Market Steer and canning beef

Hubby took off Hannah's 4h market steer, (she decided not to show him this year), to the butcher on Saturday.   We sold half of him and we will take the other half.   We had just butchered a steer back in the winter, our freezers are full, so I'm trying to can up some of the beef we have in the freezers to make room for the beef we will have coming.   We also have half a hog at the butcher and we should be able to pick it up this week or next.   Nothing like fresh pork.

If you don't have a way to raise your own  beef or pork, check with a local farmer, sometimes they will sell on the half or quarters.   It costs more that way at the time, but  half a beef would stock up your freezer and  you would know where your meat came from.  Plus you would be helping out a local farmer.

Hannah's 4h market steer hubby took to the butcher the other day.   He was a pretty nice steer.  I think, if she would have shown him, she would have had a good chance with him, but  he was a handful for her to handle and she just lost interest. 

Some of the meat I pulled out of the freezer to can. 

  7 qts of beef, canned.  I mixed up water, salt and kitchen bouquet and poured into each jar.  I also cut up some sweet peppers and add them.  After they came out of the canner, the house smelled so good.   You could smell the peppers.     Hubby said it made him hungry. lol   I have more to finish beef and some pork to  cube up and can today. 

It's been fair week

It has been the week of our county fair and our daughter Hannah's last year to be in the fair for 4h.   Cowboy, her horse and her did a great job for her last county 4h horse show.  She took 1st place in senior showmanship, 1st place in the flag race, barrels and  cowboy extreme.  Pretty good way to end her last 4h show.   All her hard work and time has paid off for her.

                                                                                                                   

Not too much going on.

I have posted anything for a few days.   Not much has been going on.  Been busy trying to get an early start on my fall cleaning and organizing.  So far I'm almost done with the panty/ laundry room. I should be able to finish it up tomorrow, I hope.  I have a doctors appt. and some errands to run while I am in town.  Working on cleaning out my sewing room and getting it ready.  I plan on doing a lot of sewing this winter.  I need to piece some quilt tops and get them quilted.

I am getting ready to get back into my weekly food preps and start on the 21 day fix challenge.  I need to lose a couple of pounds, well a lot of couple of pounds.  Like a said not much going on, I have just been trying to take it easy and rest up after my surgery.   I have been trying to come up with some things to blog about and share on farming.  I have a few ideas, as soon as I can get them wrote up, and worked out, I will post some of them. Hope it will be soon.

They're here finally and the day around the farm.

We finally got our two little gilt piglets.  They are so cute.  I was suppose to have picked them up last week but ended up at the ER the night before and admitted to the hospital for appendix surgery.  So, I was a week later getting them.   Thursday evening got a little crazy, I had to have my daughter run me into town to meet up with the farmer I had purchased them from  and hubby stayed home to lasso  a little heifer calf for a guy who was buying her from us.   Yeah, as soon as farmer hubby, lassoed  the little heifer calf, she took off and dragged him down the hill.   So, he did a little grass skiing.  Wish I could have been there to seen that.  He is pretty good and sore from it.  At least, he was prepared and expecting her to do that.  They got her loaded up and away she went.  She was a cute little heifer.  I had thought about keeping her and making a milk cow out of her but  she was a Guernsey/Dexter cross and I say, she will make some one a good milk cow, but we have a big ole angus bull, and didn't want to take a chance of him breeding her.   She looked like she was going to make a small cow.  But now, I can start milking old Blossom, the little heifers mom.

Back to the little piggies, they are so cute and tiny.   They are around 7 weeks old.   We have them up in our barn, until they get a little bigger and a better lot fixed for them.   The little gals had some lice on them when I picked them up, I have really never had to deal with lice on animals, but they do get them.  So, I will be giving them a good dusting of Diatomaceous earth and see if that helps, then move them to a different stall and use the diatomaceous earth in the stall they are in.   If that doesn't work,  I will have to come up with something else.  Catching them is going to be the fun part.  I really haven't a chance to mess with them a lot since I got them.  Farmer hubby, my dad and son are going to the drag races today, so I should have a little time to go down to the barn and start letting them get use to me today.

Farmer Hubby ran to town to check out one of our local farmers markets to see if any of our farmer friends has corn for sale today.   Our corn didn't do anything, so hopefully he can round up about 10 dz ears from someone so I can can corn today while they are gone.       Not much of a canning season from our garden this year, but maybe next year will be better.

