There were many, many truck gardens when I was a kid. The produce raised for sale at market, the roadside market, the farmer's market.
I always loved that word, truck garden. Come August and September, I smile and think we are certainly eating a lot of truck.
We've eaten a lot of truck this summer. Sadly the tomatoes and the cucumbers are nearly done. But that damn squash...
Whatever we're having for supper features squash. This week squash has been featured in the chicken and rice, accompanying hamburgers, and on pizza. I understand it will be cut small, like corn kernels, for tomorrow night's tortilla filling.
Squash is featured in a couple layers of tonight's quiche. The vegetable? Beans. They're up to a peck a day.
And the lovely flowers were for my sister, who is sixty today.
I remember the year our mother was fifty nine again. I did that once, myself. It's neat to get back a year. Better than a truck garden.
i have no luck with squash except for last summer. no work, no income that year and the white patty pan produced an endless supply. even the zucchinis did the best ever. we get squash vine borer and they attack my zucchini every year. but not the white patty pan. we ate squash every day for months. fried, sauteed, baked, stuffed, tempura, in spaghetti sauce, in casseroles, in salads, every possible way you can think of fixing and eating squash. I was sick of it.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 1960's we had neighbors who'd put in a bit of a garden, then leave for their summer home. They told us to use whatever their garden produced. This was my introduction to zucchini. Not knowing any better we let it grow to the size of baseball bats. I had no idea what to do with it and only used it for zucchini bread. It was years later when we grew it ourselves that I'd pick it hardly bigger than my fingers. THAT'S when I learned to appreciate squash!
ReplyDeleteYou're smart to eat seasonally, even when it means having the same thing over and over.
ReplyDeleteOur bodies (minds) do crave variety. I wonder if we had to good back before techniques to ship food were perfected we would force to eat much of the same and perhaps eat less.
ReplyDeleteI love the phrase 'truck garden'. We have road-side stalls, which have none of the charm - despite having the same ingredients.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Jan.
I have never heard of a truck garden that's a newie on me, but my dad always produced a lot of one vegie in his garden when we were kids, we alway got so sick of the excess lucky it was not the same one every year.
ReplyDeleteMerle.........
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My mother's garden was certainly a 'truck garden', and we ate well all summer and then all winter.
ReplyDeleteFresh beans? Awesome.
Why is it that squash always seems to be so proliferative? Someone might want to put together a cookbook, 1000 ways to cook squash :)
ReplyDeletehappy birthday to your sister; it is nifty to be sixty :)
betty
Happy birthday to your sister. I would love to have some squash. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of good recipes for it. I am grilling some zucchini tomorrow though.
ReplyDeleteI love homegrown beans.
ReplyDeleteHow much is a peck exactly? Compared to a kilo?
Am I correct in remembering 8 pecks is a bushel?
But then how much is a bushel in today's weights?
Happy birthday to your sister. I have never actually tried butter squash - still got armfuls of cucumbers and marrows, not to mention runner beans and tomatoes. We don't have any truck gardens here which is a shame - only the occasional stalls at the car boots.
ReplyDeleteThis is the time of year when I wish I had taken the trouble to plant a garden a few months ago ... but every spring I think about how busy I am (my busiest time at work) and the deer that wander through our yard eating everything green ... so I buy at the grocery store, and it's fresh and full of variety, so maybe it's okay after all ... But maybe I am - just a little - coveting your prolific garden :)
ReplyDeleteHAPPY BIRTHDAY JOANNE'S SISTER!
ReplyDeleteYou can never eat too much truck. Unless it's a diesel, because the indigestion is killer.
I bet you are quite inventive when it comes to cooking squash !
ReplyDeleteThanks for the birthday wishes. I wanted to say the squash recipe book is not a thing anyone could write. At some point, the things I end up putting squash in are done in desperation to get rid of it. I try to use it. I plant too many plants but you never know, most might die so you have to over plant! The final non-use of the overabundance is to just put it in the compost, it makes great dirt!
ReplyDeleteOur squash didn't make it this year...Woe to us...I do have a recipe book called, "the squash cookbook" by Yvonne Tarr..My favorite is a recipe-not from that book-for Zucchini Souffle. We use the biggies to put into the freezer for winter Souffle dishes..Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteHappy Belated Birthday, Jan..I forget that you and my sister are the little sisters.
ReplyDelete