How to make Zots (AKA Zuchini Tots)

Is your garden being overrun with zucchini? I know mine is! This is my first year in the community garden and for some reason I thought it would be a great idea to have 14 zucchini plants (to my credit I was originally going to have 7 but then someone gave me 7 more. Can't let a good plant go homeless!). But let's talk about my over zealous nature and inability to tell when too much is too much later.

Right now, we have very important things to discuss, like : What in the world to do with all that zucchini? And how to get your kids to eat it (and like it)?

I have one word for you: Zots.
AKA Zucchini Tots.

There is a very popular post floating around on Pinterest right now from Curious Country Cook which I used as my starting point and this is where I landed.

So grab a zucchini and come with me and I will teach you the ways of the zot making ninjas.

Ingredients
1 large or 2 small zucchini (about 2 cups grated)
1/3 white or yellow onion (about 1/2 cup diced)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup grated mozzarella (could sub in cheddar)
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
3 eggs
Salt and Pepper (or other herbs) to taste


Directions
1) Shred your zucchini

Cut your zucchini lengthwise if needed to fit in the chute of your food processor. Or grate by hand. (also preheat your oven to 400 degrees)

2) Squeeze

Lay out a clean kitchen towel on the counter. Place a layer of paper towels on top. Spread the zucchini shreds on the paper towel. Place another layer of paper towel on top. Pat down to initially absorb moisture. If the paper towel soaks through, trade out for another one. Now, start at one end and roll the zucchini up in the kitchen towel. Press down the length of the roll to absorb as much water as possible. Unroll and place the zucchini shreds in a medium size bowl.


3) Mix

Add the rest of the ingredients into the zucchini shreds. Mix it up.


4) Set up

Grease a 24 cup mini muffin tin. Spoon or scoop zucchini mix into the wells and press down to fill the well all the way up.


5) Bake

Bake the zot mix in your 400 degree over for 18-20 minutes until set and brown and very tasty looking.


6) Serve
Serve warm with ketchup or ranch dip and watch your kids and hubby gobble up the zucchini filled goodness.

Ink Effects Printed Chiffon Scarf Tutorial

This post is brought to you by DecoArt Ink Effects. I received product and payment for this post. My project is original and all opinions expressed are 100% mine.

Ink Effects Chiffon Scarf

One of my friends had been eyeing a scarf online that had printing across it like large calligraphy. I loved the idea of putting words meaningful to you on a scarf so when I was given the opportunity to try DecoArt's new paintline called Ink Effects, I thought it would be perfect since the ink sinks into the fabric when you iron it on and leaves it soft instead of crunchy like a traditional iron on transfer. 

Supplies Needed

• Iron
• Scarf (I got mine on clearance at Target)
• If your scarf is more than 30% cotton, you will also need Ink Effects Base Coat
• Words to trace, printed in "flip mirror image" mode
• Ink Effects Paint (I used black and violet)
• Paint Brush
• Pressing cloth if you're using delicate fabric like I did

Step 1: Gather Your Supplies

Make sure when you print out your text that you go into the options and tell your printer to print it in "flip mirror image" mode. My text printed out black but you may want to print yours in light grey so that you can really easily see where you painted. I also printed two copies of the words so I could paint one black and one violet. Mine says:

act justly

love mercy

walk humbly

Step 2: Paint Your Paper

Keep in mind that only what you paint is going to transfer so you want to make sure you hit everything. Let the paint dry for 30 minutes and then add another coat if you'd like. Let everything dry for 30-45 minutes or until it's completely dry.

Step 3: Iron It On

Heat up your iron as warm as it goes and turn off the steam. Since my scarf is made from 100% polyester chiffon, I wanted to protect it from the high heat with a thin cotton cloth. I laid one piece of scrap fabric on top of the ironing board, laid out the scarf and placed the words (note that I cut apart the words so I could space the parts of the phrase out better). Then I topped it with another thin piece of cotton.

Iron over the words and keep the iron moving at all times. Do this for about 40 seconds (I know the paint bottle says 30. I got better results with 40). Remove the pressing cloth and the paper.

You can re-use the painted design several times all over your garment. When you go back to iron for time number two (or three or four or five), use the iron for 60-70 seconds instead to get a good transfer image. Keep placing and ironing and placing and ironing and placing and ironing (you get the picture) until you have enough text in enough places to make you happy.

