Yard To Table

Giving Thanks for the Harvest Table

• Trevor Crafts and Ellen Scherer Crafts • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Warning - listen to this episode on a full stomach, hunger may ensue! On this episode of Yard to Table it’s truly a journey from the garden to the plate. Ellen and Trevor talk about their growing season and what they have done with the amazing bounty from Stonebrook Gardens. They get into how they preserve the goodness by freezing and canning, share some recipes and chat about what may be on the table for the upcoming holiday.

 Recipes they talk about:

Message the show at the link below for the recipes you’d like  to have from the episode and send any ideas for an upcoming podcast! We all give thanks to you for listening!

And to see what's happening with Ellen and Trevor at Stonebrook House follow @stonebrookhouse on Instagram today!

Questions? Ideas? Things you need to say? Message us!

Trevor:

Hello Ellen.

Ellen :

Well, hello Trevor.

Trevor:

Here we are back at the table. Yes, at the table, yard to table. It's another episode.

Ellen :

It's been fun.

Trevor:

It's been good. We've been doing a lot of good stuff. We've been talking a lot of people. We're just gonna keep on talking. If we do like to talk, we do like to talk. That is very true. So it's good that we it's good that we have a podcast, because talking is one of the things that you have to do on a podcast. That's true, because this .............as a podcast is just not good, that sort of awkward silence. That was an awkward silence.

Ellen :

Yeah, it just felt awkward, uncomfortable. I was looking at you like, what is happening?

Trevor:

What is he doing? Yeah, that's, that's uncomfortable. Normally, I would edit those out. I would, I would, I would trim those little bits.

Ellen :

So what are we going to talk about today?

Trevor:

Well, today is harvest day. Harvest. Yeah, we're getting to that point in time where it is time to close up the garden. Time to close everything out, time to take a look back at what we've done this year, which has been really extensive.

Ellen :

It has really been a wonderful year in the garden. It's been phenomenal, an extended growing season here in New England. Yes, it's no. Many folks have had a longer window on their garden this year.

Trevor:

I was talking to somebody today who was still having some tomatoes and some elements from their garden.

Ellen :

Nice and a tad unsettling.

Trevor:

It is science fiction out there these days, it is.

Ellen :

But we're going to focus on the joy, because we do really love our garden and how much we have grown with it over the years. And I would say, is it safe to say this may be ourbest.

Trevor:

This is the best year yet. Yeah, for sure,

Ellen :

I wasn't trying to do an awkward pause, but I was almost like, didn't want to jinx myself.

Trevor:

No, no, this was definitely the best year. We had more more things grow. We did do some upgrades this year. We did talk about that. We added some height to all of our beds. That's latest a little bit. It did push us a little bit of time, but I think we made up for it.

Ellen :

We did. We started out by the continued work that we did around making sure our beds and our soil was good,

Trevor:

yeah, and I think that's one of the things that we had some trouble with over the over the years, was soil health. Yeah, it was a real problem for us. Ultimately, I know we've talked about that before, but having 25 yards of new organic compost layered in really was game changer.

Ellen :

It was huge. And adding the depth to the bed, we have historic raised beds in our garden, you cut a lot of the wood, but we I helped a lot of it

Trevor:

You did help an enormous amount. There is video of you cutting

Ellen :

it was, it was a lot. We were definitely having some moments as a married couple in putting in,

Trevor:

I think my favorite part was, you got that those are long, that's a big, that's a lot, whoa, wow. That's a lot of that's those are, those are heavy. Did you know they were gonna be so heavy these pieces, I got two by 12 by twelves, which is a rather large and heavy piece of piece of wood. Well,

Ellen :

I think when the wood got dropped off, I think that was also a moment

Trevor:

It was a full pallet. Yeah, that's the thing. Stone Brook is not a small place, no. And nothing that we do here is small. Everything is at more of an industrial scale.

Ellen :

Yes, for two people,

Trevor:

for two people and family.

Ellen :

And wedid an extended family. We did a little help. Thank you so much to everybody

Trevor:

who helps. Overall, I think the beds really helped.

Ellen :

It was a big difference. And obviously we continue to use compost tea intermittently this time, because the soil really was in so much better shape. Correct was last year, right?

Trevor:

We're still getting wiggle room at scale, yes. And, you know, we're getting 10 gallons at a time and dropping that in doing a little bit of mix of both. We did both follicular on the leaves itself, but then we also did it right into the soil. We did more into the soil than we did follicular. We did a lot of follicular. Yeah, say that three times fast follicular. Last year we did a lot more of that.