The little girls. 

The little heifer calf we sold. 

Getting organized.

I figured since I was going to have to take it easy that  it would be a good time for me to start working up a plan to get more organized.  I'm so unorganized, I can't keep to a schedule at all.  When my kids were younger, I was better about keeping them on a regular schedule but since they are almost grown, not so much.   It is about time for us to get back into the swing of homeschooling, and I need to working on lesson plans too.   I figure baby steps is the way to go at first.  Nothing to overwhelming.   I sat down tonight and came up with a weeks worth of meals planned out.   Not to hard, and came up with a plan for organizing and cleaning each room in the house.   The only room I don't have to worry about is our 17 year old daughters room.   She keeps her room picked up and organized way better than me.   My oldest daughter is the same way about her house.  She pretty well keeps it spotless, they must have taken after their dad.

Here is the weeks meal plan.

Tuesday

Baked ham, mashed potatoes, fried apples and homemade biscuits.  

Wednesday

Spaghetti with homemade rolls

Thursday

Beef with homemade noodles, mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls

Friday

Pork chops, green beans, corn and cornbread

Saturday

Chicken n dumplings, green beans, mashed potatoes

Sunday

Beef Stir fry with rice.


It is Saturday or Sunday we are suppose to go to a family cook out.   I will have to find out from hubby which day it is.   I also plan on baking some pies and a cake this week, if I feel like it.  Depends on how I am feeling from my surgery.


My plan for organizing, cleaning and decluttering

Week 1
Our Bedroom.  We have already started on it, hubby has been redoing the closet to add more storage.  I have a bunch of clothes, papers and homeschooling stuff I need to sit and go though.  So I figured, since I am not able to do a lot right now is the perfect time to go though it and pitch it.

Week 2
My sewing room.   Well I guess it is my sewing room and everything else room.   I want to finish organizing it and give it a good cleaning.   I need to finish painting it but that will have to wait a few weeks.

I will stop at  two weeks, to see how far I can get.  Might not work out as I hope it will but I am going to try really hard.  

I also need to work on a place for the piglets, since I ended up in the hospital, I didn't get their place ready or them.  I will go sometime toward the end of the week, and pick them up.  I can not drive right now, so I have to have some one take me.

 I will keep you all updated and hopefully post some pics of what I get done.

What's been going on.

It has been a while since I have posted anything.   It has been kinda crazy around here the last couple of weeks.   I had been trying to get some canning done, not that I have had much to can.   I had several dogs to groom, 4h spaghetti dinner we had to get ready for and prepare and then, on Wednesday, I started getting this really bad pain on my right side.  I kept working through the day, grooming a dog, cleaning, and when hubby got home we worked on building a  large cage in one of the chicken coops, so we could turn out some of our chickens that had gotten to big from the small cages they were in.  By 11 pm that night, I was really in pain, and called my mom to take me to the ER.   They did a CT scan, and come to find out it was my appendix.   So, they admitted me to the hospital and Thursday evening, I went into surgery to have my appendix removed.   Doctor said, it was a mess.  I finally got to come home Saturday morning.  That is two surgeries in less than a year for me.  
I am still having some pain, and my tummy is messed up from all the meds..  So glad, they found it out before it ruptured.  

Before I went in to have surgery.  We had gathered a bunch of green tomatoes and some ripe ones.  I wasn't able to get them canned, so yesterday, I made some homemade tomato soup.  It turned out pretty good.   I will probably be eating on it some the next couple of days, since I can't eat much.  

 Some more green tomatoes I canned.  I ended up with 7 pints. 

Some tomato juice I was able to can up.  Sure wish I was able to have gotten more canned.   

 I thought it turned out pretty good. 

Cleaning Chicken coop #2 and 4h market steer.

Went out today and decided to clean chicken coop # out, it was a mess.  Chickens can be messy, but I enjoy having them. My Grandma Akers loved her chickens.  She would always get her chicken books in the mail and look though it for hours.   She always had them while I was going up.  She had this one mean ole rooster.   He would chase me every time  I would go over to visit her.  I may have only been around 4 years old but I still remember that ole rooster.  For the longest time, I was afraid of chickens, but finally I got over that fear and so glad I did.   We have had chickens off and on, for about the last ten or eleven years now. I guess, I get my love of chickens from my grandmothers.  Both of them raised chickens.