That's It!

I really love how the texture of the fabric isn't changed so it's not crunchy or stiff like it would be with paint or regular iron transfers. Everything is still super soft and silky. Plus the paint looks way classier than if I had drawn on the scarf with sharpies (which is what I thought about doing before I heard about this great product!)

One of the other super cool things about this paint is that you can paint and transfer anything you want...not just text text. You can paint and transfer from any type of paper, too. Coloring book pages anyone? Next, I'm thinking about designing my own soft book for my son. 

DecoArt's Ink Effects line is coming to Jo-Ann Fabrics soon. In the meantime, you can check them out online here:

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ The DecoArt YouTube Channel

Other bloggers are talking about Ink Effects, too! Check out these other awesome projects:

A Natural Mom's Guide to the Fourth of July

Forget fireworks, bugs and sun burns, this natural mama's biggest fear on the fourth of July is all the crazy artificially colored foods packed with sugar that are going to be at family festivities. Don't get me wrong: I love a cute Pinterest project, but can we do it without tons of Blue 2 and Red 3? (and you know, the risk of thyroid disease, cancer, food allergies and hyperactivity associated with them? If food coloring issues are new to you, check out this short article from the Food Network).

Now, there are natural food coloring alternatives out there. Check out this great looking kit from India Tree (which I have not used myself but it looks pretty awesome) made from concentrated vegetable color. But when nature makes so many beautiful and tasty foods come in patriotic colors all ready, why go to the extra time and expense?

Check out some of my favorite natural Fourth of July recipes!

(remember many of these recipes contain berries which absorb pesticides that can't wash off. Go organic when you can)

Drinks

Left: Strawberries, blueberries and pineapple are the star of the show in this patriotic sangria from PunchBowl.com.

Center: Make a pretty, red, watermelon strawberry lemonade following the recipe from Frosted Bake Shop (is it just me, or does this look like the best thing ever?).

Right: If you're looking for something a little deeper red and less sweet, Good Housekeeping has a great recipe for Red Strawberry Tea that features red tea, strawberries and pomegranate cranberry juice. Make a pitcher for everyone and then make a seperate pitcher for the grown ups with a little something-something added in.

Naturally Red, White and Blue

Left: There is no summer side more classic than a potato salad. Use a mix of red, white a blue potatoes to make yours pop with this recipe from Proud Italian Cook.

Center: Berries are a natural choice for a sweet side. Serve them simply as they come in paper cones to make it easy to mingle and snack on a small handful. Photo from Better Homes and Gardens.

Right: Both potato chips and corn chips come in natural red and blue varieties (though the red corn chips are usually a result of adding tomato) that are easy to find at local supermarkets. Serve up red and blue chips with a creamy white dip. Like the fancy cones? Follow Martha Stewart's post here to make your own.

Printables

Left: Your food doesn't need to be red, white, or blue to be festive! Download the free printables from Le Partie Sugar to dress up your otherwise plain foods. I also love her addition of colorful paper straws to add flair.

Center: Make patriotic little snack cups for pretzels, nuts or trail mix using these printable snack cups from the Mardi Gras Outlet blog.

Right: Magnolia Creative Co. has a variety of patriotic printables available for free as well. I particularly love the hot dog wrappers.

Dessert

Left: Make a heaping cherry and blueberry pie following this recipe from Women's Day that focuses on using pre-made ingredients so you can spend more of your day enjoying your day.

Center: Top your favorite cupcakes with blueberries, raspberries and coconut and arrange like a flag or follow this recipe from Good Housekeeping to make a tasty lemon cake from scratch.

Right: Follow Betty Crocker's recipe for shortcake stars to make a showstopping dessert from your latest trip to the you-pick berry fields.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I hope whether you're a natural mama or you're just starting your journey of avoiding artificial junk in your food that you found at least one idea that will make your Fourth of July holiday a little more festive and worry free.

A special thanks to all the bloggers and women's websites that featured such great content. I was delighted to feature you.  If you like showing off your "as seen on" swag, please feel free to grab a button if you'd like one.

