Good garden eats

Today's afternoon snack is brought to me by my garden! The last of the rhubarb has been harvested, and I might have a new favourite cookie: rhubarb hamentaschen. My Smitten Kitchen cookbook informs me that these are traditionally made for the Jewish festival of Purim (which, my Bible informs me, was when Queen Esther saved the Jewish people). I'm not usually fond of jam cookies, but these are just exquisite, albeit labour-intensive. I burned the first batch of compote and had to start again, monitoring the heat carefully this time, because I only just had enough rhubarb to get by. Really, any other fruit would make an excellent substitute, I think. I have it in mind to try out peaches next time.

After a period of dormancy, our zucchinis have been flourishing. Hubby picked two large ones out of the garden a couple of days ago, and those were only #4 and 5 of the season (the first three went towards zucchini fritters). I adapted this recipe to make chocolate zucchini muffins, because we were short on time this morning. The cooking time was just under 30 minutes, which allowed me to have a shower and throw all our stuff together for a play date across the city.

We've been experimenting with indoor tomato ripening sans newspaper, which some might call "leaving green tomatoes on the counter". It's worked out well so far; we've successfully had three tomatoes ripen thusly. The first two went into a grilled cheese sandwich and  a couple of black bean quinoa burgers, to delicious effect. The next one is headed for a one-dish pasta that I'm planning to try tonight. For now, some snacks are calling my name while my children are not.