Thursday, September 9, 2010

End of the Zucchini?

With the recent cold spell that seems to have spread across the country as far as all of the blogs I read, I wonder how much longer my garden will be producing. Frankly, at this point, I'm excited about the cool weather, and I'm not too worried about reduced productivity out in the yard. Next year I have a few ideas about what to do differently. One thing I don't plan to change is the number of zucchini plants I grow. Okay, there was a time in July that I was trying to give shiny green baseball-bat-sized zucchinis away to friends and family, but overall they've been good to me this summer. It turns out that zucchini is not only a great ingredient for simmering pots of vegetables and soups, but it's also become my go-to fast food meal.

I spent some time in the garden yesterday, and brought home several extra-large zucchinis, as well as a few small tender ones. (My sister in Indianapolis requested a few zucchini from the garden too, so my dad headed south with a couple of nice ones today.)
The little ones became dinner - maybe the last sauteed fresh zucchini of the season.
The large ones became shredded and sliced frozen zucchini, ready to be turned into cookies, bread, muffins, or soup when the ground is coated with frost and the trees are bare.
I had over 17 lbs of zucchini in my fridge before I got started this morning.
I froze 8 two-cup bags of sliced zucchini and one 3-cup bag of shredded zucchini. I had originally intended to shred more, but my good grater was in the dishwasher and I didn't want to wait for it, because I had other plans for the day . . .

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