Cleaning out the chicken coops isn't one of my favorite chores to do on the farm.   Today was a hot day to pick to decide to clean out the #2 coop.   It was a hurried job.  I usually give the coops two really good cleaning a year, once in the spring and once in the fall and get them ready for winter.  Then, the rest of the time, I just clean at them.  I have a broody hen and she was not happy with me cleaning out the nesting boxes.

Our coops aren't anything fancy. Most of the time, the chickens, free range and we put them up at night.  They still make a mess when they go on the roost for the night.

I use this putty knife to scrape poo off of the roosts and off of the nesting boxes.  It does a really good job. 

I scrape it all off with the putty knife and I wear gloves when I clean out the chicken coop too. 

Then I will rake it out.  It is dirt floor.  I like for them to have a dirt floor so they can scratch around in it during the winter months and it is a lot easier to clean out, well at least it is for me. 

After raking, I sprinkle some diatomaceous earth around the outside and inside of the coops.  They say it helps with keeping mites  and bugs.   

Lastly, I spread some wood shavings down.   We buy our wood shavings from a local sawmill by the truck load.   It is way cheaper than  buying them from a feed store by the bag.   I think, Sam gets it for $20.00 a dump tailor load.   Which is a lot.  We use it also in the barn stalls for the horses and other livestock. 

This is our daughter's 4h market steer for this year.   Our fair isn't till the end of August.   She needs to get him finished out with in the next few weeks before the fair starts, so he will be ready to go.  This will be her last year showing a steer in 4h.   He looks a mess in the pic,  she hadn't bathed him or curried him out.  She keeps him in a special stall, with fans and an air condition unit to keep him cool so he will keep his long and thick enough for the fair. 

Blueberry syrup, green tomatoes and some canning.

I have been trying to get a little canning done.   We have had so much rain our garden isn't  doing the greatest.  As soon as the tomatoes start turning, they start to rot.  We have never had that problem before.   As far as the plants go, they look great and loaded with tomatoes.   Everyone around here is having trouble with their gardens and stuff rotting.

5 qts of spaghetti sauce, 3qts dill pickles, 3 qts of green tomatoes and  4 qts of zucchini and yellow squash. 

4 qts of green tomatoes, and 3 pts and 4 half pts of blueberry syrup. 

With the green tomatoes, I slice them kinda thick, add lemon juice, salt and boiling  hot water.  I hot water bath them for 20 mins.   Most of the recipes, I saw said 7 mins. but I felt like I should do it for a little longer.   I wish I had wrote down my recipe down from last year.    The ones I did last year turned out great. 

Blueberry syrup was pretty easy to make.  Basically, it is just like making jelly except you don't add pectin.   Cook it down till it is as thick as you want it.   It won't be thick like syrup you buy at the store.  I have some syrups to make.  I wan to make strawberry and cherry.   I use the blueberry and blackberry syrup I made in tea and loved it.   It was really good on pancakes. 

Around the farm and blackberries

 We have a bunch of blackberries this year to pick.  I know there is no way we will pick them all.  We have already put several quart bags in the freezer.  I made easy blackberry cobbler yesterday and canned 4 pts of blackberry syrup and little over a half a pint of syrup to put in the frig to start using.   I use blackberries for cobblers, dumplins, pies, jam and jelly, and syrup. I might try and make some juice this year, if I can get the time.  Garden stuff is coming on and I will have other canning to do, plus my pet grooming business.  I want to pick some blackberry leave to dehydrate for tea.

Blackberry sweet ice tea.  I just made reg. tea, added sugar and some of the blackberry syrup I made.   It turned out good.

Blackberry cobbler, and syrup

The cobbler recipe is easy.  1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk, 1 cup self-rising flour, and mix.  Add 1 stick of butter to your baking dish, stick in the oven to melt while you are mixing up your ingredients.   Once your butter is melted, add your mixture.  Then add you berries.  Bake for 1 hours at 350 degrees. 

Yesterday, after picking blackberries, just a few minutes after being home it started raining and raining hard.   We just got back off the hill in time or we would have been caught in it.   I was working around in the kitchen and Hannah was helping, and I looked outside and the water was rushing off the hill and into the creek and the creek was starting to over flow.  It was crazy, I have never seen it do that before.  