Ellen :

Yeah, and we were having in the early growing because, again, we were a little late, because getting the beds done, getting the soil in, we had garlic that had to be harvested. So those beds, that's always so much fun. As you all know, I love the garlic harvest. It's so satisfying. We talked about that in an episode, I know, but just got to say it again, but we had those beds had to be. They were the last of our beds that we had to finish and plant. But I mean, overall, it was a great year. And what did we What did what came out of our garden Trevor?

Trevor:

What didn't come out of our garden? That was my question. No, I think tomato harvest this year was phenomenal. And. So many different varieties that we hadn't tried before. Yeah, and I think between the green zebras and the golden cherries and all of the rest San Marzano Yeah, the sun golds, the San marzanos were phenomenal,

Ellen :

amazing. And when we talk about garden and we talk about harvest, we want to talk about preserving, because you want to get that incredible summer flavor and joy that comes out, and you want to try to save it for those cold, dark winters.

Trevor:

Do whatever you can save it. And particularly, winter is coming,

Ellen :

allegedly, but yes, it is coming. But, yeah, I mean, so we were really able to this year, because it was such an incredible yield, we were really able to do a lot of that preserving. So when you're talking about preserving tomatoes, what we did this year was we, we did some batch freezing. We did some creation of sauces and soups

Trevor:

we did, like, sort of three major areas, I would say, of of preservation, yeah, I will also say, Yeah, preserving is very hard when you have to eat it immediately because it's so delicious. Oh, I know it makes a problem. Preserving is, you mean the word itself is to save for later. It's really hard to do.

Ellen :

I know, I think we do that for like five nights with the San Marzano sauce, because it was so incredible. Yes, delicious. But anywho for freezing, you know, it's so easy. And I never really had thought that freezing a tomato was a thing. It's a thing. Yeah, for your sun golds, your cherry tomatoes, your smaller varieties, you do a flash freeze first, so lay them out on a sheet pan in your freezer for like an hour, get them nice and cold, and then you can preserve them in a bag. I like to use Reusables, because we always are trying to figure out ways to reduce plastic or containers. And then you can put that in, and then it's good for to use over the winter. And for your larger tomatoes, if you're going to save a larger slicing tomato, you can also do that. You just need to make sure you take out the core, take out the stem, take out the top core. You don't have to go all the way through the tomato. I like to do a flash freeze, also on a sheet pan. And then you can also put those in a reusable bag and put it in your freezer, Mark and label it and use it over the winter. And again, you can pull those out, chop them up for salsas. You can use them in roasts. You can they're very easy to take the skins off, also after Once they're frozen, and that's really nice. So you can use them in as a crushed tomato, in any way that you would a jarred or canned tomato. We also tried a really fun recipe with the green zebras. We were able to create this delicious tomato lime jam. Yeah, it was phenomenal. And we'll put a note to that. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, so you guys can get the recipe for that one.

Trevor:

It was really surprising. This flavor was herby, but it was also bright and it's sweet. So this green zebra tomato jam is pretty easy. Well, first of all, number one, you have to grow green zebra tomatoes.

Ellen :

It is a key ingredient.

Trevor:

That is a key ingredient. So if you're not growing green zebras, then it probably will still work, but we didn't dry it with doing it with a different one. But what I think is interesting about the green Zebra is just from a flavor profile, is they aren't sour, because they are naturally fully green. That is what they're that's their color, which also makes it a little bit tricky. When you're trying to check for ripeness and freshness, they go a little tiny bit stripey yellow. There's a little bit more yellow when it's red gold, but for the most part, it's, it's still pretty, pretty widely green and so pretty. They're beautiful, and the flavor is so bright and sweet. And it's just they're phenomenal. I really, highly recommend for everybody,

Ellen :

use them just like you use any tomato salad. We sliced them up for burgers, for barbecues over the summer. It was, it's a very it's very versatile.

Trevor:

And for these, for the zebra jam, that's why I'm calling it now zebra jam. I'm forgetting the green and I'm just calling it zebra might be off putting for those who don't know or for people that don't like zebra, but this tomato jam is essentially two pounds of the tomatoes, and you got a quorum, and you do want to keep the juice when you do that. And then some zest from limes, just a little bit of that. And then

Ellen :

the lime with this particular it really was such a nice compliment.

Trevor:

It makes it saying it really, it really adds it all to it. So it's just zest of the limes, water, cane sugar, little bit of lemon juice and the basil. So obviously, we're also growing basil. That's also a really important component to add that additional depth of flavor and complexity too.

