Dear Zucchini Diary: Zucchini in the Zeitgeist

Big butterstick summer squash, what is your destiny? Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smelled a bunch of zucchini recipes. The summer squash plants at VHHQ are starting to produce. The crop this year may not be great. It’s been a cool summer in Madison. But I’ve already plucked a butterstick as big as my forearm and a pool […]

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Bottled

MVH fills bottles. First there was brewing. Then there was grainy tea. Then there was transferring the beer to the secondary fermentor (this wasn’t particularly interesting, so I skipped showing this part of the brewing process). After the secondary fermentor, which is a glass bottle large enough to hold the volume of two cases of […]

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The big coverup

Lest you think all I do around here is eat, here’s a glimpse at a pair of clothing projects. I have a beach vacation coming up, and I need swimsuit coverups that are more stylish than an oversized Brewers T-shirt (charming as it may be). I want coverups that go from beach to cafe and […]

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Grainy tea

Cool drink on a hot summer night. After we brewed beer, MVH steeped the spent grains to make a delicious iced-tea-like beverage. He was inspired by a drink he had on a business trip to China. Half a gallon of boiling water was poured over the grains, and they steeped for about an hour. The […]

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Devil brownies and easy jam

Easy raspberry jam is stirred into the brownie batter. I am a brownie woman. Make that a fudgey brownie woman. Forget cakey brownies. If I want a chocolate cake, I’ll make one, thank you. And let’s skip frosting. A fudgey brownie needs, at most, a sprinkling of powdered sugar. These brownies β€” my favorite brownies […]

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Who needs a yogurt maker?

Start here, with a quart of milk and two tablespoons of plain yogurt. There’s more science than cooking to making yogurt. Don’t panic. We’re not talking Avogadro’s number stuff here; we’re talking vinegar and baking soda volcanoes. Making yogurt is an easy exercise. The hardest part about making yogurt is keeping the milk from boiling […]

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