Here are some ideas to make meals from vegetables

‘Tis the season for fresh-off-the-farm vegetables and fruits.

Coast farms, fruit stands and farmer’s markets offer baskets or bags of fresh squash, zucchini, onions, potatoes, green beans, and, maybe, some early peaches if a shopper is lucky.

Peas, beans and tomatoes will be coming soon.

Charlie’s U-Pik in Lucedale and Wiggins is offering drive-through service for mixed boxes of the veggies from 7 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Mixed boxes include bell peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, potatoes, slicing cucumbers and pickling cucumbers. Mississippi sweet onions are also available separately as are snap beans. They also offer bushels of certain vegetables. Last week, they added snap beans to the lineup.

Updates on Charlie’s offerings can be found on the website www.charliesupik.com/ .

Those that “put up” or can produce and fruits have their pots and canning supplies out ready for the pickling cucumbers and jams.

Farmer Browns Southern Farm CSA offers fresh, naturally grown garden vegetables, herbs, turkeys, hogs and more. To find out what’s growing or to sign up for a membership, interested persons can call 228-365-1765. Farmer Browns also has a Facebook page with updates and events.

DJ’s Produce is selling on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Biloxi’s farmer’s market, under the I-110 bridge and in McHenry on Saturdays. This family has a Facebook page, DJ’s Produce.

If other Coast farms are selling vegetables or fruits, please contact me at ayeager51@cableone.net, give me a call at 228-596-1650 or shoot me a text. I will add your information in next week’s column.

Now, that vegetables are here, what to do with them? Good old southern cooks often fry veggies or load them up with bacon grease or the like, making those vegetables less than healthy.

“Sonny Bubba’s Southern-Fried Semi-Low Calorie Cookbook” offers some good vegetable recipes that are lower in fat than perhaps some folks cook. This cookbook was published in 1988 and is in short supply on Amazon. Prices range from $3.95 to $14.95 in paperback.

A new cookbook, “The Southern Keto Cookbook,” has 100 recipes of high-fat, low-carbohydrate recipes. I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet; the book came out in April and is priced at $13.46 at Amazon.

Since squash and zucchini are in good supply, here are two lower-calorie recipes, a corn and squash soup and zucchini cake. I threw in a cold water pickling recipe, too, from www.savvycouple.net/ .

Sonny Bubba’s squash and corn soup

Broth:

2 onions, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely chopped

1 leek, finely chopped

2 quarts water

2 cups finely chopped celery

1 bay leaf

Lite salt to taste

Put all the ingredients into a soup pot and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Strain the broth and throw the vegetables into your compost pile.

Below is what you need for the Squash and Corn Soup:

3 cups of the broth you just made

2 yellow summer squash cut into slices

1 leek, sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 bell pepper, cut into strips

1 teaspoon ginger

Dash Lite salt

2 ear fresh-picked corn

Put everything but the corn in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour. Now add the corn, which you should have cut off the cob as carefully as possible to keep the kernels large.

Simmer for another 15 minutes and taste to see if you need to add any more seasonings. Makes 6 to 8 servings. -- “Sonny Bubba’s Southern-Fried Semi-Low Calorie Cookbook”

Zelma’s Zucchini Cake

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

3 eggs (but only use one of the yolks; save the other 2 for an omelet or something)

1/2 cup cholesterol-free cooking oil

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon Lite salt

2 1/2 cups grated zucchini

Mix the sugar, eggs, oil, milk and vanilla flavoring in a large bowl. Mix the flour and other dry ingredients in another bowl and add to the milk and egg mixture a little at a time, along with the zucchini. Bake in a non-stick cake pan or a Bundt pan that you have sprayed lightly with vegetable oil. Bake in a 350-degree preheated oven for 1 hour. Let cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan. -- “Sonny Bubba’s Southern-Fried Semi-Low Calorie Cookbook”

Cold pack pickles

(For 2 large Mason jars)

4 cups water

1 1/2 cup white vinegar

1 1/2 ounces pickling salt, about 1/4 cup

4 pickling cucumbers, each pickle sliced in 4 pieces

4-5 cloves of garlic

2 heads of dill for each jar

1 teaspoon dill seed per jar

1 teaspoon mustard seed per jar

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper per jar

Add water, vinegar and salt to a medium stock pot. Use larger one if making more pickles. Bring brine to a rolling boil, and remove from heat,

Allow to cool to room temperature

Slice or spear cucumbers

Fill 1 head of dill at the bottom of each jar

Mince or chop garlic and place in jar along with dill seed, mustard seed and crushed red pepper.

Tightly pack the jars with cucumbers.

Fill the jars with brine and add remaining heads of dill to top of each jar.

Tighten lids and store in the fridge 1 to 2 weeks before consuming.

The longer you allow cucumbers to pickle the better they will taste. --- www.savvycouple.net/

Andrea Yeager can be reached at ayeager51@cableone.net/ and Cooks Exchange, 205 DeBuys Road, Gulfport, MS 39507.