Garden Delights

Hey, y'all, I've been out in the garden this morning

picking me some fresh basil. You know, there's nothing like the summertime

when we have all these great vegetables coming in down here in the south

So today, y'all, I'm adding some green to my cuisine with my hearty garden full of goodness lasagna

and a garden treat, chicken and asparagus crepes, y'all. You'll crave my delicious chocolate chip zucchini bread

And to wash it all down, a refreshing watermelon cooler. So get out your gardening tools, because today it's all about garden delights

Now the first recipe that I want to share with y'all today is straight from the garden

And I'm going to do a garden full of goodness lasagna. There's not going to be any meat in here

And I'm going to use two medium-sized zucchinis. and I'm just going to cut those down the center

and cut them just like this, like half moons. I'm using like one medium onion

half of a red bell pepper, half of a green, yielding us about a cup

I'm going to throw in like a cup of fresh mushrooms and about a cup of carrots

and I think I probably cut up about two medium yellow squash

So there's no fat going in our pot. You know, I get a lot of kidding because I cook with so much butter and sugar

and those kind of ingredients that we love down in the South

You know, it's like I told Oprah. You know, I said, honey, I'm your cook, not your doctor

All right. Now I'm going to dice up a couple of cloves of fresh garlic

All right. So we've got our vegetables going. I'm going to cover them with a little bit of water

Now I'm not going to need to put much because a lot of these vegetables that we have in here

have naturally just a lot of water in them. So we don't want to drown them

And look at that. Look at all those beautiful colors we've got going on

It looks just delicious. And I'm going to let them cook for a few minutes

while I step over here and make that nice cheesy filling that we're going to use when we put our lasagna together

Now, I've got one half of an 8-ounce bar of cream cheese

that I've softened, and I'm going to measure out about 3-4ths of a cup of cottage cheese

Now, if you really want to lighten the dish up, you can use a light cottage cheese

All right, so I'm just going to mix those two things together

And then I have one egg up here. I'm going to give it a little beat, and I'm going to add it to our cream cheese

and to our cottage cheese. And this is going to make this cheese filling just nice and creamy

And give it some body. All right, I'm going to switch from my spatula to my wooden spoon

So just that quickly, our filling is ready. It's going to be very, very good

All right, let's come back over here and check on our vegetables now

Those look great. They've gotten nice and soft. Now, I'm just going to take these vegetables

and I'm going to pour them over into my colander. All right, so in the colander they go

I'm going to give them a shake to get that water off of them. Just like that, and then back into the pot they go

I've left my own because I want that water to kind of evaporate

before I start adding all my tomato goodness to the pot. You can hear that water cooking off of them

All right. Now I'm going to add a little salt. A little fresh ground pepper

This is beautiful. Now I'm going to add my two cloves of garlic

because we can't have lasagna without some good garlic flavor going on in there

All right now let's bring in that wonderful fresh basil that I was out in

the garden collecting. Smells so fabulous. Now I'm gonna tear off about a fourth of

a cup you know making sure I don throw the stems in the pot Okay now we gonna come over here and add that tomato goodness that I was talking about You know if you got fresh tomatoes you can certainly use those

but I'm just going to use a canned diced tomato today. I have a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, and we really only need half of that

but I didn't have a small can in my pantry this morning, so half of that goes in the pot

And now to that, I'm going to add a small can of tomato sauce

And look at the look that it's taking on now, y'all. Isn't that just beautiful

All right, now I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to take a small can of tomato paste

and I'm going to use about half of that. So in the pot, look, even Lady Bird

she is saying, bring me some vegetables. We're gonna let that simmer for about 20 minutes

And when we come back, I'm gonna show you how I put this great vegetable lasagna together

Coming up next, it's chicken and asparagus crepes, y'all. And later, chocolate chip zucchini bread

and a refreshing watermelon cooler. Hey, y'all, welcome back

In case you were late joining us today, I've made us up a wonderful sauce for our veggie lasagna

and I've started layering it in my pan, and I'm just going to continue layering those until it's the way I like it