Ellen :

It's your companion. Plant with your tomatoes, you should be planting basil,

Trevor:

exactly, and that really. So it's an easy thing. It was all right there. Once the tomatoes come to a boil, that's when you add that sugar and the citrus juice. You're basically doing it like you're making normal jam for those that make jam, and then you get it into that right temperature and that right consistency, so that it's it's perfect for jam little bit of foam. You can get some of that off, but depending on how jammy you like your texture, you can continue to cook it, then turn the heat off, let it sit, and then can it. Now you can at that point, you can really preserve it in a couple of ways. You can do more of a refrigerator canning, where you just put it in there. Or freezer canning, where you put it in and then you put it into your jars and then just poop right into the freezer. Or you can do a full water bath can, which is what we did. So we like using just longer jars, eight ounce jars. Doesn't really matter. It's all about how many jars you want to make if you want to do

Ellen :

I was thinking, next time I think I want to do a smaller jar, but go ahead,

Trevor:

I was just gonna say, yeah, if you want to do more gifts, we love gifting our peach jam

Ellen :

Even it you want to pop one open, because you it's not like a cheese plate. You're

Trevor:

not really gonna put because it's so good, it is good, but you're not gonna put all this on a full sand, you know, full toasted bread. Maybe you would, maybe you would,

Ellen :

maybe you would. It's a nice little accent.

Trevor:

You want me to do an accent?

Ellen :

I did not say that.

Trevor:

I thought you said something about a nice little accent. Not say that Good on ya Cobber, no accents. Sorry. You didn't want that. I thought you did. I really thought you did. Back to the jam. So if it is for a cheese board, you can put them in little three ounce or two ounce jars, which we've also done, and then, like you said, you pop them open and you just delicious, a really good addition,

Ellen :

delicious with brie, you know, that kind of cheese that will hold up to an unctuous, you know, just a nice little flavor with That snappy jam.

Trevor:

It's all good. Yeah, pretty much. I don't think there's anything that's not gonna work with this. I agree. You could probably put it on ice cream,

Ellen :

and it would be fine. You know, your dad would, by the way, 100% yes, yeah.

Trevor:

He's got a very unique ice cream palette, that's for sure.

Ellen :

But part of this journey with this recipe and sort of creating these things is because we had such an incredible yield. We had such an amazing harvest. So we were really looking at all these different ways that we could preserve. And I love seeing in the pantry these little jars of this Korean jam that I'm like, when are we gonna pull that out? I know they're really fun. Thanksgiving, for sure. Oh, for sure. Yeah, we're gonna put that on a little cheese tray for those lucky folks that are coming over.

Trevor:

It's not the only way that we I mean, obviously we froze, we canned, in terms of preserving in a jammy sort of a way. But I think some of the for me, at least, I think some of the big stuff happened in the oven with the roasting,

Ellen :

oh my goodness, yes, those San marzanos with,

Trevor:

it's kind of a whole. And I know, look, everybody makes tomato sauce. Most people make tomato sauce in various and 70 ways. You yourself, hell have made lots of amazing sauces for us over the years. Yeah,

Ellen :

thank you. It's true. It's one of my favorites.

Trevor:

I will say that roasting those tomatoes, San marzanos, with our garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper on a pan,

Ellen :

sometimes a little halved pepper,

Trevor:

little pepper, red pepper, chocolate peppers. We grew those two red peppers, chocolate peppers, Ace peppers, all of that candy bell peppers, yep, came in really well, putting it in a blender after 2030, minutes in, what temperature are we doing? Usually, 403 5400. 400 that's a whole nother thing. So good. It's makes the house smell phenomenal, by the way. So even if you're not out there needing to eat anything, and you just have people coming over, I would recommend just putting garlic, tomatoes and peppers in the oven. Forget about chocolate chip cookies.

Ellen :

Just do that. It's just that happiness too, that we see everything on that sheet pan is things that we grew in the garage came out of the yard. This is a, I don't know we love it. It's such a nice feeling. And then again, it's so delicious that immediately we're getting spoons out. As those of you who grow know, everything usually comes all at one time. So you have bowls of different things that are ready to be processed in some way, shape or form. Either you can only process so much, right? We had good friends of ours that were here this summer for a visit. They live up in West Hartford, and they also moved to Connecticut from Los Angeles, also previous east coasters, and one of them was from Connecticut, and I think we're in the middle of this processing time. And we had, I had multiple jars that. That were in the fridge, in either they were going to be frozen, they were going to be canned. I mean, all this stuff. And I think I pulled everything out on the counter with a bunch of tasting spoons, and our good friend Regina, I was letting her taste everything in the jars to get her it was a fun moment

Trevor:

Everything was better than the next. It was a really, yeah, just, it's a it's

Ellen :

and they started growing in their yard. They bought a 1920s house

Trevor:

right after, they really started the process. Right after they came. Saw what we were doing, yeah?

