The First of The Zucchini

Zucchini is a desperately misunderstood vegetable. ;) It exists in most peoples' minds as something their parents made them eat. Katie Wilson and I remember it as something our mother's threw on the grill on the way down to Clayton, GA, and that we ate with plugged noses. (For shame! :) I like it now. But did you know that some people don't even realize it is a vegetable? Abigail insists that the reason we don't like going down to the beach in the summer is because there are lots of immodest ladies walking around in zucchinis. Poor vegetable, it has such a false reputation amongst modest little girls who unbeknowst to themselves, daily tend it in the garden! :D All this to say, I have found two recipes in which even the most picky of eaters would fail to detect the presence of zucchini. The first is something Benjamin begs me to make each year. So yesterday, with the first zucchini from our garden, I made it: May I introduce you to:

Chocolate Zucchini Cake!

2 1/2 c. flour 2 c. sugar

1/2 c. cocoa 3 eggs

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder 2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda 2 tsp. orange zest

1 tsp. salt 2 cups shredded zucchini

1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 c. milk

3/4 c. softened butter 1 c. nuts (optional)

Combine dry ingredients. Beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, zest, and zucchini. Alternately add dry mixture and milk. Add nuts. Spoon into greased and floured Bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 45 minutes. Frost with Chocolate frosting (recipe follows)

Chocolate Frosting

1/2 c. softened butter

2/3 c. cocoa

vanilla to taste

3 c. powdered sugar

1/3 c. milk

Cream butter and cocoa. Add vanilla. Add milk and sugar, alternating. Beat till smooth.

Sound good? We ate ours with fresh strawberries. Here is a picture. (Isn't that hand most mysterious? I wonder who it belongs to? ;)

And the other, equally great recipe that I don't have a picture of:

Zucchini Spice Bread

2 eggs, beaten

1 1/3 c. sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

3 cups grated zucchini

2/3 cups melted butter

2 tsp. baking soda

1 pinch of salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ginger

1 cup raisins or nuts (optional)

Mix the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together. Add zucchini and butter. Sprinkle the soda and salt over the mixture, and stir well. Add flour, one cup at a time. Add spices, raisins, and nuts. Bake in 2 greased loaf pans at 350 degrees F. for 50 minutes.

Enjoy the recipes! They were super good! We ate the cake last night, and the bread for breakfast this morning! :P -Rachel

The Tale Of The Turnip (that sounds scary)

I was sent on a mission today: figure out how to make something with turnips. Something that actually tastes good. Something that we can type out on recipe cards and hand to customers who buy them at the Wilson's on Saturday. They have very generously allowed us to sell our loose-leaf lettuce, turnips, and spinach at their farm pick-up day on Sat. So what is a girl to do who only has a vague idea of what a turnip is used for? I recollected (somewhere in the files of my brain) that you cooked the leafy tops and ate them like regular greens. So far so good. But everyone knows that. The only other inkling I had was that in some AmericanGirl book, the heroine refused to eat her "orange mashed turnips". I am wondering why her's were orange: ours are purple on the outside and white inside! :) So I did a Google search, and I came up with some interesting facts: you can use turnips in any recipe in which potatoes are called for, you can use it instead of cabbage in coleslaw, and it has cancer-fighting nutriets! Yay for that strange vegetable! So I set out to make two recipes, for better or for worse....."Turnip Oven-Fries", and "Mashed Turnips". Sound good? Here's what I did:

Washed, peeled, and cut up the turnips: some I chunked, (to boil) the others I sliced thinly like potatoes. I tossed the thin ones in olive oil, and laid them out on a tray. The others went into a pot of boiling water. Here's a picture of the chunked ones:

The oven-turnips baked at 425 F. for 20 minutes or so, and the stove ones just got the dickens boiled out of them. I like to boil my potatoes to mash until they are nearly falling apart, so I did the turnips the same way.
Back to the oven-turnips: When they were done, I salted them, and had everyone try the finished product: it tasted sort of like sweet potato fry, if you have ever had those. Sort of sweet and mild at the same time. Here is a picture!

Here they are. Aunt Christy added the spinach to the side in lieu of curly kale. :)

Then for the mashed turnips---I strained the water away from them, smushed them up with a pastry-cutter, (I did NOT feel like taking out our whole Bosch thing and doing it the right way! :) and added salt, pepper, butter, and our goat-milk. Yum! They tasted pretty good, if not exactly like real mashed potatoes. I found that they were a bit more wet than potatoes, and a tad bit stringy-ish and lumpy. But that could have been because I didn't use a mixer! Here are a couple pictures of those! :)

Here is a far-away-ish picture. I am dealing once again with our addle-pated camera, so bear with me. We'll call the darkness of the picture "Art" and leave it at that!

And once again, my hand stars in the post. I believe that is all ya'll have seen of me! :) hee-hee. Well, hope this turnip-y post is not too dull! If I were anything like Winnie-the-Pooh, I would have made up a "hum" by now, because "turnip' is a promising sort of word that deserves a rhyme or something! ;) -Rachel