~Babylons Bliss~

Not Your Usual Zucchini Recipes - it's true, you're bound to find something new to try here. I suggest the Mock Crab Cakes-if you care for crab cakes. Those I've tried with great success in the past. The chocolate zucchini cake looks promising to me too, of course - if chocolate makes almost anything sound promising.

Ljc's Projects:Cooking:Zucchini - a blog with some new recipes to try

There are a few at about.com that as well - Italian Food Southern Food

And as one might guess - at a site called Just Vegetable Recipes has a couple too.

National Center for Home Food Preservation - USDA complete guide to home canning.

Home Canning recipes from Southern Food at about.com

How to Can, Freeze, Dry and preserve any fruit and vegetable from home, pretty much says it all from pickyourown.org

I've been searching the net looking for recipes and preservation instructions for when the gardens start producing. Seems like a good way to while away this time where it's just too cold to go out and even contemplate much else.
What we're attempting here is a life style change - and having the gardens is only one small step in it. Knowing how to eat from the garden all year long is another step. I want to have a variety of meals to plan the use of our harvest both in season, and after preservation.
I once read in the Tightwad Gazette about a basic menu plan for stored items. What she did was make a list of everything she had stored like Spaghetti Sauce 30 jars - then she divided up how many weeks until the next harvest/canning season and estimated how many meals using the sauce per week she could prepare both without running out, and making sure she used her current supply up.
I think this will be particularly useful in planning the next years garden as well. Letting us know what we may be able to cut back on planting, as well as what we may need to try to plant more of. It will also, no doubt, encourage us to plant more of a variety of items even if it's just to be sure we don't have to eat squash 4 times a week ;-)

This is our first year having a garden at our new house. This year, we plan to keep it fairly simple - we need to get to know our little parcel of land to really know how to make the most of it. For now, I've got a list going of what we want to plant. Next, we have to get outside and measure out the space where the in ground gardens are going to be. Then we need to start looking for / making the containers we'll be using as well.

While the weather still prohibits us from being out much - I am also looking for recipes to preserve and use what we harvest from the garden. It's going to be strange eating strictly from the garden as far as produce is concerned...but that is a goal for us. There will be a lot that we will miss - mangoes for one...Being in NY we'll have no citrus. That may be tough. But, I think it's important to learn to eat from your region as well. Definitely if we're to ever become self sufficient.

We live in a small city, and while we have neighbors who have gardens, or fruit trees growing themselves - it should be interesting to see how our landscaping endeavors are accepted. Our gardens won't be assigned to just the back yard. While I do believe that edible landscaping can be attractive as well as productive, and we are sure to have flowers inter planted as well - I'm not sure we're going to pull off the aesthetic aspect of the design right away. I'm thinking it's going to take some time to learn about what works, and what doesn't. While pretty is nice - it's not exactly our primary goal.

I imagine the first couple years are going to be a learning process for us. Learning how to work with our space. Learning how to preserve the harvest, and use that for meals we'll want to eat, to sustain us. We're also going to be learning how much of each plant we need to grow to last for our family. Learning to eat with the seasons is going to be important as well. It's strange to think about, obviously it can't be that complicated - it was how we survived for generations before. It can be done. It is being done. Breaking the habit of just running to the store to grab what ever you could want to eat when ever we want it is going to be a tough one. We've gotten spoiled. I think that is going to be the hardest thing of all. Knowing that if our garden isn't successful, we can just run to the market. While it's nice to know - I don't want it to make us complacent in the chores that will need to be done.
This is important to me - for so many reasons I can hardly put my finger on just one.
I don't want this to be just a trial hobby.