Here's a site that has some of them saved from Gran's Front Porch. Here is a link that might be useful: Gramma Owl

Lucky you all in NorCal - we haven't seen a drop of rain in months and months down here in SoCal, and it's been so much hotter than normal this year. Between the bugs and the heat, my garden is pretty much kaput at this point. Man I hope we get something close to normal winter rainfall this year...holding out hope but not much. Happy for you, though, keep going, Nancy's garden!

Well, it worked GREAT. I made a simple clam chowder with turnip, daikon radish, and rutabaga, all cubed about 1/2", in place of potato. Everything else was as usual for a simple clam chowder. Onion, celery, a little garlic, bacon, clams (some canned, some whole), plenty of butter and heavy cream, milk, salt, pepper, a little flour to thicken (which turned out to be unnecessary, in fact I had to thin it out with more milk), Italian parsley garnish. Served in a boule bread bowl for DD, in plain bowls for SWMBO and me. We all preferred the low carb chowder to the traditional potato based chowder, which I'd made last week. SWMBO liked the way these root vegetables held together in their cubes instead of disintegrating as potatoes are wont to do. She liked the daikon radish best. She did complain about the actual clams with shells. DD pointed out that the shells slow you down and prevent gobbling. I felt the root veg-based clam chowder was a little lighter than a potato chowder, in the sense that it doesn't sit quite as heavy in the belly. But that may have been psychosomatic. (Numbers. Grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams of food: Potato 17, rutabaga 9, turnip 6, daikon radish 4. So next time I'll use more daikon radish. It's low(er) carb than the traditional recipe, but has plenty of fat from the dairy. I'm trying to eat less carb and more fat and protein, so this is perfect for me.) Anyway, this is going on the Christmas eve menu. We are doing a big crab feed. We always do a big crab feed. This year we broke tradition and went away for Thanksgiving, to a friend's house in Port Townsend WA. It was a wonderful trip - ferries, food that I didn't have to cook, a cute coastal town with interesting shops, our favorite cafe and a good bookstore, lots of lounging and napping, and one day I set up my laptop, put my head down, worked for 10 hours and pushed through a task that had me "blocked" for months. But . . . This has made us more determined to spend Christmas and New Years at home, with the kids and a fire, cooking and knitting, working and reading, getting the last college applications submitted (DS), and napping, hopefully a good deal of napping.

First I have to say that I actually really like zucchini, and Sol's zucchini pancakes are a favorite of mine and Elery's. I pickle them, I saute slices, mix them with onions and garlic, I make a gratin in the summertime with fresh zucchini and tomatoes, I even make zucchini candy. I like zucchini bread and muffins and even the chocolate zucchini bread is OK. However, I'm not taken with "zoodles", and I particularly dislike them topped with spaghetti or red sauce. I'm not a big fan of red sauce anyway, and I definitely don't want it on "zoodles", it's bad enough on pasta. The frozen ones are terrible, they are watery and soft. And truly, I don't see any difference in the shape of them. Why is a zoodle any different than a julienne or a matchstick or a slice? It's still a piece of zucchini and all the big hooha around "zoodling" different vegetables is completely lost on me. Cut them up and saute them or sauce them or whatever, but calling it a "zoodle" doesn't make it not a zucchini. And yes, Elery has one of those stupid "zoodle" makers. It's stuck on the back shelf because it's impossible to use on anything firmer than a zucchini and terrible to clean. Annie