Ellen :

So we were just sharing our our process to go. So it was a lot of fun at a time, one yard at a time. So with all of that, you know, Sun gold tomatoes,

Trevor:

that's the other thing. You're roasting those too,

Ellen :

Yes. and they make a delicious soup. They make a amazing gazpacho cold. And I like to do again, that's 400 olive oil, little salt and pepper, nothing else. You can add garlic if you want. But for sometimes, just the taste of it alone is just so, I don't know, just lovely. You don't want anything else. You just want that bring out the sun, gold. Of it all

Trevor:

Crunchy bread, sun gold and a blender, not don't put the bread in the blender.

Ellen :

No, I guess it feels weird. But for the gazpacho, you roast the sun. Gold tomatoes, you puree them in the blender. They only take about 20 minutes. Wait till they start to pop a little bit cooking for cooking, and then chill. And then what I like to do was I took cucumbers from the garden. Another big harvest we had this year was cucumbers, and made cucumber noodles and put that in the gazpacho there a little crunch,

Trevor:

little crunch, a little extra delicious. We also did a little bit of chive oil on top that we made from our chives, and it's an herb, herb section, right? That's super easy. Just blend it up and put it into olive oil and strain it out and, boom, you got your chive oil.

Ellen :

So yummy. So this was the problem. We're making these things that are delicious, but we're eating them. We're eating them, which is also okay.

Trevor:

I think one of the things that's so cool about those Sun gold, those little babies, if we're not using them for the soup, is also the fact that the blender emulsifies with the olive oil, the juice of the tomatoes. That's all you need. It's all it's so game changing for sauce, is what I was saying. You've made all these amazing sauces. But this process of just taking these fresh, ultra fresh ingredients, right from our yard, blending them up, there isn't a better sauce period, like it doesn't exist.

Ellen :

It goes back to everything. It's so simple, it's so it's the fresh, yeah, good ingredients. Simple process, amazing flavor, amazing taste.

Trevor:

It's so good, so good, so good. And I think it's something that was really for me. I say this a lot, I think, on the podcast, and I don't think it's saying it too much. There are those moments like the nasturtium or ground cherry or asparagus that you just have these aha moments, and I'm still having them, and I think that's so much fun, and I'm still having them, yeah? And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that are saying, well, yeah, of course, you roast them and you blend them, and what house do you do it? But for us,

Ellen :

I'll give you another one.

Trevor:

Give me another one,

Ellen :

radishes.

Trevor:

I mean, girl, these radishes. Let's talk about radishes for just a moment.

Ellen :

Let's talk.

Trevor:

Let's talk about radish. I'm not traditionally a big radish guy. I do like them.

Ellen :

Yes, I like them. Not a lot of people on the compound are big radish people. That's true. My mom and I like the radishes. You do like little decorative rosettes. We always we gotta. We go very old school. We make some very traditional rose radishes for holidays in relish trays. Yeah, that is like an old school. I remember learning with my mom how to cut the radish and soak them in water in the fridge and they open up

Trevor:

these roasted radishes. Like them in a salad? Good. I do like them in a salad. Yeah? I think I like them nice and thin, just like a little using the mandolin and just getting them real thin, but the roasted radishes so good. This is a revelation.

Ellen :

Yes, and I had again harvest, leading to, what the heck do you do with this incredible yield? And this was an amazing year for us with the radishes. And so I'm like, I need to figure out different ways to eat this stuff. I was starting to do some research, and people cooked a radish that was new to me. I had never had that before. And again, roasting brings out the it's almost it's potato like. Turnip like

Trevor:

it's a little more on the turnip side, I think once you roast it, yeah? But I think where the real amazing part of this comes in, you've got these little baby radishes, I think it works best if they're younger, I would agree, yeah. You know, they're smaller, little smaller, smaller, I'll say not younger, smaller, yeah. And then you're popping them in the oven. Yeah, they're roasting for longer, I think, than you think. You know, sometimes it's 2030, minutes. I'd give them a good 45 just to get nice and soft. And then the magic comes in at the end, with the butter and the lemon butter and the honey. Lemon honey and thyme. Yes, possibly that's the building blocks of humanity. It may be like the sort of core DNA. I think if you put butter, lemon, honey and thyme on pretty much anything, I think asphalt would taste good if you put that on there, but

Ellen :

that sauce lights up your tongue.

Trevor:

The magic of those flavors combined. Yes, that's really, you're right. That's another one. It's a real Aha, yeah, surprise, yeah,

Ellen :

that sauce is so good because lemon zest.

Trevor:

There's a tanginess to the radish.

Ellen :

I'm drawn to lemon though.

Trevor:

Well, you are you essentially, you are one lemon. Essentially, there was a flavor profile, putting Cake, ice cream, gelato, sorbets, foods, any of us soup,

Ellen :

I love lemon in the soup. So good.

