I have been so busy cooking and making food this month. It’s been fun! A lot of our meals have featured zucchini simply because we have a bunch of it and I like exploring new creations. Our summer meals in August have also included such staples as burgers, hotdogs, BBQ chicken etc. It is summer after all! 🙂 I didn’t include EVERYTHING I made that’s new, but much of it is here and perhaps it might inspire you!
Zucchini Recipes
Stuffed Zucchini was a hit! This was such a good meal, and it made enough to serve everyone two meals (including our tenant). I did make a modification to this recipe. Instead of sausage meat I used ground beef and added a touch of salt and pepper. Also my bread crumbs were seasoned.
The Best Classic Zucchini Bread. Made with the light green squash. I stuck these immediately into the freezer so can’t tell you what we thought of them. I did add a few chocolate chips to the recipe.
Zucchini Chili was made this with the big round green squash. This was quite good though hubby said it needed more spice. I liked it as is. Changes I made: Only one bell pepper, no tomato sauce, two cans black beans, no pinto beans, and no jalapeno pepper.
Zucchini Muffins made from a zucchini bread recipe. (made as muffins) Made with regular zucchini. 250 calories each with raisins. Hubby liked these which is a good thing as I made a double-batch with half in the freezer. 🙂
More Zucchini dishes….
Zucchini Garlic Bites. Makes 52 bites if doing a triple recipe. A great way to make sure everyone gets some. This time when I made it I almost forgot the garlic so I added 3/4 tsp garlic powder instead of minced garlic. I like how they turned out.
Made a double recipe of Chocolate Chip Zucchini bread . If I make again I would do maybe 3/4 cup chocolate chips as this was just a bit too much adding a full cup. I didn’t expect that.
Zucchini cheddar cheese savoury muffins. These surprised me. They would be excellent served with chili, as a side breakfast item, or by adding a touch of bacon or ham to them. A nice quiet part of a meal. A good surprise. My tenant said, “get me this recipe!”. 🙂
I was reminded by my sweetheart that I hadn’t made “apple pie” with zucchini in quite a while. As I was searching for the recipe again I came across this savoury pie as well. Both were great!
The sweet pie recipe I changed by making it as a crisp. The savoury pie I mostly used as it but added 3/4 a can of chopped spam to it. I also just used onion rather than shallots and chives, and changed the type of flour and milk.
Birthday Cooking
It was my birthday this month so I made food that I liked when it was time to celebrate. I failed to get a picture of some really good pork chops. Garlic Rosemary Pork Chops are quite excellent. Made for a lovely meal that son and I enjoyed but hubby declined as “I don’t like pork chops”.
Two types pasta salads which were quite different from each other. The one I made thinking my hubby would be delighted with it… he was, as was my son. Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad. I did a herb garlic base and added 1/3 of a red pepper along with half a white onion. Total hit for my fellows.
The other recipe I LOVED. I kinda… scarfed it down over two days. Yes, yes, I know.. totally horrible from a weight loss point of view! 🙂 Smoky heirloom Tomato and grilled peach pasta salad with basil vinaigrette. I did make some changes. Instead of grilling corn on the BBQ, I used canned corn which I put on a frypan for a bit to darken. The peaches I did not grill and I chose to use regular pasta. Basil leaves… I didn’t have enough fresh so I used dried basil which worked quite nicely.
My mom-in-law brought along some cauliflower and cheese, and chiffon lemon pie (my fav). My mom brought her own lovely self. We had hamburgers with all the toppings (at least the fellows had all the toppings I stuck with cheese and peach slices).
Canning
I put up two kinds of zucchini relish. It’s a great way to use up a lot of zucchini quickly and both of my fellows really like it. This year I tried a new one that’s supposed to be Sweet and Spicy. I also did up a more normal relish. They cooked up quite differently so I’m looking forward to testing them out. With the more normal one I didn’t let the zucchini sit overnight as the recipe said. I’ve never done that with my relish and it always turns out. I just let it set out and drain once I had all the veggies mixed. The bit I had tasted good (Just had too much for the jar).
I love how pretty it is in the jars.
Rabbit Dishes
I had a rabbit that was throwing a random weepy eye. Never lasted beyond four hours at a time, but it was concerning since it was repetitive. I decided that I would euthanize her and see if I could determine a cause. She had a lung that wasn’t quite right so I believe it was a good call. I let her sit in a salt water bath for a few days and this morning cooked her long and slow in the oven.
She turned out great! I made a kinda soupy stew out of her and served it over mashed taters. My son had some later and …gasp…had seconds! 🙂
It’s easy to make once you have your slide off the bone rabbit.
The liquid from cooking the rabbit, a can mushroom soup, a can onion soup, about 1/2 a pack mixed veggies, a liberal amount of rabbit and because it’s still liquidy, a package of gravy mix. It’ll still be thin, but thick enough to pass sorta as a stew. 🙂 I enjoyed it with mashed taters, the lad did bread and cheese on the side.
I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of it, but I made this REALLY REALLY good pulled rabbit BBQ meat dish. It was so very good, the lad kinda scarfed it up so fast. It was enough for what I thought would be three meals… We got maybe 1.5 meals out of it. Crockpot, pulled rabbit, manwich sauce with 1/2 bottle chicken bbq sauce. REALLY REALLY GOOD. I will make it again sometime. See if I can persuade hubby to try it… just once.
How about you?
Did you make any interesting dishes this month? What new things did you learn would work? Were you inundated with squash and figure out new ways to cook with it? Or perhaps your tomato season is just coming in and you’re thinking… what do I do with it all? Let me know! It’s good to share new ideas don’t you think? Tell me what your summer meals in August were! 🙂
Other meals I’ve shared:
July. January. February. March and April.
Lots of yum in this post! Makes me want to go eat something tasty! We love zucchini boats, a.k.a. stuffed zucchini.
Oh thank you. Did you go eat something tasty?