If you happen to have a garden, you may face this dilemma:  Everything seems to ripen at once.  You have a few days where you get the green beans or some early tomatoes, then whammo, you can’t keep up with the vegetables as they struggle to bust loose from their vines, stems and other appendages.  When this happens, how do you eat everything?

Some people give their fresh garden veggies away as they multiply exponentially.  Others can the extras.  I imagine other people try to keep up by creating new dishes and have salads every night to accommodate the lettuce, radishes and onions that are sprouting.


I was faced with this issue a few weeks back when our verdant garden decided to send me tomatoes, eggplant and banana peppers all at once.  Now if you think about it, these are not vegetables you would think to combine in one dish.

But since I picked all of them, and had them lying on our counter, I had to think of something to do with them.  I decided to slice them all up, throw them in a skillet, sautéed them, then cracked two eggs and beat them into the mixture.  As that quickly coalesced, I added some McCormick’s seasoning, sprinkling it in lightly.

Once this was accomplished, I slid it onto a plate, then covered it with grated mozzarella cheese and microwaved it for about a minute.  It was dang good.  I would have never figured it would turn out that way.  The banana peppers gave the eggs a bit of a bite.  The eggplant and mozzarella went together perfectly.  And the fresh tomatoes stood out.

This event occurred, of course, when the rest of our family was off looking at colleges, so they did not have to indulge in my bizarre creativity.  If you get faced with a similar dilemma, it may be best to put off trying these new mixes until the rest of your family is gone for the evening.  Then the kitchen is all yours.

Our family likes broccoli. 
I enjoy telling a story from when our kids were probably 2, 4 and 6 in
age.  We were at a Nebraska-Kansas
State football party.  A woman was
walking around with a vegetable tray – cauliflower, celery, carrots, tomatoes
and broccoli.  All three of our
kids took some broccoli and started chewing away.

This woman, with a look of amazement on her
face, asked me if I knew whose kids they were.  “They’re ours,” I replied. 
“HOW do you get them to eat broccoli?,”she asked. 
“Bribery,” I said, not totally in
jest.

Broccoli is something we all eat.  Our motto has been to try new things
and when our kids were young, we gave them dessert to ensure they’d at least
take a few bites of something they hadn’t had
before.

Recently, I ate a broccoli dish that turned
my head.  It’s worth sharing.  The dish is nothing complicated – just
broccoli, garlic and butter.  But
when straight steamed broccoli starts to bore you, this is a way to add some
extra flavor.

Steam the broccoli heads for 10
minutes.  In a small dish, mix in a
couple of tablespoons of butter with two tablespoons of minced garlic (you can
get it in a jar already diced) and microwave until melted together. 
Pour the mixture over the broccoli and stir it up until
saturated.



You can experiment with how much butter and
garlic to use.  The first time I
tried this, I did not use enough of either, and there wasn’t much added
taste.  I had the dish in a
restaurant and it was out of this world.   You may need a bit more of the
garlic and butter than you would intuitively
think.



Once you get it right, you won’t have to
tell anyone about your kids not eating broccoli because they’ll ask for it as
your signature dish.