Trevor:

We got to get a lemon tree in the greenhouse. We do. That's a lacking. We're lacking.

Ellen :

I Miss having a lemon tree. Yeah, California lemons. They're good, but no, that was amazing. It was so delicious, and I shared that recipe on our Instagram, and I was so excited that many people tried it, and we'll put a link to the recipe in the show notes, and I got a lot of great reactions. And that also is so part of why we love this journey is just sharing and people telling me their riffs on how they make it, and people exploring it for themselves and being surprised at this flavor and taste profile. It's it's really cool.

Trevor:

And we have a bunch of radish converts now there's, like, the new church of Radish

Ellen :

one friend I'm still working on, but I think I can bring it. So I think so. But in the meantime, we also do have a freezer full of delicious sauces of both. You know, we have base for tomato soup. We have pasta sauce with the San marzanos. I have whole tomatoes. I have cherry tomatoes frozen.

Trevor:

There's not a lot of space left, by the way, good options we have. We do have limited, limited space. It's a good thing that the season is over, yeah? Because I don't think we would, we would have to basically have a room of refrigerators, essentially, which I'm sure some people do out there, have a room of refrigerators. But for us, yeah,

Ellen :

and the cucumbers. I mentioned cucumbers. What a year we had. It was an insane year. Yeah. So we had these beautiful, bespoke trellises made with found wood on the property that were just so fun to watch grow and the flowers and the vines. And I kept peeking in the tunnel underneath the trellises to see it was just like a world in there with the flowers and the, you know, the cucumbers growing. And we did slicing cucumbers, all the bees. And the bees, they were loving it. So great. The butterflies, yeah, Skipper Jack, butterflies were everywhere. It was just so cool. And the slicing cucumbers did amazing, but the pickling cucumbers now, Trevor, do you like pickles? I do not. This is true. I do not. Yeah, my poor, poor husband, yeah. As I got into some deep

Trevor:

she got into some real pickling situations here. Some real situations. There was an incident with a broken jar of pickles in my childhood, which has scarred you for life. Smell of it has kind of scarred me for life. So I think it's, yeah, it's, it's, unfortunately, not my favorite flavor. However, if I was a fan of dill pickles, yes, I would be an enormous fan of yours, because they were delicious. I did try them, and I did, like, very proud of you for trying did I did try them, because I always try, and

Ellen :

you have to be a good role model for your child

Trevor:

I do for my small child who likes less things than I do by a lot. So I think it was a wonderful, wonderful thing everybody that we gave those pickles too, because we gave jars and jars of them away, which is so fun. They love them. Hardcore.

Ellen :

Yeah. And you know, if you haven't done a refrigerator pickle, it's such an easy brining process with water and sugar and white vinegar, and once you make the brine, you're really stuffing as much of those sliced. Cucumbers you can into your mason jar, and along with coriander seed and mustard seed and dill and again, those good, big cloves of that hard neck German garlic sliced up, fill the brine up to the top and seal it. And you can really keep those in your fridge for a month or more. And then the fun part about that, too, is that the brine continues once the pickles are gone. So you can just take that brine, I like to redo the dill and redo the garlic, and put that into a whole new set of sliced cucumbers, and you've got the whole pickling process starting again. I was starting to get a lot of other recipe suggestions around that pickling brine. I think good friend of ours, Allie, sent me a pickle Martini recipe. I know you really want one of those.

Trevor:

Oh boy, wow, that's a hard pass. I'm not a martini guy either, and to do a pickle Martini that I'm moving on from in a big way.

Ellen :

I'm totally doing that, by the way, yes. So if anybody has any really good pickle brine recipes, you just send them to me. Link in the in the show notes that you can send it to us. There's also, what was a pickle biscuits where you're using the brine.

Trevor:

I'm gonna move on. I'm gonna start talking about chickens. That's all I have to say, because I, this is a we grew other things, but, but cucumbers,

Ellen :

we did it just that was a very prolific harvest. It was bananas, yeah,

Trevor:

it really was bananas. I know we talked about that before, but it's, it was a very big year for everybody here in this in this area, yeah? Pickles, pickles. Cucumbers were a very big, sorry pickle on the brain business.

Ellen :

Yeah. And again, necessity drives invention, right? I mean, you have to come up with and when we're talking about preserving, oh my gosh, the zucchini, there's so we had an incredible year for zucchini.

Trevor:

I think the funny thing is, so many people you talk about, I have extra zucchini. Do you want zucchini? Like, no, no, we're good.

Ellen :

People got here,

Trevor:

We got plenty. No, we're fine. Thank you so much. It's sort of like we were joking with a friend on the train to New York. People are trying to hand out zucchini to common strangers because there's so much zucchini, yes, at this time.

