Zucchini of Fire August 5, 2006

Having about eight million zucchinis on hand at any given time (yes, I brought this upon myself by planting 3 zucchini plants), I am constantly trying to come up with new and exciting recipes to throw them into. Luckily, zucchinis are a versitile vegetable that can be made up a zillion ways. Baked, fried, raw, in baked goods, stir-fried, you name it.

Friday night I made a garden grill stirfry, and it went a little like this:

ZUCCHINI OF FIRE

2 good sized zucchini, sliced into 1/4″ slices

12 cherry tomatoes, whole

some basil leaves

one fresh jalapeno, seeded and sliced into strips

one fresh cherry bomb pepper, seeded and sliced into strips

salt

pepper

garlic powder

AB’s Chili powder

olive oil

Tabasco

Throw all the vegetables in a bowl, coat with olive oil & Tabasco, toss, and then add salt, pepper, AB’s chili powder, and the garlic powder. Hooooo-weeeee that’s hot! Toss to coat evenly. Throw mixture into a hot grill wok over high heat, stir often until zucchini are done to your liking.

The greatest thing about this recipe was that all of the fresh ingredients were home-grown! I was pretty proud of myself for that.

Please, Anything But Kidz Bop August 5, 2006

I’ve had music on the brain this week, specifically music for kids. I’ve been going through the massive amounts of music that H and I have been acquiring throughout the years, specifically looking for kid-friendly music. I know I’ve bought a lot of CDs that maybe I didn’t listen to a lot when I bought it, but I knew that someday, I would be able to share it with my children while they were in the formative stages of development. So far, we’ve been listening to Miles Davis, Leadbelly, Canadian Brass, but right now, this is LP’s “favorite” CD:

Yes, Contra Dancing. It’s very big up in New England, and contra dances are still held in this area, particularly New Hampshire quite often. While I’ve never been to one, they intrigue me and the music has a good beat. This is a collection of New Hampshire bands and callers doing some contras and square dances, so the music is very lively and holds LP’s interest while she’s on the changing table. Whenever I start this up, she gets an excited look in her eye because she knows it’s time to dance!

I’ll be highlighting some other music that we’ve been playing for her that she “enjoys.” I say “favorite” and “enjoys” because who really knows? It really just means that she’s not wailing and crying when this comes on. The contra dancing is really fun because we can wiggle her legs back and forth and make her dance, which she really does love. So, with contra dancing having silly words (“Now allemand once, and promenade!”), very few (if any) words in other tracks, and a dancing beat with fiddles, you can’t go wrong for the very wee. Once they start being able to protest when you put it on, then it might be time to retire the contra.

I have been trolling some music blogs this week, and I stumbled upon 2 that I particularly enjoy have been Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child and small ages. See links on the blogroll over on the left. Small ages talked about getting your kids into Camper Van Beethoven, something I can definitely get behind. I can see other songs such as any of the instrumentals, “Tina”, even “Where the hell is Bill?“, but that one’s up to you. I would be wary of bringing them into daycare belting out the chorus to “Wasted”, which goes a little like this:

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WAAASSSSSSSSSS SOOOOOOOOOOO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASTEDDDDDD”

You have to admit, it’s easy to see a 3-year-old screaming that. However, I cannot even begin to try and think of an explanation for Child Protective Services. David Lowery, will you just pay my bail now?