Zucchini Explosion!

Admittedly I have mostly ignored our garden this year.  We planted in May and I've weeded maybe twice.  It gets watered automatically thankfully.  So Sunday when we got home from church I walked over just to see how it was going.  And found 4 MONSTER zucchinis.  So apparently I need to pay more attention (I promise I will as soon as the tomatoes start to come in :) and in the mean time the question is: what to do with this much zucchini?!?

Pinterest to the rescue.  I've been pinning random zucchini recipes that look good and this seemed like the perfect time to try them.  

So Sunday night we added fried zucchini to our dinner.  Recipe score:  a perfect 10.  In fact they were so good that Taylor and I didn't even share them with the boys.

Tuesday night:  zucchini boats.  Score: maybe a 3.  And that's generous.  They took almost a hour hour to prepare plus a half hour to cook and then the zucchini itself was very slimy.  Next time I think I'll slice the zucchini, barely saute it and add all the other ingredients together- zucchini, sausage, mozzarella cheese, and spaghetti sauce. mmmm as long as the zucchini isn't slimy.

Wednesday night we added baked zucchini fries to our dinner and I forgot to take a picture until I was doing dishes and realized that these were the only few that didn't get scarfed down.  Miles kept stealing them off Taylor's plate.  Of course he was also stealing pieces of spinach off Isaac's plate so maybe he was just craving vegis.  Who knows?
Much better for you than the fried version and almost just as good.  Easier to make to.  Recipe score:  10- because my kids loved them so much.

And on Thursday we used our last zucchini to make zucchini brownies.  If you want the recipe it's on my pinterest account and they were Deee-Licious!  A little dry so they definitely needed the frosting to balance them out but they were gooey and fabulous and really very easy to make.  That brown glob in the top right is the piece Taylor snuck when he got home from work and we were still out swimming.  His comment to me when I made a face at him was that really I should be "thanking him" for not eating more since they were SOOO good.  And that was pre-frosting.  Recipe score:  definitely a 10.  So all in all and fun week of adding zucchini to our diet and I'm pleasantly surprised to be keeping all 4 recipes and only needing to modify one.

Next up:  I pinned a recipe for lemon zucchini bread.  YUM!  And since I haven't checked the garden since Sunday there's probably a few more zucchinis ready to be picked.  Yeah!  Love our garden!