When a friend gave me a 20-pound box of zucchini, I was in an upper ring of Zucchini Heaven.
First, I dug through my mother's old Farm Journal canning book and made a double batch of what are basically zucchini bread-and-butter pickles, a little sweet, with the fragrance of celery and mustard seeds. From another canning book, I followed (loosely) a recipe for zucchini chow chow. Then I had to get really creative.
It turns out zucchini works for every meal of the day. For a Saturday breakfast, we had zucchini pancakes from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything." I squeezed out excess liquid before mixing in the other ingredients and let the mixture sit a few minutes before forming the cakes. It was a quick and easy breakfast with a little low-fat yogurt on the side.
At lunch, we put some of those zucchini pickles and relish on our sandwiches. (I also love to grill a couple zucchini cut into quarter-inch slabs, which I can keep in the refrigerator for salads during the week.)
I searched through the kitchen gadgets at TJ Maxx until I found a spiralizer, one of those cutters that turns vegetables into curly strands, for less than 10 bucks. That opened up vast possibilities for dinners besides the standards.
One night, we had a simple zucchini salad, cut in spirals and tossed with fresh lemon juice and a little olive oil. The crowning dinner event was Zucchini Pad Thai, with spiralized zucchini standing in for the noodles. A quick saute softened them without making them limp and unappealing. A sauce came together easily with natural peanut butter (which I substituted for the ketchup called for in the recipe), fish sauce, and a few other ingredients I always have on hand. I crisp-fried some tofu as a protein and we enjoyed a tasty, nutritious dinner.
And what's dinner without dessert? I whipped up a zucchini cake, similar to carrot cake: shredded zucchini, spices, chopped nuts. It calls for a cup of oil, but dedicated gleaner that I am, I had some mashed banana in the freezer. (I never let those mushy Costco bananas go to waste!) I substituted a { cup of mashed banana for half of the oil. It made a rich, tender cake that lasted well.
This weekend, you can sneak those zucchini onto your neighbor's porch if you'd like. But if you keep them for yourself, there's plenty you can do with them.
