dill | It's Still Life

It’s July, so that means the garden is producing. I spent the morning in the kitchen. The first thing I did was made 2 batches of zucchini bread. In the past I used my food processor to chop up the zucchini. It was time-consuming, and I usually ended up with small chunks. It worked, but once in a while you would find a piece of zucchini in the bread. I decided to grind it in my Vitamix. Yes…smooth, creamy zucchini. Perfect for the bread. It turned out delicious.

For those of you that know that I have reduced my sugar intake, the zucchini bread was my normal zucchini bread recipe with 1 3/4 cups sugar. I will probably eat a small piece, but it is more for my boys. They are 18 and 15. They aren’t on the no sugar bandwagon, so I still make them their yummy treats. They are making some changes in the diet, but not as much and Big M and I are doing.

I had heard about coconut butter, so I decide to make my own. I used about 2 1/3 cups shredded coconut that was not defatted. I ground it in my Vitamix. The butter turned out yummy.

Since that was a success I put two cups of cashews in my Vitamix and made cashew butter. Ok, this was even more of a success. Everyone loved it.

I then went back to coconut. I had just purchased a container of coconut cream. We are moving away from dairy. We found a big chunk of coconut at the bottom. So I decide to try my Vitamix. Failure. It ground it up but it made it a very weird texture almost curdled looking. Won’t be doing that again. I need to find out why the chunk was at the bottom and what to do about it. Anyone else use coconut cream?

Our dill was looking beautiful, so I had pick dill and dried it for a little over 2 hours. Normally I scrunch it up with my hands and spend time picking out the larger pieces. It can be time-consuming. Out came the Vitamix again. I ground it briefly, and it looked like a course powder…no large pieces of stem left. Quick and easy. Now I have dill for the remainder of the year.

I was done around noon. I was hungry. Since I had my Vitamix out I decided to make a green smoothie. I had just picked up some rainbow chard from our CSA. It looked yummy. Never have eaten rainbow chard before. I added a couple of leaves without the stocks into my smoothie.

It turned out delicious. It was slightly more bitter than kale when I took the first couple of sips. However, I got used to it and enjoyed my healthy, green smoothie.

It was a productive morning in my kitchen. It is official. I am hooked on my Vitamix. It can do anything I seem to need in the kitchen, except the dishes.

We use the herb, dill in our cooking, but it only grows for a short time in our garden. So during the summer, I dry dill. Here is a small patch of our dill.

In case you haven’t seen a dill plant before, this on is a small plant just growing. To pick dill just pull the tender leaves off the plant. You don’t want the stalks.

Then wash it and lay it on a dehydrator.

It depends on how much I have as to how thick I lay it on each tray. The thicker it is, the longer it takes to dry. This thick took about 2 hours with my dehydrator.

You can actually leave it sitting out for a few days to dry, but it will turn a brownish green…still usable but not as appealing. I like to use a dehydrator. It is quicker and the lush green remains.