Just a peek at why it pays to check the plants daily ~ when I don’t, the monsters appear! 🙂
a lovely little cornichon-sized pickling cucumber, and a monster!
a lovely summer squash as it should be picked ~ young and sweet ~ and a monster!
the kind of monster I never fear ~ a giant cherokee purple tomato! 1.6 lbs!
Of course the monsters don’t go to waste – they just have all the big seeds removed and tough skin peeled before cooking/eating. I find with cukes and squashes especially, when they suddenly stop producing, I almost always find a monster lurking, usurping all the energy the poor plant has 🙂
With those baby cucumbers, I tried a batch of homemade cornichons with this recipe — only I’m curing them in the fridge. We’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile…
Happy Monster Hunting!
the summer squash plants… from whence came…. the monster 🙂
Out Of The Garden 
Sra said
I’d be happy my garden is yielding so much but dismayed about how I can use up all these monsters and gremlins!
LOL Sra — gremlins — I love it! I just have to be more watchful 😉
Shammi said
haha! I grew a mutant tomato as well. Do you find that the giant squashes and cucumbers don’t have as much flavour as the little versions, Linda? A friend of mine regularly gives me these giant zucchini and I’m at my wit’s end what to do with them!
I do prefer the squash and cukes smaller, Shammi. Maureen Abood has a great recipe for stuffed squash — you can easily make it vegetarian and if you have giant squash, I’d just cut them up, get rid of the spongy center with overgrown seeds, and make an easy casserole or stir fry out of the same ingredients/spices 🙂 I do the same thing with stuffed peppers!