A-Bakin’ and A-Plantin’

It’s official. It’s really, really summer — not just ‘hey, it’s kinda warm out’-summer, but true, ‘it’s too hot, stop touching me’-summer. As if the sweat on my brow weren’t a clear enough clue, I was tipped off by the fact that I baked my first loaves of zucchini bread today:

They’re exceptionally pretty loaves, I feel. I used this recipe, with the following changes to measurements: 1 cup chopped walnuts, the zest of one lemon, 1/4 cup poppy seeds, 1/4 cup crystalized ginger. I used all-purpose flour and skipped the cinnamon and curry powder completely.
I had gone on the hunt for a new recipe to try, because I’m tired of the taste of cinnamon in quick breads, especially when it’s paired with nutmeg and/or cloves. Yawn. Not summery, sorry. Even with the reduced amounts for some ingredients, I still think my loaves are very flavourful (my mom concurs). I could see upping the zest or the ginger to the original amount, but I wouldn’t want any more poppy seeds — I thought a quarter cup was perfect.
I was going to take a picture of my zucchini loaves next to the loaf of white bread I made today and title it ‘Carb Overload’, as that’s what I thought when I saw them all sitting on the counter. I figured since I had to make the regular bread, I’d do the other stuff while the oven was on — not my oven, of course! No, it’s hot enough in my little house without cranking that up. Instead, I went over to my parents’ air-conditioned abode. My mom took over the oven after me and made pies. Mini blueberry pies. Would you believe she didn’t even know that blueberry pie is my favourite before she started? Along with pumpkin and pecan and apple and rhubarb and sour cream raisin. . . I like pie.
The heat has made me verbose.
I feel that this is the year that I’ve come to truly love zucchini. Last year, I baked with it a lot and made zucchini fritters, but I’ve been really enjoying it sliced up, sprinkled with salt, and cooked in a bit of olive oil in my cast iron pan:

The medium-sized zucchini are exactly perfect right now — soft and buttery and bursting with as much flavour as you could ever expect from a zucchini. I cooked one last night with baby bok choy, peas, tempeh, and brown rice. I tend to forget how much I like brown rice, but I made up a batch yesterday, and it turned out just right.
One last seemingly unrelated photo. I’d only been getting white poppies from the packet of seeds that had shown various pastel-coloured flowers on its front. Well, one of those pastel ones finally showed up:

Sweet, isn’t it? Looking at the flower garden this morning, I thought it almost passed as acceptable. See here. I actually managed to make it look a bit fuller in that photo that it really is — don’t you like how the spaghetti squash vine is taking over? One of my zinnias is going to bloom any day now. Oh, the excitement.
I have a gardening question, and then I will return to proof-reading in the only semi-cool room in the house. Do most cucumber plants (I have bush pickle) self-pollinate? Or do they need ‘help’, like some squashes? A lot of the little cucumbers that had started are now shriveling up, and I’m not sure if it’s just due to the heat, or if they haven’t been properly pollinated. Oh, plants. Getting the ‘most highly evolved’ species to do your dirty work for you. Very clever.