zucchini baby

Yesterday my aunt gave me a giant zucchini from my uncle's garden. I put my zucchini child's picture up on flickr and he's now famous thanks to boing boing! Here's the famous photo:


Here he is next to a regular grocery store zucchini, and with a quarter for size comparison:


So what to do with a giant zucchini child? Apparently it's not really desirable to have your zucchini get this big, but he looks pretty tasty to me, so I won't let him go to waste. My first thought was bread, so I shredded part of him up and made a loaf and a dozen muffins. I used this recipe from the ol' Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book that every household seems to have:

Zucchini bread

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup sugar
1 cup finely shredded unpeeled zucchini
¼ cup cooking oil
1 egg
¼ teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
½ cup chopped walnuts

preheat oven to 350

In a mixing bowl combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. In another mixing bowl combine sugar, shredded zucchini, cooking oil, egg and lemon peel; mix well. Add flour mixture; stir until just combined. Stir in chopped walnuts.

Pour batter into a greased 8x4x2-inch loaf pan. Bake in a 350 oven for 55 to 60 minutes or till a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack.

Remove bread from pan; cool thoroughly on a wire rack. Wrap and store overnight before slicing. Makes 1 loaf (16 servings).

I didn't add the lemon zest, though, because I didn't have it. Also instead of walnuts I added a bag of salted sunflower kernels from the 7-11, and a couple handfuls of golden raisins. The result was good. A little too sweet, though. I'd add less sugar next time. And there will be a next time, since this double batch only managed to take care of about 1/6 of the zucchini baby.

big giant smooshed sandwich

Summer time is picnic time. Every Wednesday I try to make it to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for the Whittaker Music festival. Basically, it's free admission to the gardens to hear some live music and hang out with friends. We usually have an array of snack foods...cheese, sausage, olives, etc. And some wine, of course. Yesterday, since I had a vacation day, I decided to make a big sandwich to share with everybody. I got the idea for this sandwich from the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living. Here's the original recipe.

My pesto consists of basil, garlic and olive oil. I added a few drops of sesame oil for nuttiness, since I was out of pine nuts. And salt and pepper of course. I also added some fresh parsley, because I had it.

For the rest of the sandwich I grilled eggplant, zucchini and red pepper, much like the original recipe:



The bread I used was LaBrea Pane Italian. It's one of my favorite breads, and it was the perfect size and shape for this sandwich. For the meat I used cappicola ham, and for the cheese I used an aged provolone.


I assembled the sandwich about 5 hours before picnic time, wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and put it in a large pyrex baking dish, with another baking dish on top which I filled with bottles of water. The end result was fantastic. The picnic didn't happen, though, due to weather. I went over to my brother's house instead and he and my sister-in-law helped me eat the giant smooshed sandwich.