That is coming from a little ravine off the hill. 

That is our road.  I was worried it was going to wash out our culvert. Thankful it didn't. 

It was running fast. 

Then yesterday morning I  thought I heard a noise outside, but is wasn't really loud.   I thought, maybe it was the fedex guy delivering my package, and that was him setting it down on the porch.  Zeus started growling and barking, so I went and looked.   Didn't see anyone outside. I decided to go out and check the mail.   We have to drive down to our mailbox, they will only deliver it so far up the holler.    As I walking out the door to get into the truck, I could see what  made the noise.  A huge tree fell across the pasture fence, right between our stock trailer and horse trailer.  Just barely missing our horse trailer.  Looks like it will be an early start to our firewood season. 

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I will be doing some canning this week.   I hope to can green tomatoes for frying and green beans.  Not going to can as many beans this year as I usually do.   I might try and get 21 qts., that should be enough.  I already have a bunch canned up from last year.  I hope our corn does something, so I can can up some.   I would love to make up a big pot of veggie soup and can it. 

Salting, Curing and Smoking your own meat

Tim Farmer of Ky Afield on PBS - KET video.    Love to watch the show when I'm able to.  I was looking youtube videos and came across this one on salting, curing, and smoking your own meat.  One of our little project we want to do is build a smoke house.   I can remember my grandparents talking about their smoke house, and how they grew up smoking their own meat.    My grandparents grew up in  large families, so they raised and grew all their food.    I wish they were still around, I have so many questions, and I know they would have the answers.  I miss sitting on the porch and listening to their stories.  I hope you all enjoy the video as much as I do.

Make Bologna in Your Own Kitchen

Tim Farmer youtube video on making your own bologna.  Sounds like a good recipe  and I would like to try it.  I can remember my mamaw making souse or hog head cheese.  Not big on it.  Hope you enjoy this video.

Canning 101 - The Basics for Beginners (Episode #217)

Tim Farmer Country kitchen.  I love watching his youtube videos.

Canning and dehydrating time.

I started getting my stuff out and cleaning it up, and  ready to go for the garden stuff coming on.   Looks like I will be canning green beans this coming week and probably green tomatoes.   I haven't been able to get out in the  garden much because of my knee I hurt over a week ago.  I  go Monday for an mri, and  hopefully they find out what is going on.  But anyway, I got the dehydrator out tonight and started dehydrating zuchinni.

I just thinly slice them and put on the dehydrating trays and started the dehydrator.    I have seen where some people season their zucchini, I have never tried that before, but I think, I might try it on the next batch.  Unless something happens, I will have a bunch of zucchini and summer squash.  
 
Having a time keeping a momma deer and her baby out of the garden this year.    She has her baby bedded down in the field in front of our garden.   Guess she knew where to start staying, and they could eat good.  Japanese beetles are awful this year.   I can remember them when I was little and then seems like for a few years we never saw any and now they are back.   They have just about ate the leaves off my beans.   Between all the rain, and my knee injury, I haven't been able to get out and work in the garden, like I need to be.  The weeds are taking over, as well.   Always something on a farm.  I'm always thankful with what we are blessed with and we always have plenty.

I also made some zucchini bread.  I plan on baking up some more loaves and putting them in the freezer.     

Emerald Salad Recipe

My grandma would make this salad for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year and everyone in the family loved. My mom, and aunts make it now. We all still love it. I thought, I would share the recipe.

Emerald Salad

1 c. drained, crushed pineapple
1 pt cottage cheese
1/2 c. chopped pecans or English walnuts
2 boxes of Lime jello ( 13 oz) or 1 lg. box
1 c pineapple juice, if not enough to make 1 cup add water
1/2 pt. whipped cream or 1 pkg Dream whip, whipped ( you could use cool whip)
2 cups of mini marshmallows

Mix jello using 1 cup hot water plus 2 cups cold water. Add pinapple juice and marshmallows. Chill in refrigerator. After chilled until just thick, whip slightly.

Fold in pineapple, nuts, cottage cheese, and whipped cream. Put in 13x 9 inch pan. Refrigerate till it sets up. Serve and enjoy.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th of July.

