October's Delicious Meals

It’s that time of the month again! Time for me to tell you about October’s delicious meals made by yours truly.

As you might guess, zucchini featured in a lot of our dishes. I made a fair number of meals that we often have like meatloaf, pork chops, and chicken casseroles etc. We celebrated Thanksgiving with family (complete with leftovers!) and have, overall, had fairly nutritious month! 🙂

Zucchini Recipes

I was busy cleaning the kitchen one day so needed to use up some zucchini in order to get clean counters. I made this zucchini bread with some yellow zucchini. Instead of adding walnuts to it, I added chocolate chips to it.

I used a different type of granola in these carrot muffins, and since I was short on carrots I added some zucchini to them. The lad really enjoyed these. A bit of a funny story to them. My tenant gave me the granola and said “I can’t eat these since they have hazelnut in them. I’m allergic”. I said “great, maybe I’ll make some muffins”. I did, and then brought one to the lad, and then offered one to B. She said sure, I got her one and then went back to the kitchen to work.

She came out, holding out a muffin with a tiny bite out of it, and said “Annette, are you trying to kill me?” Gave me a moment, and then I blurted out “AH, oops, sorry DON’T EAT THAT!” We laughed. The lad was coming into the kitchen at the moment to snag up another one and asked what was up. He hooted! It was SO GOOD to hear this moody 15-year-old really laugh. B. had told me she wasn’t deathly allergic, it just makes her tongue frozen, so I didn’t technically try to kill her… but still! It was SO funny. (which reminds me I need to mark the bag of 12 I have in the freezer).

Even more breads and muffins

Since that day I have also made Classic Zucchini Bread from The Wholesome Dish. I added chocolate chips to the recipe. I tried Zucchini bread recipe from Simply Recipes. The unexpected use of raisins surprised them, and decision was “good bread, but we prefer chocolate chips”.

Banana Zucchini Muffins... lovely lovely muffin. You taste more of the banana than the zucchini. But it’s a lovely moist muffin. Needs to be used in three days or kept in the fridge. Added chocolate chips of course. The fellows were reticent at first to try them, but once they did.. boom gone!

Zucchini muffins October's Delicious Meals

Zucchini Cookies

I made two versions of Oatmeal Zucchini muffins. They were very similar to make but with quite different taste profiles. The one that our tenant, myself and son liked best was from Sally’s. Zucchini Breakfast Cookies were so close, but we decided would be better served with hot chocolate.

I also made Zucchini Cookies that turned out completely different than what the picture looked like. I’m not sure why that happened. They were VERY good, and were too easy to overeat them!

Other Zucchini Recipes

Did you know that Zucchini Garlic Bites heat up really nicely in a toaster over? At least this recipe does. I also like them chilled, but warm is better. For this recipe I did make some changes I used dried parsley, basil and oregano. My breadcrumbs were seasoned.

Canning Dishes

This Year I have learned to make homemade ketchup, Spaghetti sauce from scratch, and green tomato relish.

One day I had a young man and his family over learning about rabbits, I mentioned to his mom about making some green tomato relish. She mentioned she just got a canner so I sent her home with enough green tomatoes to make a big batch for canning.

Hubby brought home a cauliflower head one day … it’s on for a great price hun! He was hoping I’d make some pickled cauliflower. I didn’t add the chili pepper though as I’m not into heat. While I was making those I thought hmm… on my search to make spaghetti sauce I saw a recipe for pickled cherry tomatoes why don’t I try them too?

Main meals and Casseroles

WOW… this lasagna recipe… wow… HUGE, very tasty, but wow.. makes for a very full dish, ergo a longer cooking time. I will make it again, but probably reduce the size of the filling a bit. Changes I made: all beef, homemade spaghetti sauce (so all the make your sauce ingredients I eliminated), all cottage cheese, no provolone, and I used cook in the pan lasagna noodles.

I made some boerenkool as well. Surprised my fellows. I make it so seldom, but being originally of Dutch stock, I have to make sure my lad knows what it is. We made ours with smokies, completely from memory of watching my mom make it, but if you don’t know how to make it, this recipe is fairly close. I didn’t put a bay leaf in mine.

I made a really tasty potato bake that disappeared it seemed like literally overnight. No pics, but boy it was good. What was in it? Mixed veggies, cubed potatoes, cream of mushroom soup, cubed turkey, various spices, and cheese. Just gone, like so fast!

Biscuit shepherd’s pie met a similar fate. Made like a typical shepherd’s pie but with a biscuit cover instead of mashed taters. I put some grated cheese into my biscuit mix.

And my chicken stew, “hun, this is really good!” Could I ever replicate it again? Probably not. It has chicken, carrots, potatoes, beans, leftover mashed taters, gravy, seasoning and whatever else I could find. It was a bit more liquid than intended so it was half stew, half soup. Either way… YUM!