Success at last ... I think that's a good thing.

Under the heading of "be careful what you wish for", I have hoped for a large zucchini crop for years and have had relatively non productive plants.  I'll get just enough to eat but not enough to really go crazy with.  So this year, I planted extra plants.  And this year, they must like the weather, or the bees have been better at pollinating because I have zucchini.  A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about 3 loaves of bread and zucchini fritters from one large zucchini.  This morning, I found five large ones in the garden.  I hope I found them all.  The largest, a 3 pound sucker was the last one I found and it was purely by accident.  As a result, I knew the direction my day was taking.  Fortunately, the weather also agreed that an in house day was not the world's worst idea.

So I've been busy.  First on the agenda was Zippy Zucchini Relish from Canadian Living's The Complete Preserving book.      I have had some very good success with recipes in this book and the relish was no exception.  It is delicious.  Definitely a go to recipe again next year (or maybe next week).  We tried some of the relish on tortilla chips and it also makes a good salsa.  It used up 3 pounds of zucchini.  Which was good because I'm not sure the 3 pounder would have been good for general eating.  In a relish, it had lots of time to soften up but was pretty tough to cut.

Bon Appetit's issue this month has a page devoted to zucchini.  Last night I made up the Squash and Tomato Gratin (because in addition to the bad boys picked this morning, we've had a pretty steady diet of zucchini for a bit now).  Today for lunch I whipped up the Curried Squash Soup.  It was good.  Fairly mild but the curry helps counteract the natural mellow taste of the zucchini.  Served with a dollop of goat cheese, a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds and one of my whole grain rolls from the freezer.  Very nice.

I made two more loaves of Lesley Stowe's chocolate zucchini bread and zucchini cookies from Food 52.  I tasted the cookies right out of the oven and they are actually more cake-like than cookie.  I think I like them but the true test will be after they have cooled down.  All of that used up 2 more zucchini, I gave one to my neighbour and the other went into the crisper.

Phew.  Now it's time to decide on what to make for dinner.  Zucchini anyone?