My grandmother's Old time stack cake recipe

Not sure where my mamaw got the recipe from but she would make her dried apple stack cakes from it.  I remember papaw building her a drying stand outside.  He took old tin roofing, four tree posts, and make it for her.  He had two layers of the tin.  She cut up apples and placed them on the tin and he built a fire underneath the tin.  He made the stand pretty tall, well, it looked tall to me at the time.  I was probably around 10 yrs old.   I just remembered it gave the apples a different taste.  A couple of years ago, I was up at my aunts house and she had this big glass jar full of some of the apples my grandparents had dehydrated.   They probably were over 34 yrs old, she had me try one.  Yes, I was brave and tried one.   It tasted  just like it did when they first dehydrated them.  I was surprised.  They had kept them in glass jars, with clear plastic over it, then a lid.  No mold, or anything.

Mamaw would cook some of the apples down and made almost like applebutter and that is what she would use between the layers of the cake.  I tried making one, but I had to use applebutter between the cake layers of mine.

This is the one I made. Not as pretty as my mamaws was, but it turned out pretty good.  Wrap in clear plastic and let set couple of days, it tastes a lot better. 

Here is the recipe for the cake part. 

3/4 cup of shortening

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of sorghum 

1 cup of buttermilk

6 cups of flour plus extra to roll

3 eggs

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ginger

Preheat oven to 375

Sift dry ingredients together.  Cream shortening, sugar, sorghum, eggs and milk together.  Add flour mix until stiff.  Put dough onto floured broad, small portions at a time, roll thin.  Cut out with 10inch lid or pie pan.   Bake 10 mins. or until golden tan.  Put layers together with dried apples or applebutter. 

Makes 12 layers. 

I have one of her old recipe books that she had wrote some of her reciped down in and it was little hard to read,  If you try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it. 

Our Daughter's Country Wedding

Wanted to share a few pics our oldest daughter's country wedding.   She and her husband were married August 3, 2013.  It was a small country wedding, in a small country church.  My daughter is a lot like me, she likes to keep things simple and she is pretty frugal to.   We didn't spend a whole lot and we did just about everything ourselves and the help of family and friends.

I love this pic of them.  She was really close to her great-grandparents and they both are gone, but she want to have them in her wedding.  She had a memory table set up with their picture, my stepmoms and Kurt's grandpa picture. 

I love this one with just her holding their picture. 

 I was so happy that a long time friend of mine Pastor Scott was able to perform the wedding for them.  He did an amazing ceremony.  He was my neighbor for years, we went all the way through school together, from K-12, and he has been our pastor for years.  Pastor Scott and his wife Michelle, has truly been a blessing to our family. 

Pastor Scott saying  a prayer over them for their marriage. 

Beth with her brother and sister.  Love these kids more than they will ever know. 

Beth with her matron of honor and the bridemaids.

Kurt with his best man, ring bearer and groomsmen.  They wanted camo vest. 

Beth with her Marton of Honor, bridemaids, and flower girl 

Her daddy walking her down the aisle. 

 I did her wedding cakes, I also did the food for it.  My mom and aunt helped with making some food too.   They had baked ham, chicken, rolls, green beans, corn, garlic potatoes, broccoli salad, baked macaroni and cheese, sliced tomatoes,  sweet tea, lemon aid, pop and coffee. 

The happy couple before cutting the cake. 

I almost forgot this is the boutonieres we made.   The guys loved them because the were made with shotgun shells. 

Tables set up for the reception.  We did all the flowers for the wedding to along with bridemaids flowers. 

This is how we did the center pieces, each one was done different. 

 I thought she was abeauitful bride and had a beautiful wedding.  

Another trip to the hospital

I think we are keeping the hospital in business.  Hannah had worked this morning till 11 am  and she came back home.  I had been up about all night with my knee hurting from the fall I took last week, trying to get our little cousin out of the barn when Hannah's market steer got loose.  I had broke down and took a muscle relaxer to see if it would easy the pain some, so I could get a little sleep.   After she got back from working, I laid back down and fell a sleep, next thing I know she is coming though the house crying and all upset, I think Cowboy( her barrel horse) just broke my nose, she said.  I got up, half a sleep, and went to her, blood pouring from her nose, she is crying and shaking.   I had to call my aunt and uncle to take us to the ER.

