So Much Zucchini.

There are two questions that I get asked often behind the scenes of Bloom:

1. I want to start a garden.  What should I do?
2. I want to start a blog.  What should I do?

I love helping people so both questions are always welcome, but truth be told, I much prefer the first question because actually… I am a pretty bad blogger. 

Okay.  Okay.  Maybe not a bad blogger, but definitely a inattentive one. 

Anyone who knows even just a little bit about blogging would tell me I should be doing newsletters.  Affiliate links.  SEO.  Ads.  Redoing old post and photos.  Posting on the same day each week.  Running Facebook live and experimenting with Periscope.  Hashtagging it up on Instagram and Twitter.  And, just about 400 other things that are imperative to successful blogging.

I know about these things and know they can be game changers in terms of viewership, yet I still don’t do them.

Sure.  There is a big part of me that would love to gain more engaged readers.  (Like yourself.  Love ya.)  But, there are so many other things I would rather do than shift though old posts adding links to every ingredient or adding unnatural words making me sound like a robot just for a couple more clicks.

Not to mention, these days, just getting a new post- with photos- done feels like a major accomplishment.

I love my life, but Holy Moly… It is full.  

I recently went back to work.  So, Theo started “school.”  Together, we are getting a routine all figured out again.  In the evenings I want to spend every second with him until his bed time.  

(I really enjoy my job and because of my substantial contribution to our way of life it would be silly to walk away from… but, working mom’s… don’t ever to the math of awake hours you get with your child versus what the teacher’s get.  That is, unless you want your heart to break into a million little pieces.)

Between work and motherhood, there’s the gym, maintaining a clean(ish) home, friends, a cute husband to dote on, the farm tasks from selling products to caring for animals, occasional blogging, and… the garden.

Right now, the garden can be summed up in one word: Abundant.

After a rocky start because I spent the last half of April in the hospital, it has surprised us.  It’s a beast. Not a day goes by where we don’t pull at least ten pounds of food from it.  If not twenty. 

Any and all of my free time that could be spent on beefing up the blog has been put towards preserving peas, freezing green beans, canning pickles, making baby food and trying what the heck to do with all the zucchini.

Zucchini is such a backyard garden staple.  It’s very summery and, because it is so easy to grow, it is the first thing I recommend when asked what to grow in a newbie garden.  I feel like it’s not just a good garden confidence booster, but also seriously versatile in the kitchen.  

You can roast it. Grill it.  Sautéed. Baked. Freeze it for later.  Make soup with it.  Put it in a baked goods.

[insert record screech here]

Baked goods?

Oh yes.

Shredded zucchini is great in cookies, brownies and breads.  As an added bonus it’s basically like getting a serving of veggies with your carbs. What’s not to like?

Note: I am not a nutritionist and you might want to consult an expert on that one…

More than the extra veg serving, I love putting zucchini in baked goods… to help use it up.  

Like I mentioned, Zucchini is easy to grow.  Without too much effort, it produces a lot of food.  

Let me say that again… A lot of food.

We are always trying to get creative and use it up so I put a little spin on herby cheese bread.  With the addition of some zucchini and it made for the perfect accompanist to a lunch time salad.  

It was fun to go the savory route with a zucchini baked good, because so often the lean towards the sweet side of things.

 

But, then again there is nothing wrong with that… So, I am off to make zucchini brownies now too.

See why I am a bad blogger? 

I get distracted by seasonal vegetables.