Ellen :

So on the preserving side, you know, obviously zucchini is very watery, so you have to, you know, there is, I'd love to hear people's ideas for water bath canning, of, you know, anything like that, for zucchinis, I tend not to do any pickling, because Trevor does not love pickling, as we have, such as we have previously stated. But we did a lot of zucchini lasagnas with that delicious,

Trevor:

long batch, and we took those San Marzano tomatoes and had an assembly line of zucchini lasagna,

Ellen :

which is so great because they're all portioned. They're in our freezer. So, you know,

Trevor:

They heat really easily, and it's so fast and it's so easy to do.

Ellen :

You can do it in the oven if you want. You pop it in the microwave. There's no shame in that game. We're busy. Life is hard. Sometimes you just need I want something that's really delicious and healthy and I can do it quickly.

Trevor:

Maybe we have it tonight?

Ellen :

that sounds really good.

Trevor:

Actually does sound good. I'm hungry. We're talking about recipes endlessly. This is, this is a rough episode,

Ellen :

yeah, but bring snacks. We didn't.

Trevor:

We did that sounds weird on the podcast, though. I

Ellen :

I don't think anyone wants to on the podcast. That sounds weird, yeah? No, that might be odd, but so we have a lot of that, so that was a really good way. And also we did a lot of shredding of zucchini.

Trevor:

We did some shredding and freezing, which is also totally fine, yeah, so you can wait for muffins. You can shred. We used our food processor to shred we've saved multiple pounds of 10s of pounds of zucchini frozen muffins.

Ellen :

I've made a batch delicious muffins, whole wheat flour, shredded zucchini, walnuts, delicious sugar, but still yummy

Trevor:

when we're freezing the zucchini. The nice thing about it is that it does go sort of flat, yes, because it's you still retain all the moisture, which is fine, but it does go nice and flat and easy to easy to store that way you just sort of have a stack of these little flat containers of zucchini.

Ellen :

Yeah. And again, we try to use reusable wherever we can. And for those of you that bake with zucchini and you're making muffins, you still have to get that liquid out that, you know, you'll have that in a frozen zucchini, but it really translates very well for baking

Trevor:

totally. And I think that's one of the best ways to use that. Although you can put them in eggs. You can put them in, you know, for breakfast. Do a little omelet with little zucchini in it. Just fry down that zucchini, just a little bit just good butter. Get some of the all about the good butter, please. That's all it is. There is one thing that you made, yeah, that was extra good.

Ellen :

Are you talking about the soup?

Trevor:

I'm talking about that soup. Oh, so yeah, that soup, that zucchini soup. Now, if you want to use up a lot of zucchini and you want to keep it for a long time with a soup that is very tasty and also keeps and reheats really, really well, this is the soup for you friends.

Ellen :

Well, thank you, Trevor,

Trevor:

that was a very good handoff, by the way.

Ellen :

That was. And again, ingredients all fresh, very, very simple. So for the soup, you're going to use those fresh ingredients from the garden or from your farmers market. It's olive oil, it's obviously zucchini, garlic, vegetable broth, kosher salt, black pepper, thyme. We used fresh thyme from the garden. Of course, double, triple the recipe as you need.

Trevor:

I would quadruple the recipe. It'll take some time, but it's worth it. It's totally worth it when, when zucchinis come back around. This is definitely a game changer.

Ellen :

Yep, the key for the consistency was Cannellini beans. That's

Trevor:

the that's the sort of surprise there. Now, if you're growing your own beans, certainly you can use them. For this one, we used beans that we had that were canali beans,

Ellen :

organic canned beans, they were organic.

Trevor:

That's right. That's right. People, we don't grow everything. Okay, we grow a lot. We don't grow everything.

Ellen :

It also has lemon juice. As you know, I love lemon juice and cream, or you could use Greek yogurt or sour cream, whatever works for you, or a milk substitute, like coconut milk. That would be delicious. That'd be really good, actually, would be very, very yummy. And then on the top, we did some homemade croutons. But you're gonna cook everything. You're gonna saute.

Trevor:

That's the nice part. It's like it's just cooking in a big, beautiful pot. Smells amazing.

Ellen :

And dump everything, and then you use an immersion blender, yeah, blend it all up, or you throw it in your in your standing blender.

Trevor:

Immersion blender worked really well for us.

Ellen :

you did an extra I think it might have done an extra squirt of lemon on the top and

Trevor:

serving, really, did you that's surprising to me. This is shocking.

Ellen :

And a little bit of homemade crouton on top. It was delicious. Yeah, yeah.

Trevor:

It was really, really good.

Ellen :

And we have some of that in the freezer.

