6 Favorite Zucchini recipes

July 26, 2012 By Filed Under: Cooking ~ baking ~ recipes~food, zucchini

It’s zucchini time!  Every year we get so many of these delicious vegetables.Smile with tongue out This year they seem extra hard to get rid of, I can’t even give them away. So I had to get busy in the kitchen cooking them up. Here are 6 of my favorite zucchini recipes that I make every year.

Zucchini cobbler, honestly, it tastes like apple cobbler! Warm with ice cream it’s so yummy!

zucchini cobbbler

Peel and cut up about 8 cups of zucchini. If they’re large and have big seeds, I remove the seeds. Smaller zucchini have small and softer seed so you don’t need to remove them.   Put in a pan with 1 cup sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to your taste and 3T lemon juice.  I like lots of cinnamon, about 2 T. Cook until soft.

Make crumbs by combining 4 c flour and 2 c sugar, cut in 1 1/2 c cold butter, stir 1/2 c into the cooked zucchini mixture. Press about half into bottom of a 9 x 13” pan, spread zucchini over and add remaining crumbs on top.  Bake @ 375 for 35-40 minutes. This freezes well for the holiday season.

Ricotta stuffed zucchini, rich and delicious! This recipe is a little different because it doesn’t use ground meat.

zucchini stuffed

Cut a medium sized zucchini in half lengthwise and scoop out as much as you can but still leave a sturdy shell.  Sauté a medium onion in olive oil. Chop up what you scooped out and add it to the sautéed onions. Cook until liquid is gone. Cool, then add in 3/4 c ricotta cheese, 1 cup of corn kernels and 1/4 c parmesan cheese.  Salt and pepper. Mound filling in zucchini and sprinkle 1/4 c parmesan on top.  Bake 350 for 35 minutes.

This is really good. The corn adds just a little sweetness.

Zucchini pasta sauce, a favorite at our house. Click the following pictures to go to the recipes.

zuchini pasta

Chocolate Zucchini cake, we love this! It’s moist and gooey. So good!

zucchini cake

Zucchini relish, it tastes just like pickle relish and makes a great little gift too.

zucchini relish

A great zucchini bread recipes is zucchini bread with pineapple or pears.

pineapple pear zucchini bread

zucchini page 5

What do you make with zucchini? Got any good casserole recipes? I really need a few new recipes because I gotta use them up!

 

 

Thanks for visiting! Debbie (((xx)))

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, gardening

August 18, 2011 By Filed Under: Cooking ~ baking ~ recipes~food, food, foods, Gardening, gardening plants, home canning, peaches, tomato, zucchini

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We plant a garden every year and I have to admit, this year, our garden is a mess. Between too much rain, no rain, pesky insects and rabbits, it’s looking pretty bad.

Despite all that, we are still getting some vegetables. Not as much as we have in past years, but still plenty for us. Our neighbors must be wondering why they aren’t getting many tomatoes or zucchini from us this year.

The GOOD.     We got some absolutely delicious cantaloupe, there were plenty of zucchini for making relish and my husband got plenty of his beloved chili peppers. And I had a burst of energy and actually put up some peach preserves. Put up means canned around these parts.

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The BAD.  Cracked and split is how almost all the tomatoes look and an insect is eating them up right on the vine. It has to be insects or birds because rabbits can’t reach that high. Next year I guess we’ll spray them.  We never have before and always got nice looking tomatoes.

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The UGLY. This year I tried a new tomato, Black Krim. The pictures don’t show just how ugly they are. When cut open, the edges are black and I thought rotten, but boy are they loaded with a rich tomato flavor and not rotten at all…..just ugly.

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We planted a couple rows of green beans and  harvested about…….four! That’s four beans. I saw that the plants didn’t have many blooms on them and sure enough it was rabbits. Our garden is completely surrounded by wire fencing but baby rabbits still get in and had a grand smorgasbord. We didn’t see them because they hid in the zucchini plants.Bunny

Next year a new fence will be the first project on the list………unless Clint Eastwood shows up.

 

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How does your garden grow this year?

Debbie (((xx)))

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Got zucchini? Make zucchini relish, home canning

August 3, 2011 By Filed Under: Cooking ~ baking ~ recipes, Cooking ~ baking ~ recipes~food, home canning, zucchini

If you’ve ever planted zucchini, got tired of zucchini bread and your friends and neighbors just won’t take any more, why not try something like zucchini relish?   Don’t be afraid to try canning, it’s not hard at all.
For the recipe you’ll need 4 quart grated zucchini, (about 4 medium to large zucchini) and 4 grated onions.
A food processor really speeds up this recipe, but you could grate the vegetables with a hand grater. I like to cut the zucchini into large chunks and scrap out some of the large seeds from the fat end.
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I had a red and yellow bell pepper so I added them too for a little extra color. You could add some hot peppers if you like a little kick in your relish.
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Grate up all your pretty vegetables.
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When all the ingredients are grated it looks like this.4Next,  pour  1/2 cup of salt over grated vegetables and let stand 20 minutes, then drain thoroughly.

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Combine in a large pot;
3 cups vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard, 2 tablespoons mustard seed, 5 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon turmeric and 1 tablespoon celery seed. Bring to a boil then add the grated ingredients and boil lightly for about 7 minutes.
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Now it’s time to jar it up. canning-pantry_2167_45040424You’ll need jars, lids and rings which you can buy in a set, or if you already have the jars, you can buy just the lids and rings.

Wash the jars and then sterilize. I  boil mine, but you can put them in the oven to get them nice and hot. The lids must be hot too and make sure the rings are really clean.
The rims of the jars must not have any chips or cracks or food bits so wiping the rims after filling is a must.
I remove one jar at a time from the hot water, fill it, leaving about 1/2 inch headspace, wipe the rim and add a lid and ring.
Since there is so much liquid, I used a slotted spoon to fill the jars and then a small sieve to get all the bits out of the liquid. I discard any leftover liquid.

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Now just wait for the sweet sound of lids a-popping which means the jars are sealed.Thumbs up The lid will be slightly concave if it’s sealed.
How do you use up all your garden zucchini?
If you have any canning tips or tricks I’d love to hear them. I’m thinking of making peach preserves this year too.Smile

Added to Show and Share day at Just a Girl.

Debbie (((xx)))

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