Tag: gardening

What to do with Zucchini?

Marissa

It’s the Great Garden question — what do I do with all that zucchini taking over my garden? It seems to grow overnight. One moment it’s shorter than the length of my hand and the next moment it’s the size of a baseball bat. I usually stir-fry zucchini or turn it into bread (see recipe here), but I needed more options. So I turned to the ever-trusty Google for answers and found several recipes to try.

Do you have any favorite zucchini recipes to share? Link them in the comments below 🙂

Zucchini Recipes

Zucchini Muffins from Simply Recipe  is the first of these zucchini recipes that I tried. They have a really good flavor  — love the cinnamon and nutmeg. They’re neither too dry nor too moist. We had a Lord of the Rings-like conversation here when my mother, sister, and I were talking about how filling these muffins were and my brother got this guilty Hobbit-ish look on his face and said, “I’ve had three.”

Verdict: This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Roast Carrots and Zucchini “Fries” from Voracious Veggie. This is the very best way to cook carrots. They’re healthy and taste like candy. Since we like them so well, we thought we’d follow this blogger’s suggestion and cook zucchini the same way. Maybe I did something wrong, but they were gross. Soft, squishy, slimey — the texture was so bad I couldn’t even tell you if the taste was any good.

Verdict: keep the carrots, toss the zucchini

Zucchini Pistou from Baked Bree uses as it’s base a French version of pesto made with zucchini  as well as basil. It caught my attention because Bree’s pictures are so gorgeous. Mine didn’t look much like this (for one thing I ran out of basil and used walnuts instead of pine nuts in the pistou), but it had a pretty good flavor.

Verdict: I cooked too much pasta, which spread the sauce around too much, so I plan to try this one again and see if I can get it right.

Julia Child’s Zucchini Tian. This one is still on my to-do list. It’s doesn’t look hard, just a bit time consuming. I’m sure anything baked in that much cheese has to taste good, though 🙂

 

Sweet Potato Casserole

Marissa
Sweet Potato Casserole recipe marissabaker.wordpress.com
our sweet potato harvest

We grew sweet potatoes in the garden for the first time this year. I wasn’t quite prepared for how deep and far away from the base of the plant they grow — we cut several in half with the spade and potato fork. My brother started excavating them with his hands, and he proved to be the most successful at locating sweet potatoes. Per instructions we found online, we let the potatoes sit for about a week before using them.

This casserole was the result of experiments combining several recipes last year. It cooked up splendidly with these new sweet potatoes, and I decided to post this finished version. If you use enough sweet potatoes, it has a very nice not-at-all-soupy texture.

Sweet Potato Casserole

Sweet Potato Casserole recipe marissabaker.wordpress.comprint this recipe

Filling

4 or 5 medium sweet potatoes

3/4 cup white sugar

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons butter, softened

Sweet Potato Casserole recipe marissabaker.wordpress.com3/4 cup milk

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Peal and chop sweet potatoes into 1- to 1.5-inch chunks, enough to fill a 2.5-quart sauce pan. Add water fill pan about halfway. Cook over medium-high heat until tender. Drain.

Sweet Potato Casserole recipe marissabaker.wordpress.comMash sweet potatoes in a large bowl. Add remainder of the filling ingredients and beat until smooth with electric mixer. Transfer to a 13x9x2-inch baking dish.

In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar and flour. Cut in the butter until the mixture is coarse. Stir in the pecans. Sprinkle the mixture over the sweet potato filling.

Bake at 325°F for 30 minutes, or until the topping is lightly brown. Serve warm.

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