I stopped at the farmer’s market this afternoon. Hadn’t been in a while!
The loot…it’s not much, just gigantic!
No, I did not buy the spoon at the farmer’s market! That’s a cereal spoon.
These 2 zucchinis…the gigantic one. And the regular size one.
$2.
What on earth am I to do with such a large zucchini???
I cut it into thirds.
1/3 shredded for zucchini bread. Yielded 4 cups.
1/3 diced for chunky zucchini muffins. Yielded 4 cups.
1/3 cut into chunks to freeze and drop into smoothies. Yielded 16 chunks.
And into the freezer went the gigantic zucchini.
The other we ate with dinner tonight. Just $.50 for that “little” zucchini!
Oh, and I snuck away to NYC yesterday for a quick day trip to do some cookbook business and a fun radio show…and check out this great price on homegrown zucchini at the farmer’s market down near 19th St. You can find great deals in the Big Apple. More on my trip soon!
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Erin — How do you prep your zucchini for the freezer when you are chopping it up for winter soups? I’ve got tons shredded and frozen for muffins, but do I just chop and freeze for soup or do I need to blanch or sautee or something before I freeze?
I’m sooooo tired of zuch bread! I’m looking into http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/canning/cucumberzucchini-relish/.
Throw some in some lasagna or spaghetti sauce. That is how I sneak it into stuff for my girls. Shhh…don’t tell.
My daughter’s (age 5) favorite meal is penne pasta with a creamy sauce made by mixing a jar of spaghetti sauce, 1 cup or so of sour cream and 2 or 3 generous handfuls of shredded zucchini. I’ve made it twice now and she’s tries to get away with the bad manners of licking the plate clean by claiming that no other meal is nearly as good and it needs to ALL eatin’.
Twitter: SavingAndGiving
August 14, 2009 at 7:05 am
My uncle just loaded us up with a TON of zucchini…. all FREE! I shared some with a couple of neighbors and will spend this weekend shredding the rest for future baking. My favorite? Chocolate Zucchini Bread: http://savingandgiving.blogspot.com/2008/09/chocolate-zucchini-bread.html
It’s so hard to find zucchini around here that looks like your little one. That’s exactly the size I love.
I have been blessed with an awesome produce stand. Their squash are all 50 cents a lb. Cantaloupe 2/$1.00. Bell Peppers (red, yellow & green) 3/$1.00. Blueberries $1/ pint. They have actually just about every vege & fruit you could think of all at super prices. If you actually want to go pick all your stuff from the field, they charge 20 cents/lb for tomatoes and 39 cents/ lb for everything else. I usually get out of there (not picking myself) for around $20 for the 5 of us for about 2 weeks. Not bad. I wish you had a stand like that there, you could probably do lots of different stuff. CA is good for something. Take care, also check out zucchini cobbler from Taste of home, excellent!!! No one will ever know it is zucchini!!
I know what you mean about huge zucchini! My garden is full of it. I just blogged the other day a ton of zucchini recipes. Check em out….I’m super interested in the zucchini cobbler. mmmm.
http://reclaimdinner.blogspot.com/2009/08/zucchini.html
I love giant zucchini like that for baking only – the texture seems weird to me for the big ones!
Great idea though!
oh how i wished you lived near by. my cup runneth over with zucchini! and tomatoes! and real soon corn on the cob!
http://randommusingsfrommypov.com
For those who are interested here is my Zucchini Cobbler recipe:
8 cups chopped, seeded, peeled zucchini
2/3 cup lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
CRUST:
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups cold butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon
In a large saucepan, over medium-low heat, cook and stir zucchini and lemon juice for 15-20 minutes or until zucchini is tender. Add sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; simmer one minute longer. Remove from heat and set aside.
For crust, combine flour and sugar in a bowl; cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbs. Stir 1/2 cup into zucchini mixture. Press half of remaining crust mixture into a greased 15×10x1-inch baking pan. Spread zucchini mixture over top; crumble remaining crust mixture over zucchini. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at 375′ for 35-40 minutes or until golden and bubbly.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, Super Good!!
