Well folks, it''s that time of the year again. Mid summer and the gardens are all bursting with fresh vegetables. Now if you are like me you were smart enough NOT to plant your own garden. Knowing that my neighbors, all of whom are at least twenty years younger than me, have all planted massive vegetable gardens all I have to do is be patient and I will be the recipient of many, varied veggies before too long.
So far this summer we have received a large bag of fresh string beans, a bunch of onions and several luscious tomatoes. All of these veggies are so flavorful and nothing like the nasty produce that comes from our grocery stores. These vegetables have all ripened on the vine or in the ground and not in the back of an eighteen wheeler that's been driving from California for a week.
Now The Man and I aren't very good at eating vegetables each day. If it doesn't come in the form of ice cream or a donut The Man is not going to go near it. I have yet to find broccoli ice cream or string bean donuts. (We DO eat carrot cake but I really don't think that counts as a vegetable.)
ANY WAY . . . Last weekend our neighbor with the HUGE garden showed up on our door step with two of the LARGEST zucchini I have ever seen in my life. I mean these things were thicker then a football and twice as long. They were B I G !!!! with a capital "B". Of course I thanked the bearer of these monsters and then proceeded to place them on the kitchen counter until I could decide what in Heaven's name I was going to do with them. I started researching recipes on my computer and came up with a bunch of very interesting possibilities. Of course there was one recipe for zucchini bread because how can you NOT make that when presented with monster zucchinis ?
On Wednesday of this week I decided it was time to make an attack on the giant vegetables. I started with only one of them just to see how involved I was willing to get. I figured once I cut the damn thing I was committed to doing something with it other than throwing it out for the deer to eat. THAT suggestion came from The Man who wanted NOTHING to do with this crazy vegetable. I believe his comment was, "I have NEVER eaten squash and I don't intend to start now!". (I can't believe how like Husband he is!) I was not about to throw out these magnificent examples of God's handiwork so with knife in hand I began to cut.
The zucchini would not stop giving . . . It took me three days but from one single veggie I made the following . . . 2 loaves of zucchini bread, a zucchini "apple pie, (that is to DIE for. I swear you can not tell it is a vegetable in the pie and not apples. This totally blew my mind!) zucchini fritters, and last, but not least, zucchini lasagna. And after all of this I STILL had another zucchini to use.
Today I grated the second vegetable and froze it for future recipes when I am no longer sick of it. I swear this vegetable would not "die". It just kept on giving and giving and giving. If ever there was a zombie vegetable these zucchinis would be it.
I would like to say in defense of the zucchini that every recipe I have tried is AMAZING ! The "apple" pie is my all time favorite. The lasagna comes in second and the bread can't be beat. The fritters are OK but really don't do much for me even when covered in sour cream. I much prefer fried green tomatoes, which we have also been making because even though I did not plant a "garden" I did buy a tiny tomato plant back in May which I planted in an old lobster pot. It is sitting outside the kitchen door so that each day we can see how it's doing. I am afraid the tomato plant must be related to the zucchini in some way because, like the zucchinis, the tomato plant has EXPLODED and we are now the proud parents of a massive amount of green tomatoes. They are just beginning to turn red but there were so many of them that the plant couldn't hold them all. I went out on Tuesday of this week, (before the whole zucchini cook off began), and picked some of green tomatoes. They are delicious when fried in bread crumbs and corn meal. And they don't even need sour cream on them !
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