A Day Off

After four days straight of zucchini & squash, my husband asked me if we could take a break.  I guess he was tired of the veggies?  I guess I don't blame him, but I still had some shredded squash and zucchini to use up, so I decided to throw it in a green smoothie.

I know these are all the rage now, so I probably don't need to explain this, but I will anyways.  Green smoothies include at least 50% greens/veggies along with the fruit.  My personal favorite is spinach, but we also get kale, collards, and other various greens from time to time.  

For this smoothie I threw in most of my remaining Squash and Zuke shreds.  I also added a couple handfuls of spinach fresh and some carrot juice, and some of our plums.  (For the record, the green ice cubes are pea puree baby food and did not go into my smoothie.)

 

Oh, did I mention our plums?  So along with our huge stash of veggies, we also ended up with a boatload of plums!  These we actually picked ourselves.  Well, I picked them and handed them to Josie and she boxed and bagged them.  What a happy helper!

 

Summer Squash Brownies

More sweets today!  As you saw from our previous post, we had a TON of summer squash to use up, so in our search for recipes calling for shredded squash, we found another keeper on All Recipes.  Who would have guessed that these would be delicious?

Zucchini Brownies

For this one, we again, pretty much followed the recipe with the exception of using summer squash instead of zucchini.  Much to my daughter's dismay, however, we did not put frosting on top.  I did let her put chocolate chips in, so that was a good compromise.  

I will warn you, this batter does not look like brownie batter.  It is really dry and crumbly.  But don't worry, that's what its supposed to look like.  Here's a few shots of what you can expect to see in your mixer.

Pre-Squash

Post Squash

My happy mixer!

To get them into the pre-greased pan, we basically just dumped the crumbly 'batter' in, and pressed it into the pan.  It looked still looked really dry and crumbly.

Oh, and we still have a ton of squash left!  More squash recipes to come.

So after the brownies come out of the oven, they don't look much different than when they went in.  The top still looks dry and crumby, but trust me, they are done.  When you first take them out, they are a little spongy and really crumbly so definitely let them cool.

If you are not ok with the top being a little crispy, you should probably add the frosting, or even better, top with some ice cream prior to serving.  Personally, even though they are not pretty, I like them just how they are, and so do my girls.

Zucchini & Squash Latkes

Yum!  I was actually trying to make fritters, but these turned out to be just as good.  My one year old daughter loved them, but unfortunately, my four year old wouldn't touch them.  As mentioned previously, she is very picky.

If you recall, I have a bunch of shredded squash to use up - and if that wasn't enough squash, I added some zucchini shreds as well, so yeah, there is a lot!

When I'm not baking I don't measure too accurately, so I apologize in advance for my imperfect recipe, but I'll describe as best I can what went into making these.

What I used:

3-4 cups shredded Zucchini & Squash

1/2 cup flour

2-3 tsp Baking Soda

1-2 tsp dill

1-1.5 Tbs minced onion (dried)

Salt & Pepper

Butter

What I did:

Mix everything except for the butter together in a large mixing bowl.  If it seems a little wet, add more flour.  The batter should somewhat stick together.

Heat a small-medium sized skillet to medium heat on the stove.  I didn't want the pan too hot since I usually have several things going on at once and don't want to risk them cooking too fast.  Throw a pad of butter in the pan, and then drop heaping spoonfuls of the squash mixture into the pan.  If they don't spread on their own, you can flatten them a bit with the back of your spoon.

Once they hold together and slide around pretty easily in the pan, they are ready to flip!  Here is what mine look like after I flipped.

Cook on the second side about as long as you did the first side.  Again, once they slide around pretty well in the pan, they are probably ready.  Here is my first complete batch.  (Go Gators!)

This batch made about a dozen or so latkes.  We ate a few while we were cooking, so they didn't all make this picture.  My one year old ate them up (as did my husband and I).  

We did have a couple leftover, which I heated up the following day for lunch and they were just as scrumptious!  I didn't add any sour cream or applesauce on the side, but it would have been a great addition.  Hope you enjoy!

Summer Squash Muffins

Time for something a bit sweeter.  When I told my oldest that we were going to make muffins, she was really excited.  She loves to use our mixer - so much, in fact, that she doesn't ask me to bake, or make cookies, she asks me if we can do some mixing.

