The Annual Zucchini Roundup

I'm sitting here in my new house, on my new street, in my new neighborhood, in a new city.  Granted, it's just two miles from the other one, but still.  It's new to us.  We are unpacked and making our daily living space work for us.  I am not sure I thought I could be more content with less space than I'm used to, but geez - I'm happy with this space.  It took me a whopping 8.5 minutes yesterday to clean all the rooms but one.  That deserves a "woohoo" if anything does.

Oh, and look at these sweeties: my little kitchen helpers.  Goodness, do they make me melt.  Big Sister just keeps me at the edge of my seat, waiting for the next awesome thing she's going to say (like yesterday: "Hey, Mommy, you're the best mommy in the world.  I like being with you.  Now will you please go out of my room?").  And Little Girl is pure spunk: keeping up with the big kids, and running to give kisses and hugs like there's no tomorrow.  She likes to shush her baby dolls, ask for things by name (I finally figured out "nee-nets" means Kleenex), and generally do everything by herself.  

Oh, the zucchini, you say?  I almost forgot that this is a post about zucchini.

Here: friends from church gave us some.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but look at the one at the back, and then realize that it's as wide as the cart it's sitting on ... which is 18".  Yes, a massive zucchini.  I promised these friends that I'd repay the kindness with a little rundown of what I was doing with the zucchini (as well as a little treat, but shhh, don't tell!).

Here's what we've done so far:

Chocolate Zucchini Bread, with chocolate chips of course.  I actually reduced the sugar by half and upped the amount of shredded zucchini in there.  According to custom, one must refer to this as "vegetable bread" and must eat some whenever one's body needs some vegetables.

Goat Cheese-Zucchini Tart: using this recipe from Fine Cooking as a springboard, I used up about 4 oz. of goat cheese mixed with some local herbs (ehem - from my back herb garden!), spread on a pastry crust.  I did make my own crust, but I think a storebought dough would work beautifully as well.  It's a pretty simple recipe, and the flavors really mix so nicely!

Zucchini tacos: OK, no recipe here.  But I chopped up some zucchini into 1/4" cubes and sauteed them in oil for a bit - so they'd get soft but not mushy - then added a tablespoon or so of fajita seasoning.  Then we just layered them in tortillas with the works before gobbling them up in about 42 seconds.

There's still half a zucchini left: that's going on tonight's pizza along with some eggplant, tomatoes, pesto, and parmesan cheese.

(and yes, it will be followed by vegetable bread.)