Now, I've got shredded mozzarella, sliced provolone, my cottage cheese and egg mixture

and the greatest new things that the grocery store is now bringing to us is these wonderful no-cooked pasta strips for lasagna

So I'm just going to continue to layer this. I'm going to come in here with another layer of our vegetables

And I've used mushrooms, yellow squash, zucchini squash, carrots, onions, bell peppers, and it's so good

More cheese here. All right. So in with our pasta

and we're just going to lay that across just like that. Then a little bit of my cottage cheese

I'm going to just dot that layer with that. All right. And I'm going to top it with just a wee little bit of sauce

There we go. A little bit more grated cheese. and then I'm gonna add a few layers of that wonderful provolone cheese that's so zesty and

tart. So I'm gonna just dribble a little bit more vegetables on top of that. So in the oven

this goes at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. So there we go

That's all settled. Now let's come on down here to our next dish

I'm making some savory chicken and asparagus crepes. Now I'm going to start with the crepes, y'all

I've got three-fourths of a cup of all-purpose flour in my bowl

and a half a teaspoon of salt that I've mixed up. And over here, our wet ingredients

which is one and a quarter cup of milk, one whole egg, and one egg yolk

And I have one tablespoon of melted butter. We're just going to give this a little beat and add it to our dry ingredients

Y'all, one of the treats when I went to Europe was the crepes in Paris

The little crepe stands are like hamburger stands here in America. Everywhere you turn, you could buy a crepe, and they were so good

I had a crepe with butter on it and then squeezed fresh lemon juice on it

and it was so incredibly good. And I almost told her to hold the lemon juice

because that just didn't make sense to me. But it was so good

Now I'm going to let our batter rest for just a minute

Let's move on to getting the vegetables ready that we're going to serve inside these crepes

And I'm using fresh asparagus. I've separated the tough part of the asparagus

So in the water that goes, I've got my pot boiling that I've added some salt to

I'm just going to kind of move that around using my tongs for not more than like 10 or 15 seconds

And now I'm just going to remove my asparagus, put it into my ice water bath

so that it stop the cooking of this asparagus because I don want it mushy I want it kind of crispy tender to the teeth

Okay, we've chilled that. I'm going to throw it into our colander

move that bowl out of our way. And let's come over here and take a look at our batter

It looks good. And I'm going to put a couple of tablespoons of batter

into my nonstick pan and we're going to cook these between medium and medium-high

But you can see the way I'm twisting my pan around to cover the bottom of that. There we go

We have a nice crepe on the way. Now I'm going to take me an offset spatula and just flip that crepe and you can see how

quickly and beautifully that cooked. I'm gonna slide that off onto our crepe pan

So our crepes are ready. And y'all, for the filling of this, I literally went to my pantry and my refrigerator

I found some roasted chicken that I had left over last night from dinner

I grabbed me a can of cream of mushroom soup, a few onions, a little wine or sherry

Toss that in there along with some cheese. And I just cooked it back here on the pan

And I came up with this wonderful creamy chicken center for our crepes

Now, I'm going to take our crepe, and I'm just going to spread out a little line of our chicken

Oh, and it's good. I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to take our asparagus

And I think I'm going to use like four. All right, now I'm just going to fold that together

and seam side down, I'm gonna put that into my pan. I've got a grated Swiss

that I'm gonna put on top of my crates. So I'm gonna slip this in the oven, y'all

350 for about 10 minutes. We've still got that lasagna. Don't forget about that

And when we come back, I'm gonna be making a chocolate chip zucchini bread

and later a refreshing watermelon cooler, y'all. Hey, y'all, it's a good thing you got back when you did

because I was fixing to get started without you. Look at this

All those flavors from my garden taste so good with that pasta and the cheese

Mmm. The lasagna is out of this world, y'all. Well, come on down here

I want to share with y'all a recipe, and it's called chocolate chip zucchini bread

