Seasonal recipes: 5 for the zucchini blessed

 

Someone’s tweet on Twitter yesterday read something like this, “Zucchini are plentiful now. Time to lock the doors and close the windows on my truck.” If that confuses you, then you’ve never had a garden bursting with zucchini. There comes a time during the harvest season, and it’s starts about right now, where some gardeners have so much zucchini they can’t give the stuff away to friends and neighbors. Apparently some generous gardeners end up sticking them in others cars just to get rid of them.

 

If you’re one of the zucchini blessed, I’ve gathered ten recipes for you that go beyond zucchini bread – not that there’s anything wrong with zucchini bread. It’s delicious. If you make any of these, please come back here and let us know how it turned out.

 

Zucchini Parmesan Hummus – This recipe from In Jennie’s Kitchen is an original of the blog author’s and uses canned chick peas, grilled zucchini, and parmesan plus a few other kitchen staples. Next time we fire up the grill, I will be sure to add some zucchini so I can turn it into this hummus.

 

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies – This cookie recipe comes from Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and comes recommended by my friend Val from More Hip Than Hippie on her Greenfeet blog. She says, “You don’t taste the zucchini at all making it perfect for veggie-aphobia kids. My 11 year old and his friend gave them a thumbs up and grabbed a handful on their way out to play.” Note: This is in PDF format. You will need to open it with Adobe.

 

Zucchini, Ham, and Ricotta Fritters – Smitten Kitchen was on self-proclaimed cute-‘bonics overload when she wrote about these fritters and called them, “just one of the best, most awesome, breathtakingly lovable weekday night dinners we’ve had in ages and I can just tell, these fritters are gonna be yr new BFF, too!!!1!” Still, the recipe is begging to be made, and I figure if I use bacon from the farmers market instead of ham, this will be one heck of local meal.

 

Zucchini and Carrot a Scapece – This marinated side dish needs to be made a day ahead, but it’s easy. This is a Giada De Laurentiis recipe from the Food Network, and I’ve never made a recipe of hers I didn’t like. If you’ve got basil and mint growing in your garden, you’ll want to try this recipe.

 

Baked Zucchini Chips – This healthier alternative to frying battered zucchini gets rave reviews from users on allrecipes.com. Many of the users find that adding garlic powder to the breadcrumbs is very helpful.