the house and concocted some filling for my scooped out zucchinis. In no particular order or quantities, I combined ground beef, onions, green peppers, soft bread crumbs, egg, parsley, basil, garlic powder, salt, pepper, leftover cooked rice, and some plain spaghetti sauce. I let my stuffed zucchini bake away in a 350 oven for at least 45 minutes (the meat mixture was raw when I put it in the oven) and then put a little mozzarella cheese on top to melt. They were pretty good! I like that you get the flavour of meat / spaghetti sauce without the pasta, and it uses up at least two zucchini!

Here are a couple of hollowed out zucchini boats.

I really heaped up the meat mixture so each one got lots of filling. Here they are pre-baking. I didn't take a picture of the finished product, because we were hungry. I would definitely make this again, although the filling could change depending on what's in the fridge.

I've been typing this while listening to news casts about the hurricane affecting Texas and surrounding areas. I hope everyone is safe and secure. We don't get hurricanes here. I guess our natural disasters would be tornados and to a lesser extent, blizzards. It's always scary when nature takes over and is far more powerful than you are.