<a href="http://creativecarissa.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiklZr_Hri2zrZPhH-zN8NNyq6pEdZTgy-Rcud5hiRQiD_geRrQiXRwXiydjUqfA42RYEjke7JoQA2_vGlVBh3g7GadFxK3q2nnFZ0yC5AEv86c3o5l36hOBeqz164TxXzugVmQDxje50I/s150/featured%252520button%252520150%252520px%252520copy.jpg" alt="Carissa's Creativity Space" width="125" height="125" /></a>

Broccoli Romanesco Parmisagna

I have a broccoli romanesco plant that overwintered in my garden and was starting to get ready to harvest last week. I ran into a challenge since I didn't realize it wasn't a "normal" broccoli plant until I was checking it out and saw it's pretty, bright green spikes.

I did some research and found out it is closer in taste to cauliflower than broccoli and needs a little extra love to make sure the texture turns out right. I sauteed it first with some garlic and steamed it before adding some parmesean.  My two year old "helped" me cook and was SO excited to eat it when we were done. The grown ups liked it, too. In fact, I just ate a huge bowl of this (and just this) for dinner.

If you don't have a garden to grow your own, you can also get it at farmer's markets and natural food markets when it's in season, which won't be until the fall in most cases. But that's what Pinterest is for, right?

How to Make Broccoli Romanesco Parmisagna


Ingredients
1 head Broccoli Romanesco
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese plus extra for garnish is desired.

Cook it up!
1. Wash the broccoli and cut the florets from main stalk

2. Heat some EVOO in a pan. Add two gloves or crushed or minced garlic and sautee for 1-2 minutes.

3. Add the broccoli and saute for approximately 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of water to the bottom of the pan and cover with a lid to allow broccoli to steam for approximately 10 minutes.

4. After 10 minutes, remove the lid and allow to cook uncovered for up to 4 more minutes to allow any remaining water to cook off.

5. Dust broccoli generously with grated parmesean cheese. Cover pan and turn off heat. Allow to sit for 2-3 minutes to allow the cheese to melt.

Serve it up with dinner and enjoy this tasty vegetable. My one head of home grown, organic, broccoli romanesco made enough for 2 generously sized adult sides and some snacking pieces for the toddler. Although I'll admit that I pretty much just ate a large bowl of it for dinner.

Duct Tape Rainboot Rescue

Five years ago I was so excited to get a great pair of purple rainboots with cupcakes all over them from Target online. My boots have served me well through many pacific northwest rainy seasons, muddy corn mazes, and puddle jumping. Recently, though, I realized my beloved rainboots were done in. The rubber was just too old and was starting to crack in a lot of places. When your rainboots are no longer rain proof, that's a problem!

I'd been trying to scope out some new rainboots but due to my feet of very large size in combination with my budget of very small size- it had proven to be a tad difficult to find something that would work for me. I'd considered trying to repair my boots with pretty duct tape but didn't want to spend the money on two rolls of patterned duct tape only to find out that it wouldn't work - then I'd have even less to spend on new rainboots!

I was so excited to be picking some garden things at my local dollar store when I saw that they were carrying small rolls of patterned duct tape. I figured a $3 risk was a risk worth taking! I grabbed 3 rolls of zebra print duct tape and spent about 45 minutes waterproofing and snazzifying my old boots.

These were what my boots looked like before:

This is what they look like now:

Some tips on rescuing your rainboots with duct tape:

• This should go without saying but: Start with clean boots. Tape sticks better to clean boots and will make them more waterproof.
• If you're using patterned duct tape, over estimate how much you'll use and buy accordingly. I ended up needing close to 30 yards for mine (3 dollar store rolls).
• Use the good stuff underneath. Use high quality tape (silver duct tape is fine) you already have on hand to patch holes and reinforce weak areas or seams first. The pretty stuff will cover it up anyway.
• Wear your boots while you tape the foot area. Especially if they are already a bit snug
• If your existing trim is in good shape, don't cover it up. Work around it and use it as your guide (like I did with the purple parts in my photos).
• Work in pieces. Tear off strips and layer them in different directions. Don't try to wrap the tape around in a continuous piece.

In the end, it's kind of like paying $3 for a new pair of boots! Plus now the old ones didn't have to take up space in a land fill.

Love it!

2012 Home Garden Update: May

I got a late start on my seeds this year so I'm not going to be able to grow as much from scratch as I had originally hoped.