I'm going to start with my dry ingredients down here. I've measured up three cups of all-purpose flour

I'm going to add one teaspoon of salt, a half a teaspoon of bacon powder

and one teaspoon of bacon soda. All right, now for our dry spices, I'm going to use a half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half a teaspoon of nutmeg

And we're just going to sift that through, making sure we've gotten all of our clumps out of our flour or our spices

All right, now let's come down here and let's eyeball the other ingredients we're going to need to put our bread together

I've beaten three eggs until they're light and fluffy. Now to those eggs, I'm going to add two cups of sugar

So two cups of white sugar into our eggs. We're going to beat that, and then we're going to add one cup of vegetable oil

And that's going to give this bread the most wonderful, moist texture

There we go. All right. Now, you'll see over here, I've got my grated zucchini

and we're just going to grate our zucchini, skin and all. And I've got about two cups

I've got one tablespoon of orange zest. And I'm just going to throw this in all of our wet ingredients

And I'm going to add a teaspoon or two of vanilla extract

You know, as much flavoring as you like. I'm going to stir in my cup of chocolate chips

A cup of pecans. Let's give all this a quick little stir

And at this point we no longer even need the mixer All this can be done by hand We just going to stir this together

and I've got two 5x9 loaf pans over here. We're going to bring our batter down there

and we're going to spray our pans so that our bread won't stick

We want our loaves to come out nice and easy. Now, if you don't have any spray, you can always grease them, dust them with a little flour

and that'll help those breads come out nicely when they're done. Okay, let's give all this a quick little stir

There we go. Now, I'm going to make sure I can divide this as evenly as possible

So, I'm going to use one of my little measuring cups. Those look perfectly even

Now we're going to put this in the oven. My oven has preheated to 350 degrees

We're going to bake this for about 50 minutes. So let's put in our bread

and take out our crepes at the same time. Look at those crepes, y'all

Don't those look good? All right. Come on, you bad zucchini bread, you

Get in that oven. And why don't we just dig in and taste a crepe right now

This is just perfect for a Saturday or Sunday brunch dish. The great part of crepes is you can make them savory or sweet

You know, we got the chicken mixture in there and the asparagus and... Mmm

Cheese on top. So good, y'all. Coming up next, a refreshing watermelon cooler

Hey, y'all, welcome back. I've taken our chocolate chip zucchini bread out of the oven

I've got it cooling down there, and then I'm working on that wonderful watermelon cooler

I'm going to use the skin of one whole lemon. And over here, I've got our watermelon

Now, I'm using four cups of watermelon, and I'm using the part, you know, that I've pulled the seeds out of

And I have the zest of one lemon that I'm throwing in

Now, that's in the pureer. All right, the next ingredient I'm going to add is one cup of lemon sorbet

Now I'm going to add about a cup and a half of ice cold water

In fact, I had a few chips in my water. We're just going to come back

Whip that together. Now, all we're going to do at this point is put this in the refrigerator

and let it get ice, ice cold. In fact, I have a pitcher ready for us in here

And look how good and refreshing this looks. Yum. It's just going to be delicious with all the things that I've made today

especially that zucchini bread. I'm just going to give that a little stir

and I'm going to pour it over my glass of ice. And this just looks fabulous

I think I'm going to just split me a little piece of watermelon and just kind of hook onto that glass

All right, come on over here and look at our zucchini bread, our chocolate chip zucchini bread

Let's just tap this. Look-a-there. We sprayed it, and it just came out perfectly beautiful

Let's get us a little slice. Now, this zucchini bread, there I go swallowing again

This looks so good and smells so good. Now, I don't know about y'all, but, you know, I love that cream cheese on it

So I'm going to put just a wee little bit of cream cheese on mine. Oh, my goodness

Oh, my goodness. The pecans and the chocolate chips together, along with my vegetables

It's so good. Mmm. My goodness, it's so refreshing. I have so enjoyed being in the kitchen with y'all today

And as always, I send you loving best dishes from my kitchen to yours

Until next time