Trevor:

We have a lot of that in the freezer. Thank Thank goodness. We have loads of it in the freezer still. But I think that's for me, that was the part that I thought was so interesting, was that you have this long cook on the stove top, just getting everything nice and soft and getting all those flavors together, you're developing all these layers of flavor and flavor profile.

Ellen :

And it doesn't need to be very long. It's just true, it's only about two hours you're putting on here. It's 20 it's 20 minutes, which is really doable, even on a busy weeknight, if you can prep some of the chopping, because we always know that's hard. You know, you can prep some of these things, very easy to pull together, and then you've got a great meal really quickly.

Trevor:

The other thing that I think was the soup is very forgiving. Tell us more. I'm going to tell you all about it. There were some times in the garden where we missed a zucchini and the zucchini that we got that we missed, because it continues to grow, yes, unless you take it off, by the way, yeah, was like a baseball bat. Yeah. We had a couple of those. We had a few of those. Yeah. So this soup is actually really good. We just did a little more cutting of the seed side and kept the sort of flesh of the zucchini and it actually couldn't taste it one way or the other. Was delicious, totally fine and delicious, 100% so this is a good answer. If you have those extra big boys that end up still in your garden that you need to do something with, they're probably not going to have the same nice flavor if you're doing another dish with it. But for this soup, perfect. So good for the smaller zucchinis, we did a lot this year of zucchini carpaccio. Oh, that's so bring you back. I'm gonna bring you back to zucchini carpaccio.

Ellen :

And on those you want to go lengthwise with the mandolin. Get it nice and super thin,

Trevor:

not so thin that you can see through it. It does need a little bit of a little bit of of weight to it.

Ellen :

And, you know, we like to talk about these dishes that have a wow factor, and they're very easy to pull together. This zucchini carpaccio, incredible crowd pleaser, so ridiculously easy.

Trevor:

We have friends who have said to us, I don't actually like zucchini. Not a lot of people that. There is one friend that we've said he tried it. He said, I will eat zucchini every day if I do it like this. That's right, yeah, because it's so simple. Beach picnic, didn't we did and yeah, and he tried it there, yeah, Campo beach, and it was amazing. It's just zucchini. Get ready for this. It's a long list. Get your hands out and write it. Write it down. Recipe, olive oil, yes, lemon, salt, pepper and a little bit of really good Parmesan cheese shaved, shaved on top. That's it. That's it. There isn't anything else now,

Ellen :

No, you can literally put it together. Other lay it out, and it will marinate

Trevor:

Put it in the fridge and let it sit there. And it is, it is a no fail dish,

Ellen :

and it looks really, looks beautiful.

Trevor:

All the color is retained. It has that little wisp of yellow from the olive oil. It's beautiful. So good.

Ellen :

Eat a lot of that, tons of that.

Trevor:

It was just so good. It's so fresh, it's crunchy, it's bright, it's of the season.

Ellen :

And if I had some leftover from the day before, I chopped it up and I threw it on top of a salad sometimes, yeah, so good. It's very versatile.

Trevor:

Yeah, that was a big that was a big winner for for that dish, we did a lot with that. The other thing we had a lot of this year is squashes. Yes, we didn't do pumpkins this year.

Ellen :

No, so sad. I know.

Trevor:

You love around pumpkin. You love around pumpkin. I love the little white pumpkin. Those were great. We did those last year the house, and we'll do them next year.

Ellen :

We got four pumpkins. I think last year they took up a lot of room. It takes up a lot of space,

Trevor:

yeah, well, we have a lot more area now that we can work on that.

Ellen :

It's a devolving process. I need to find space for the pumpkin patch. Patch brings me joy.

Trevor:

That's the whole purpose of all of this. Is just whatever makes you happy. Yeah, totally. I'm gonna make more of those. But we did acorn squash,

Ellen :

we did delicious

Trevor:

we did delicata, we did butternut and I think we had a lot of good butternuts this year. We did, you know, that was a good that was a good yield. And it's funny, because the butternuts, they tend to take over. Yes, obviously the vine is long and winding, so you

Ellen :

I have a different idea for where we'll plant them again. We were the new bed energy that we had in the garden.

Trevor:

It was very full. Yes, one note, don't plant Cosmos or Zinnias near your squash, yeah, because they will be impossible to move, because the squash will go up into your zinnias and make it very, very hard to get your Zinnias out, and the squash untangled.

Ellen :

Yeah, it got a little chaotic.

Trevor:

It got a little chaos. It's still beautiful, fun chaos, but still chaos. All the same Cosmos,

Ellen :

and the Zinnias get so tall with the raised beds too, I need like a step stool.

