When we left for New Jersey last weekend, I noticed a few more baby zucchinis growing. I’d already pulled 3 out of the garden the weekend before, and figured I would grab the growing ones in a few days or so. Yesterday was my designated baking day (in between church & a Fantasy Football draft for my husband’s league), so I trudged down to the garden and started pushing aside leaves. I guessed, um, wrongly. For now I had these to work with:
That’s 11, by the way. ELEVEN. And HUGE. And at least five more are growing. I’ve had trouble with what I thought was a normal 6 or so!
Then out came the recipes:
I used a 9 X 5 and 4 of those cute mini-loaf pans for each of the bread recipes, and a standard muffin tin & a mini-muffin tin for the muffins and somehow got 3 recipes down starting at 8:30 and ending the mixing processes at 10:30 (I got the last ones out of the oven around 11 or so).
I made:
*Standard Zucchini Bread using this recipe. One thing I LOVE about the mini-tins is that I can customize. So I did half with currants & walnuts (which my husband doesn’t like), and I made the big loaf and the other two mini ones without. Quick and easy, this one is incredibly moist–not that I’ve had zucchini bread that wasn’t…
*Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins…these ones worked really well as mini-muffins, especially with the called-for mini-chocolate chips. Totally prefer them to the big ones since they’re so much more “snack-sized”, and are easier to manuever in our ridiculously-college-sized-freezer.
*Pumpkin-Zucchini Bread that honestly, I haven’t even tried yet! But the batter was delicious…
So, I forgot to take the obligatory drying-racks-full-of-food baking day picture, but here they are all wrapped up in tinfoil and bagged to go! (They all blend together, but there’s 6 mini-loaves and 2 Big ones + muffins). But after ALL of that…it only took up TWO zucchinis.
I also sliced and marinated 2 full zucchinis, which I’ll grill and then freeze (a trick I learned from my dad…he’ll grill up batches of zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, peppers to freeze for ready-made veggie side dishes).
Then lastly, I plan to cook with two (I’m thinking a zucchini quiche, and then some fried zucchini sticks with Panko bread crumbs), and then shred and freeze two for zucchini bread when I run out of the stuff I’m cooking now. The rest are going to friends, ’cause there won’t be ANY more room left!
Old-Fashioned New England Saving 