Zucchini Insanity

Recently, on my personal Facebook, I made a reference to a Zucchini Cookbook and Christmas gifts in the same sentence. Through the magic of the internet, many of my FB friends are now privy to everyday events. However, I realized that many of these friends probably have no idea what I was referring too. So, I made a promise to Blog about my Zucchini Insanity.

First, in case you are unaware. I am a city girl. Not just a girl who grew up in the city, but a true city girl. I grew up in a row house, and as the story goes, a cement truck pulled up to the house to cement the front and back yards BEFORE the moving truck could arrive. I never grew more than marigolds in a pot.

Fast forward a few years. …but not quite to the present…

I now reside with the love of my life in his house in the ‘country’. It is not quite in the country, but by my standards this is the middle of now where (NO food delivery service! How barbaric!). For the first few years, my gardening has been to pull a few weeds over the course of the years….BTW….weeds should actually be required to hold a sign that says, “I’m a weed”. In case you didn’t guess….I pulled up a few plants along with the weeds. Oops!

Somehow, I managed to convince my Mr. Wonderful that I wanted to plant a vegetable garden. It took awhile. He would tell you I nagged him until he gave in. He built me a wonderful raised bed with 6 sections. I promptly marched off to the home improvement store and bought veggie plants.

Since this was many years ago, I do not remember the exact numbers of plants. But, I purchased several plants of the following: Peppers, cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes, and egg plant. Mind you, I chose the items without regard for the SIZE of the garden area. How someone who could be so ‘visual’ fail so badly when it comes to planting a garden is beyond me. But wait! I am not done!

I also purchased 9…yes…NINE…zucchini plants! I proudly told everyone about my zuccs! I was greeted with such interesting expressions! I soon realized why everyone looked shocked! I also realized that everyone I knew felt compelled to give me recipes! Many also suggested I ‘google’ some.

By the end of the first summer, I had a large collection of recipes!

Mr. Wonderful will often tell the story of how after a hard days work, he came home to a home cooked dinner: Zucchini bread, stuffed Zucchini and Cobbler. He asked what kind of cobbler it was, I smiled.

“It better not be Zucchini.”
“Honey, who ever heard of Zucchini Cobbler?”
“Hmmm, its good. Is it apples?”
I laugh.
“What?”
“It’s ZUCCHINI,” giggle giggle giggle….

But, I digress from the story…

I had all these recipes that people had given me. People were asking if I had gotten any other recipes that were interesting. Everyone was asking for other copies of what I received. Thus the Zucchini Cookbook was born.

It was two years ago that I gave them out as Christmas gifts. Since, I have been searching the internet for more ways to use zucchini. I have assembled a few more recipes and I have tweaked some of the old ones.

My BFF, Susan, has copies of the new ones to give some a try. She and I will decide which to keep and which to toss. And, volume two will be assembled and printed by this December.

Have any great zucchini recipes that you think I should include? Email me!
Gabrielle@turtleBugGraphics.com

Today, I posted to my FB status that I had enough zucchini to open a road side stand. One of my FB friends, Tanya, challenged me to photograph them before I cooked with them. Other friends jumped on the band wagon. I accepted her challenge and even took photos as I cooked!

What did I make? Five batches of zucchini bread and a batch of zucchini crab cakes! Stay tuned as I will post more photos from my Zucchini Insanity!