Ask the Expat: how to eat zucchini flowers

Do you ever post recipes? I had somewhere heard you could eat the zucchini with their flowers, but I’d never seen it done.

One of the reasons I was so excited to start a balcony garden was realizing that I could have a cheap and plentiful supply of zucchini flowers. Yum yum yum.

Zucchini flowers are quite easy to cook and eat. You can pick (easiest with scissors) male or female* flowers, preferably on the day they bloom. Wash them gently, inside and out, and pat them dry with paper towels. Pluck out the sexual organs inside, if you’re so inclined. The flowers can be refrigerated and kept for a day or so, but it’s best to eat them the same day you pick them.

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Tags: ask the expat, balcony garden, cooking, food

Hailstorm in the veggie garden

Yesterday afternoon I looked on helplessly as euro-sized hail pelted my delicate vegetable garden for a good 10 minutes. Deciding against running outside and using my body to shield the plants, instead I stayed in and photographed the action.

I’m happy to report everyone seems to have survived intact, although there are a few tattered leaves here and there.

Speaking of the vegetable garden, it is still coming along beautifully. We have been dining on zucchini blossoms prepared every which way (stuffed, fried, on pasta, in risotto…) for weeks now, and they just keep coming. We’ve even let a few of them grow into delicate, tender 6-inch long zucchini, which have also been lovely. The leaf lettuce is delicious, as is the arugula. And strawberries! At least a few each day. This garden thing is seriously fun.

The pea plants are blossoming, as are the rest of the bell pepper plants. The tomato plants are covered with tiny little green tomatoes and clusters of yellow flowers. Judging from their numbers, we should be rolling in tomatoes in about a month. I can’t wait.

And Felice? He was delicious.

Tags: balcony garden

Garden update: Felice the pepper

OK, I know, this is one of those posts that will only be interesting to me and perhaps a couple other crazy vegetable garden enthusiasts. But…. I’m so proud of my pepper I can’t help but share. We’ve named it Felice (Italian for ‘happy’). Isn’t he handsome?

At 5 centimeters high, he’s by far the largest veggie we’ve got going on, but all the other plants are coming along nicely. The zucchini plants are humongous, spreading leaves well beyond the boundaries of their respective pots. I’m worried we’ll wake up one day and find out they’ve devised a plan to conquer the world. They’re sporting several buds, but nothing blooming yet.

The tomato plants are all flowering, and we have several clusters of strawberries in progress. Everything I planted from seeds has sprouted, so well that I’m going to have to reluctantly thin some of them out so everyone has room to grow big and strong and delicious. I can’t wait to start eating out of the garden! Although, truth be told, I’ve become so attached to Felice that the thought of eating him is starting to feel a little… wrong. What, does that make me crazy? See, this wouldn’t be happening if I was allowed to have a cat.

Tags: balcony garden