Hope everyone will try it at least once. It will look, tast and smell like apples!!!
Thanks for the great zucchini tips. I bought some on my Aldi shopping trip yesterday and have been wanting some ideas on how to use it. Zucchini is a new vegetable to us in our house. We’ve been pretty picky but want to branch out.
I had 3 baseball bat size zucchinis and 14 large ones last week, from the garden. I posted lots of recipes that I have been using and some I’d like to try yesterday http://hoosierhomemade.com/?p=2932.
~LIz
I like to slice the zucchini into small, 3 bite sized “sticks” then bread them like you would eggplant or chicken nuggets, and pan fry in a little oil. Serve them with marinara for dipping – yummy, even my 2 YO loves these
I get free veggies from my mom’s garden. I also got a huge Zucchini from her yesterday and yellow squash. I added some of both shredded into spaghetti sauce last night and the rest I shredded to feeze. I shredded in my food processor together, put about 2 cups in a freezer vacuum bag. ( I got about 6 cups total) I first squeeze the water out before putting in bags. I vacuum them and then freeze. They are ready to defrost and make Zucchini/squash patties when needed.
thank you for passing this along! I have a monster zucchini that is the ENTIRE LENGTH of my microwave (where it happens to be resting right now) that was a gift from a friend’s garden. I have been moving it around in my kitchen, just not quite knowing what to do with it. Lovely, lovely ideas. Now, to start shredding!
That’s kind of a medium zucchini, actually.
I gave one that size to my neighbor today. He asked why they don’t sell them that size at the grocery store.
Personally, I don’t know why people want to harvest them so small. You get so much more food if you just let it get a little bigger.
We had one that same size and fried it for dinner the other night. We had it along with corn and tomato salad. It fed all 7 of us with leftovers. For the big ones, we slice it (into circles), and then cut them into halves or fourths for quicker frying.
I usually wait until mine are bigger, though.
If you let it get a lot bigger (extra-large) the seeds inside will grow more and get hard. Those can be toasted and salted just like pumpkin seeds.
$2 for a zucchini–wow! I even cringe at the .79 cent price for the little ones. I get lots of zucchini for that much by buying one packet of seeds and planting them in the garden.
I guess I have $8 worth of zucchini sitting here right now . . .
I see you all are zucchini freezers, and I guess I am new to the whole vegetable freezing. I froze zucchini once and it was so mushy I thought it looked moldy. But nobody had told me what it was supposed to look like. So if you freeze it, is there a time where it is best to use it by? I wondered if I had waited too long with my frozen batch. My main question is, so if I were to freeze zucchini again, and it comes out mushy (such as the shredded zucchini), it is still okay to use for baking my bread? It was just so watery, I thought it would change the outcome of the bread. I’m new to this, but am very interested in learning to freeze and store for the winter.
Thanks for the great site – Just wondering how you use zucchini in a smoothie? When I click on the link for the recipe it does not mention zucchini. I can’t imagine that in a smoothie!
I’m also wondering what the “freezer-life” of zucchini is. I have a moster one myself that I plan on shredding for future zucchini bread, but I want to make sure I can use it in a timely manner without ODing on bread.
Thanks for this. I’ve been looking for a good zucchini muffin recipe. We had way too many in our garden this year.
http://thesuburbanjungle.blogspot.com
Hey, i thought I’d leave an idea for you all! At the Pizza Factory one time I accidentally ordered my pasta plate with zucchini noodles, thinking I’d ordered linguine noodles. The waitress heard “zucchini” and it actually was on their menu (I checked after thinking the linguine looked a little funny and…green!). I decided to try it rather than complain, and I LOVED it! I think they just used a carrot or potato peeler, shredded the zucchini with it, sauteed it in some olive oil and topped it with Alfredo sauce! I absolutely thought it was the most delicious and ingenious idea! Try it!
Just a tip for those shredding zucchini to freeze for use later. When I thaw it, I dump it from its baggie into a metal strainer as it is very wet. Every year a friend passes on surplus zucchini from her mom’s garden and I shred it, then use it all winter to make her Mom’s chocolate zucchini bread recipe.