This is my 2012 seed starting operation. I'm re-using single serve yogurt and food cups and colored craft sticks from my dollar store.

Two weeks later...

I'm working on filling in the front of my courtyard with white and purple sweet alyssum. I'm hoping it will fill in nicely and re-seed on its own so that I can have some low maintenance flowers. I'm also seed starting some candytuft, aubrietta and rockcress so that I have some true perennials there, too.

This rose bush came with my house and was cracked out on chemical applications and not very happy when we got here. Three years later, with some love, pruning and compost, it's so beautiful and happy. This is the first bloom of the season. I have lots of buds waiting to burst open, and I'm hoping to make rose petal vinegar and rose petal jelly.

The aphids have arrived a bit early this year. I bought a small package of live ladybugs and released them in my garden overnight. This is the first year I've used ladybugs and was surprised that since releasing them, I haven't found a single ladybug on my rosebush (where aphids tend to congregate) but I can almost always count on finding at least two hanging out on my lavender plant (which as far as I can tell is pretty pest free) at any given time.

My container strawberries are blooming. I followed my own advice on how to increase yield by plucking off the first flowers and berries of the year to get a better yield. They are re-generating large beautiful berries now and hopefully in my June update, I'll have ripe red strawberry pictures to share.

Gardening Quick Tip: Strawberries

Oh, the first strawberry flowers of the season! I get so excited when I see them because sweet fresh berries are just around the corner.

What can you do to help increase your berry yield? It seems anti-intuitive: Pick off the first flowers and small berries.

See these? They seem so sweet. No, friends: they are the enemy.

If you leave these tiny flowers, your plant will make tiny berries. Pick off the first tiny berries and flowers and your plant will think it's under attack and respond by making even more and bigger berries....which means more strawberry shortcake for you. You're welcome.

Documenting Two

I love the idea of taking time each year to document likes along with ages on photos. This is my latest creation with a picture taken at my son's second birthday party at the farm.

How I Did it:
First I uploaded the original to Pixlr-o-matic (PS Love that site! Plus it's an iphone ap as well.)

For this picture I used "Hagrid" color filter, the "Metal" effect and "Flowery" for the border and then saved it to my computer.

Then I opened the picture in Photoshop. I added the text in the French Script MT font in white and added a drop shadow layer effect. I also made painted in a grey cloud behind the text of his likes and set it to 50% opacity. This helps the text stand out from the background a bit more.

Not too hard at all. Pixlr-o-matic really did most of the work and I just had to add some text.

Wouldn't it be fun to have a whole book of these collected from his first 10 years or so? Or even up through graduation?

Farm Birthday Party

Last week my little buddy turned 2 years old. I know every mom says this but it really goes by so quickly. It wasn't too long ago that my little big bundle of baby was learning to roll over.

Here are some pictures from the farm party. Some of them are mine, some are from my friend Niina who blogs at The Niche. Check the watermark to see who did which. I found some great inspiration on Pinterest but wanted to keep things pretty simple.

Ingredients of a Farm Party

Cupcakes:

These were super simple but took a long time to make. I bought a package of pink rolled fondant and used about an eighth of it to make these cupcakes. I rolled it out and cut out some circles for pig and cow noses as well as pig ears. Next I colored some orange for the beaks and combs on the chicks. Then I made some black for cow ears and sheep faces. The sheep were mostly baby marshmallows stuck to white frosting with black fondant heads.

Invitations:

I found cute little farm animal graphics online to make into the invitations.


Food:

I picked up the tablecloth and buckets from my local dollar store. The goal with the food was to keep it simple. Bottled water, pre-sliced cheese, crackers, carrots, celery, dip, pre-made pinwheels, pretzels and 7 layer dip. I also made a large thing of organic lemonade from Frontier Naturals. The label is written on contact paper to make it easily removable.

Farm!
We found a great farm near us that had lots of animals available for visiting. They let us feed a baby cow her bottle, play with some old fashioned water pumps, go down huge slides and plant a row of pumpkins that they labeled so we can some back and pick a pumpkin from that row in the fall. It was a memorable day and was a great way to entertain kids of different ages with minimal work from me. All I had to bring was food!

A huge thanks to my in-laws who sponsored K's party for his birthday present! Thanks also to Niina for letting me borrow her pictures for my blog.