Summer Squash Shenanigans

Like most of the country, we have been experiencing a drought/Epic-Heat-Wave, so the last thing anyone wants to do around here is cook. Even grilling outdoors is a chore when it is still over ninety degrees at eight o’clock in the evening… Yet, somehow I found myself spending the day in the kitchen canning and baking. Okay, that is unfair to make it sound like someone forced me; I love to cook. In fact, if this whole farming thing doesn’t work out I still have the closest culinary school on speed dial; it is an option I am happy to keep open. So I wasn’t forced into the kitchen by default (as in nobody else wanted to do it) but rather because there were a few canning recipes I wanted to try out, and the summer squash was ripe and ready to go regardless of how hot it was today.

            The first recipe I wanted to try came out of Liana Krissoff’s book Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry and the recipe was for “Hot Cumin-Pickled Summer Squash.” I had never tried anything like it before (technically I still haven’t, I just finished pickling them today, and now I am going to let them sit for about a week before the first taste test...) I can tell you all that they smelled delicious before putting the lid on for the water bath, and I promise to keep everyone updated on how they turn out. The second recipe that I want to try is also for pickled summer squash and it comes from Paul Virant’s The Preservation Kitchen. Both recipes are fairly similar (how varied can a pickle get) but there are some key differences so I wanted to make one batch of each in order to decide what flavor I like better before I can up fifty to sixty pints of the stuff. 

            Speaking of summer squash, we are having a pest problem at the moment. Last year we had a problem with the squash beetles, but this year we have found like four or five of them (nothing too tragic) but we have had these worms that have been boring into the stalks and killing the whole plants! That is tragic. It is hot as hell, it hasn’t really rained in two months, we have been watering our plants with buckets and manual labor, and then poof, one morning one plant is dead, and then another, and then another… at this rate I don’t know how much longer we are going to be harvesting any summer squash, and then how am I supposed to stock up for the coming apocalypse?

            Anyway, after spending all day steaming to death in the kitchen I decided to grill some pizzas outdoors for dinner. Homemade pizza and too much cold beer… is there any better way to end a long hot day?