Before starting, we shredded up one (just one) of our Summer Squash.  It made about a bajillion cups of shreds:

Ok, not a bajillion, but at least 10, maybe more like 12.  We are going to have to find a lot of recipes that call for summer squash...

So to make these muffins, we used a recipe we found from old reliable, aka, All recipes.

Summer Squash Bread

As you can see, the recipe is actually for Summer Squash bread, but we converted to muffins.  It is a pretty simple recipe, and its likely that you have everything you need already in your pantry!

Here's a quick overview of what we did:

Start with 3 eggs.  This was cool since most recipes don't start with the eggs.  Usually we like to first break them into a small dish so that we can make sure that we remove the inevitable eggshell before we beat them. (Yes, I let my 4 year old break & beat eggs).    

Now we beat the eggs - watch out little fingers!

Now we measured out the oil, sugar, and vanilla to combine with the eggs.  My daughter loves to help measure ingredients.  She's good at telling me to stop when the liquid has reached the line (Maybe she just likes the chance to tell me what to do). She also likes to count the scoops of the dry ingredients.   Sometimes when we measure dry ingredients, I use a smaller cup so she can help me count a lot of scoops.

Now after you've mixed all your scoops together, its time for the spices.  I got a little flustered when I couldn't find our nutmeg, until I remembered my culinary inclined husband had bought fresh nutmeg last time he made us french toast.  (The best french toast I've ever had, but I'll leave that story for another day.)  So we dug out the microplane, and threw in some fresh grated nutmeg.  

Lastly we threw in our summer squash and mixed it all up.  In the end, it looked like this.

Sidenote, here is how much summer squash I have leftover.  Pretty much the same amount we started with...

Another thing my daughter is famous for is placing muffin papers in the pan.  She is actually very particular about what color goes where, although I can't ever really figure out what pattern she's making.  After she put the muffin papers in, I filled each one about half full, and then she topped them with brown sugar.  (This is an optional step, but I think it gives them a nice yummy crunch on top.)

We baked them for about 40 minutes, then let them cool.  

Here's the end product.  These were super yummy and yes, both my kids loved them!  

We have so many - about 2 dozen -  not sure if we'll be making them again soon.  I guess that depends on how fast they disappear!

Zucchini Pasta Primavera

This was our first dish made from our huge stash.  Now, believe it or not, even though my husband has a culinary arts degree, I do most of the cooking - including this dish.  Since I recently quit working to stay at home with our kids (and relocated from Florida to Utah) this is our compromise!

This was super easy and really delicious.  And with a minor adjustment, I even got the kids to eat some of it - especially my youngest.

Here's what I used:

1 Zucchini (extra extra large)
4 medium vine ripe tomatoes
1 lb box of spaghetti
1-2 Tbs Herbs de Provence
1-2 tsp Granulated Garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Salt & Pepper

Here's what I did:

Slice up the zucchini and tomatoes into large bite sized pieces.  Coat the veggies in the olive oil and sprinkle with the herbs and garlic (and salt & pepper if you so desire).  Spread the veggies on a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, stirring/turning once.

While your veggies are cooking, cook up your spaghetti per the instructions on the box.

After the noodles and veggies are cooked, combine and top with a splash (or more) of the Balsamic.

The modification I made for my picky eater included using a hand blender to make her veggies into more of a sauce, and leaving out the balsamic.  My youngest loved it - she loves noodles of any kind.  My oldest ate a few bites before she declared she was done.  I'll take what I can get!

Both variations were delicious, and we even had some leftovers for later in the week.  Definitely on the list to make again.

One Week of Zucchini!

Recently we got a huge stash of zucchini and summer squash from our community garden.  And if the amount of produce we received wasn't enough, the veggies were SUPER SIZED!  

With this in mind, we are planning on eating a lot of this stuff in the coming weeks - especially since I know the garden has more in store for us.  In talking to friends, and looking up recipes on the internet, it seems that an abundance of zukes and summer squash is a pretty common occurrence.  Unfortunately, in my family of four I have one very picky four year old, and a temperamental one year old, so fingers crossed, this goes well!

Stay tuned for updates  on this week's endeavors!