Easy, affordable vegetable dishes

Here are a few dishes that will tickle your taste buds without increasing your grocery budget. Take care and I’ll be seeing you around…Agnes.

Make refrigerated pickles or marinated vegetables with what you have left over.

Make a brine out of the following: Bring 4 cups water to a simmer, add 4 to 10 cloves peeled garlic and cook 5 minutes. Add 2 cups white vinegar and 2 tablespoons sea or canning salt. Turn up heat and cook, stirring until salt dissolves. Remove from heat. In each of 2 large mouth jars put the following:

A few sprigs of dill

½ teaspoon celery seed

½ teaspoon coriander seed

½ teaspoon mustard seed

½ teaspoons peppercorns

Put ½ of the garlic in each jar and start packing raw, prepared vegetables. I use

Small cucumbers quartered lengthwise; small carrots, peeled and cut in half, lengthwise; green beans with ends removed; small onions, halved; whole jalapenos; and sometimes I add a few pieces of cauliflower. Cover with the brine and let cool. Cover and refrigerate. I usually wait about 2 – 3 days before using. Refrigerated they will keep for 3 months.

Corn Relish

2 cups whole kernel corn

1/4 cup chopped green bell peppers

1/2 onion, thinly sliced

6 tablespoons sweet pickle relish

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar

2 tablespoons white corn syrup

In a saucepan, mix together the corn, green bell peppers, onion, sweet pickle relish, celery seed, salt, dry mustard, vinegar and corn syrup. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Transfer the mixture to sterile jars and refrigerate until serving.

Meatless Eggplant Spaghetti

Mince 2 average size peeled eggplant and the desired amount of onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Heat a large skillet and 3 tablespoons olive oil and 3 tablespoons butter. Add vegetables and sauté until tender. Stir in your favorite plain spaghetti sauce and simmer for a few minutes. Toss with cooked spaghetti or other pasta and serve with grated cheese and a little fresh basil on top. If you are watching those carbs… substitute half a spaghetti squash for pasta.

Oven Fried Okra:

Slice okra on a bias, making slices as long as possible. Toss with a little olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Roast in a 400 degree oven until okra starts to turn golden. Remove and serve.

Tomolives

4 pounds tiny green tomatoes

1 garlic clove, peeled and quartered

2 sprigs fresh dill

2 and ½ cups water

1 and ¼ cups white vinegar

1 and ½ tablespoons canning or sea salt

Wash tomatoes and pack into clean quart jars. In each jar place 2 quarters of garlic clove and one spray of dill. Simmer vinegar, salt and water together for 1 minute and pour over tomatoes. Leave 1/4” headroom and adjust lids. Process for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Recipe for Laughter: Thanks…Daniel…There was a Mensa convention in San Francisco. Mensa, as you probably know, is a national organization for people who have an IQ of 140 or higher. Several of the Mensa members went out for lunch at a local café. When they sat down, one of them discovered that their salt shaker contained pepper, and their pepper shaker was full of salt.

How could they swap the contents of the two bottles without spilling any, and using only the implements at hand?

Clearly, this was a job for Mensa minds. The group debated the problem and presented ideas and finally, came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a

straw, and an empty saucer. They called the waitress over, ready to dazzle her with their solution.

“Ma’am,” they said, “we couldn’t help but notice that the pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker has pepper.”

But before they could finish, the waitress interrupted: “Oh sorry about that.”

She leaned over the table, unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them.

There was dead silence at the Mensa table. Kind of reminds you of Washington D.C. or Ottawa Canada, doesn’t it?

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