We get to the ER, sign in and they take her right back. They did a CT Scan and sure enough, her nose was broke in two places.  Luckily she has no facial fractures but she is in pain and having trouble breathing though her nose.  I am sure she will have plenty of bruising.   They gave her some pain meds, and she will need to see an ENT doctor, to set her nose.

I think, it happened so fast, she really don't know what happen.  But she was putting on the breast collar and she clipping it underneath and we figured when she bend down to clip the straps, he must have kicked at a fly or something and got her in the nose.   If he would have kicked her from behind it probably would have been a lot worse.  She a pretty tough cowgirl.   This is the second time she has been kicked in the face by a horse.  First time, she was around 2yrs old and baby horse(a small pony) kicked her, slight facture to the jawbone, four stitches to outside of her mouth and over 25 stitches on the inside of her mouth.

One thing living on farm and being around large animals, you have a chance of getting hurt.  You never know what one might do.    Cowboy is about 16 hands high, probably around 1200 or more lbs, and gentle as they come, but flies bothers him and kicks them.   Big ole horseflies  hurt when they bite.

A simpler life

One of the things we are working on is getting back to a simpler life.   We are always looking for ways to make life on the farm, simpler and easier to do.   Farm work gets harder on us as we get older, but it is hard to just give up something you were raised up doing, hard to get it out of your blood.  We enjoy living on a farm, it is hard work a times,  but I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life.  My husband does work a full-time job and he does work out-of-town alot.  When he is out-of-town working, leaves all the work up to the kids and me to do.

I look forward to the time when he is retired and we can enjoy the farm more.  I would love for us to go back, to like things were when we was growing up.  Wish our kids could experience it.   I remember going to bed at night in the summer time, windows opened up, front door open with the just screen door. You could feel the nice cool air coming in and hear the frogs, and owls at night.  So peaceful and relaxing.   Just sitting on the front porch during a rain, and listening to it the hit the tin roof.  We still get to enjoy that.  Sitting on porch in the swing watching the rain.  I miss the days my mamaw would spend all day baking pies, and the smell of them baking.  She made the best pies.  She always told me to learn to make pies, cause one day I would marry a man who loves pies.  She was right, I did marry a man who loves pies, but he also loves cakes and cobblers too.   I did learn to make pies, not as good as hers, but my hubby like them.

I hope I can share with you all our journey to living a more simpler farm life.   I'm new to blogging, and I'm still trying to figure it all out.   I would love to share recipes, canning, baking, sewing, farm work and animals and how we do these things with you all.

Black raspberry dumplins for dinner.

  My uncle brought me up some nice zuchinni from his garden today, and I thought fried zucchini would be good for dinner, then I remember about the big bowl full  of black raspberries in the frig that our daughter had picked a couple of days ago.  Then I thought, raspberry dumplins, fried zucchini, fried taters, cucumber and onions would make a really good dinner.    When I make dumplins, I always make the fluffy kind, that is what our family likes the best. 

I start my raspberries in a pot cover with water.  Usually about half way up.  I add a cup of sugar.   Sorry I didn't measure anything. I have made dumplins like this for a long time and I can pretty well guess everything.  Then I bring them to a boil and let them cook down, then I add my dough for the dumplins.   I use self-rising flour, egg, couple tbsp of sugar, and milk.  Mix well and then drop in the  pot  by the spoonful.   Cover and don't remove the lid at all, until you time is up.  I turn down the heat and cook for 14 mins.   My grandmother always said the secret to fluffy dumplins is to not remove you lid while they are cooking even if stuff is boiling out from the lid.   She said if you take the lid off before you time is up, you will have blue dumplins.  Why she called them that I have no clue, but your dumplins will be tough.   So I have always done what she said to do.   She sure made a lot of dumplins in her time. 

Here they are done.  I had just removed them from the stove. 

Frying up some tators, with onions.   I add salt, pepper and some Mrs. Dash seasoning all to taste.  

Fried tators and onions done. 

I sliced up some zucchini, coated in oil with a little milk, then rolled in cornmeal,( I like a course ground meal, taste so much better) and  fried them up in my electric skillet.   

Fried zucchini. 

Cucumbers and onions.  When to the garden today and 

 was able to find some nice cucumbers.  Decide to cut them up and added onions, vinegar, salt and pepper.  Added a little water and sugar.  Love to eat them this way. 

 Yum, dinner.