gad zuccs!

I dream of being pursued by giant green monsters.  Of being buried in an avalanche of heavy red orbs.  Of being lost in a dense green forest growing wildly before my very eyes...

Yes, my garden is in full flourish, and every day, when I go out back to inspect things, more and more veggies and herbs are ready to pick.  Keeping up with the produce production has become a challenge.

a single day's harvest from 4 tomato plants, two zucchini plants

and three pepper plants

The pepper plants are burgeoning with peppers, but I am leaving them to ripen.  I love chiles when they have ripened to a sweet, hot red hue, and they aren't as often available that way in the grocery store as their young, green counterparts.  The numbers and rate of growth on the two zucchini plants is downright scary.  And, as for the tomatoes...I will be making sauce like an Italian grandma all summer long.  Time for some new preparations.

I have a forest of herbs in the garden as well as the veggies.  So I decided to use some of my parsley as the greens in a salad.  By limiting it to a couple of handfuls, the flavor stays in balance with the remainder of the ingredients.

the bright green hue of the parsley is beautiful -- effectively 

washed and dried in this perfect little herb/salad spinner

I decided to make a salad using zucchini "ribbons".  The ribbons can be cut with a vegetable peeler, or on a little mandolin.  I didn't peel the zucchini, wanting the dark green contrast to the white of the flesh, but I did discard the outermost slices, which were mostly skin.

this handy little gadget cuts perfect, and perfectly thin slices

of a variety of foods

Once the ribbons were cut, and the seedy core of the zucchini discarded, I placed them in a colander, and coated them with a couple of teaspoons of salt to draw out some of the considerable moisture.  After half an hour, I rinsed away as much of the salt as possible, and dried them on a pile of paper towels.  This salting process had an unexpected benefit.  It lent an impossibly silky texture to the ribbons, giving them the mouthfeel of a tender, well-cooked pasta, and a silken texture that made draping them about the plate a breeze.

For a salad dressing, I combined lemon juice and olive oil, along with a small dab of mustard, salt and pepper, and emulsified it in my little blender.  The only thing left to do was assemble the salad.  I cut a couple of those gorgeous tomatoes into little wedges, and tossed together the zucchini ribbons, tomato wedges, thinly sliced hot red pepper, and parsley to create a salad that looks like the essence of summer.

a drizzle of dressing, and a near perfect salad is born