Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Zucchini Fritters with Chipotle Cream or Zucchini Explosion Part II

Last year, when I was drowning in zucchini, I tried making zucchini fritters.  I wasn't overly impressed with them.  I tried my hand at them twice.  The second time I added a little grated potato for body.  It was a slight improvement, but not blog worthy.  I've been thinking about those fritters...and then it came to me.  While I was searching for different appetizers from my favorite bloggers, I came across cornmeal cakes on Annie's Eats.  Cornmeal, that's it!  Cornmeal would be the perfect ingredient to give my fritters enough body without being bland.  Annie's recipe inspired me to try again.  This time, in my humble opinion,  I came up with a blog worthy recipe.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Zucchini Explosion!


Zucchini has taken over my garden.  We've had a bounty of zucchini over the past few weeks.  Several days ago, I checked on my garden before I left for work.  I eyed several young zucchini, and decided they needed another day to grow and planned to harvest them the following morning.  The following day came along with torrential rain, so I never made it out to the garden.  The day after that was hot and steamy.  I was running late that morning and didn't get a chance to check on the zucchini until I got home from work later that evening. To my horror...my zucchini turned into 10 inch monsters that resembled stubby baseball bats.  I'm guessing the rain and the intense heat accelerated their growth and left me with these monsters.  I know some people intentionally let their zucchini grow like watermelons, I'm just not one of those people.  Bloated zucchini tend to become seedy and flavorless.  It was depressing.  Never-the-less, I made the best of it.  I picked about a dozen of  the oversized beasts.  As I picked, I thought about all the things I would not be able to do with them.  One thing for sure, I could stuff them.  The other thing I could do, was give some away along with this recipe!

Don't be afraid to use what you have on hand.  You can add mushrooms or diced summer squash.  Make them meatless and add some cooked rice or quinoa.  The possibilities are endless.