Trevor:

One recipe that I think we've done, I made it last year. We made it last year. We're going to make it again this year. That was really delicious with Butternut I mean, shockingly good. Another wower was the butternut squash whipped feta dip. So it was really good. It was really good because this is, as it's starting to really change from a seasonal time. This is the stuff you really want to eat next to the holiday appetizer and fire in the background.

Ellen :

Really nice holiday appetizer for your Thanksgiving table.

Trevor:

And this one, we also added a little warm honey drizzle a red bee honey on top, which is phenomenal. So good. And I mean any, any fresh local honey would work. But red be honey, I think was a really, really good one. And it's not a lot. I mean, it's a couple cups of the butternut squash. It's, you're doing the roasting, more roasting. It's garlic, it's feta. There's also ricotta in this as well, which is, I think, what gives it its really creamy nature, sage, thyme, all that can come, all of those seasonal all that good stuff, and really, all it is is roasting, blending, and that's pretty much and eating. And, you know, our blender has gotten a workout.

Ellen :

Yes, this season. Blender, yes,

Trevor:

it's just delicious. Yeah, little fresh herbs on top, little olive oil on top, and then the warm honey on top of that, that's the jam. No, not jam its a dip.

Ellen :

Very good. I'm mentally making some menus in my head as we're talking about these recipes

Trevor:

so that we can eat them again, yes, soon. Yeah. I'm all for that. Yeah, I'm all for that.

Ellen :

We haven't talked about Beans. Oh, my,

Trevor:

there were so....

Ellen :

so many beans, tri colored beans, Dragon tongue beans, super fun, like looking succotash,

Trevor:

those heritage, heritage originals.

Ellen :

There's a post that we have on our Instagram talking about this incredible purple succotash bean that was grown by the indigenous people here in Connecticut. We're so excited to make some dishes with that this winter, and particularly for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. I read that like salted pork, sauteing with that bean is like a creamy deliciousness

Trevor:

You had me at salted pork.

Ellen :

We're doing a lot of research on how to use these beans and the recipes that we can implement for our holidays, so we'll share more of that

Trevor:

as it as it comes, as they grow as they do.

Ellen :

But we have a very traditional Thanksgiving dish.

Trevor:

Ellen often says that I have. The palette of a 1950s person, yes, because I like Tang, which is true. And you loved tab. I love Tab Cola, my favorite

Ellen :

sad day in the crafts household when they discontinued tab.

Trevor:

Don't bring it up. So I'm gonna make me cry. I like a lot of those kinds of whatever reason. I don't like the era, but I like some of the foods very bizarre to me. It's very weird, but I do love

Ellen :

so different than your current so it's super local, fresh palette, totally. So I had a challenge in taking that very classic green bean casserole and making it better. Gooder,

Trevor:

gooder, yeah, yeah, that's true, because I do like a real traditional fried you. It was amazing. Yeah, it was great. And that was with our green beans, our tri colored beans, yeah. So we do, we water bath. Can those and have them all year,

Ellen :

yes, which is very yummy. So I took our green beans, and then I made my own mushroom soup. So nothing in the can, but I got some delicious I got a mix of mushrooms. So basically, I got a mixed bag of fresh, locally grown mushrooms, or shiitake. There was red cap. There was a bunch of stuff in there that was just really, really delicious oyster.

Trevor:

You mean wine cap? Wine cap? That's because red cap would probably kill us, yes. So we're gonna avoid that. We're gonna avoid that one. I know you meant wine cap.

Ellen :

I did. They are really good, really, really good. Yeah. So made of mushroom soup. Put it in with our delicious green beans. I did have to buy the fried onions. That's the hard one. If there's anyone has a hack on how to make fresh fried onions, fried onions, I know that can be done, but there's something about the taste of that that's very hard.

Trevor:

There's a lot of layers of things that are probably not good for you, that they do to those onions to make them so crunchy and delicious. But it was a big hit. It was a huge hit. No, it was awesome. It was great.

Ellen :

And I think what is so fun, as we always say, is seeing the things that we've grown in our yard and having them come to the table and sharing a meal with the people that we love.

Trevor:

It is the best. It really is the it is the whole point of being Yeah. And certainly, the whole point of being here yeah is seeing what we can bring out of our yard, seeing the different people that we know, and sharing that with them. And that's the whole point of this whole exercise, sharing our joy.

Ellen :

I love that, and we would love to hear what you have been doing with all of the wonderful things that you've grown in your yard, or things that you're planning for your upcoming holiday table?

Trevor:

Yeah, what are you bringing to the table?

Ellen :

We'd love to hear thanks for being with us and having a seat at our table.

Trevor:

Yard to table is a production of Macrocosm Entertainment. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and for tips and more information, follow us on Instagram@stonebrookhouse.

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Ellen Scherer Crafts

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Trevor Crafts

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