zucchini

Of all the delicious things that God made and gave us the ability to cultivate, zucchini is most perplexing. Seemingly everyone grows it in their gardens. And, green thumb or not, everyone ends up with way more than they know what to do with. The basket in my previous post doesn’t touch what is forthcoming. For the purpose of this post, I am lumping summer squash in with zucchini, because they are similar in taste and apparent lack of usability.

So what do we do with all of it? Every year, our first priority is without a doubt zucchini relish. Superman’s late mom made it for years and everyone loved it, so we felt we should carry the torch. Also, he loves it, maybe too much.

What we have so far. The color variation is from yellow squash versus zucchini and black beauty squash.

We use the relish to make tartar sauce on fish fry nights, top hot dogs and burgers, and as an additive in egg salad.

We also like to use zucchini to make zucchini casserole. It’s a mix of diced zucchini, sausage, cheese, bread crumbs and spices. It sounds weird, but I promise it is delicious. It would make a great side, but we devour it as a main dish.

Zucchini casserole in the making.

As a bonus, it can be cooked in a cast iron dutch oven over the fire. And although I love camping, I am not doing this with a spirit of adventure, but of necessity. Did I mention I’m cooking like I’m Amish? There was no cooking appliance when we moved in and we sold ours with our previous house. In order to get a new one, we have to wait for the furnace to be installed, propane to be delivered, and then a stove installed and connected to the propane. Few things will make you as grateful for what you have like doing without them for a few months.

Speaking of camping, I used this camp stove to prepare one of our new zucchini favorites, salsa. We eat a lot of Mexican dishes, and I am always sad to see the amount of tomatoes it takes to boil down into small portions of salsa, but zucchini is a great filler and since it doesn’t have much of a taste, it does not take away from the few tomatoes that this recipe takes.

Somebody was tricked by their parallax vision and added the wrong amount of sugar, so we were forced to even it out by making a large batch. Guess we will be having more Mexican this year.

Orange zucchini ginger marmalade on the shelves!

Another new zucchini item we added to our list this year is orange zucchini ginger marmalade. You would seriously NEVER know this is zucchini. Not everyone here is a marmalade fan, but homesteading for us means using what you’ve got, and we’ve got zucchini which means we’ve got marmalade!

We tried one more canned zucchini this year.

Sweet zucchini pickles

Pickles! I read they were indistinguishable from cucumbers when made into pickles, and since the cucumbers aren’t up yet, we went for it. They were right! You can’t even tell they’re zucchini, aside from the size.

Besides canning it in various forms, we also dehydrated some with sea salt for a potato chip substitute. They were great! Perhaps the most surprising of all though, was that we added it to breakfast smoothies and milkshakes as a healthy filler and they were amazing! The kids ask for them! So we diced, vacuum sealed, and froze a lot for future breakfasts. And don’t forget zucchini bread or zucchini egg muffins.

There is a lesson in all of this zucchini. You can find it in 2 Corinthians 9:8. “God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” Of course, God is not referring to zucchini here, but what I see is that He has given to us abundantly and though I may grow tired of picking and processing and eating zucchini, He has provided for us what we need. I do not want to turn into the Israelites complaining about manna and quail in the desert. Rather, I want to use this opportunity to show my kids God’s divine providence, the namesake of our farm.

There you have it, hopefully a rekindled love for an abundant garden plant that anyone can grow and everyone can enjoy! Now, let’s go see if that grass is tall enough for a second cutting…