what am i to do with HUGE baseball bat zucchini? the diameter of these things (2) is about 10inches, and they truly are as long as a bat! my husband loves to plant and watch things grown, but isn't big on the harvesting part!
-- read and post daily, it works! rosie
laughter is the shortest distance between two people. ........................ victor borge
When last we left our heros, on Mon, 25 Aug 2003 17:51:44 GMT, "rosie readandpost" scribbled:
Take it out in the front yard and entertain the neighbors by taking a batter's stance and chanting "Batter, Batter hey!" Swing the zucchini, drop it, and run the bases yelling " It's going...going...GONE! ANOTHER HOMERUN FOR ROSIE!"
Or stroll up to the fence of the neighbor you most like to scandalize and purr softly, "Guess what my husband grew for me that's big, and long and oh so firm?" Whip out your er...zucchini and burst into an operatic aria.
Give your husband one and you can sword fight until the zucchini disintegrate.
Hollow it out and play "Up Periscope" in the swimming pool. This is more fun if you can speak with a German accent.
Give it to your dog and video him carrying it through the dog door, then send the tape into one of those funniest videos shows.
Or or or....
Pam
Rosie, Guess what I do with the giant ones... I save them until October and turn them into wonderful Jack-o-lanterns. They are not as naturally hollow as a pumpkin but they do get soft and pithy around the seeds after storage and can be hollowed out. I carve long droopy eyes, a long nose and a turned up mouth. Stand them on each side of your front door and people will do a double take when they notice them. ;-) I keep a couple on the plant until it might frost just for this. They can store for weeks or months if needed once they get that big. I often grow yellow skinned zucchini and of course those make really nice Jack-o-lanterns.
Steve
rosie readandpost wrote:
thanks steve!
-- read and post daily, it works! rosie
"Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation, then deciding what you're going to do about it." .......................K.C. Theisen
long as a bat!
harvesting part!
thanks! (where is that maynard expression from? i use it all the time)
-- read and post daily, it works! rosie
"Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation, then deciding what you're going to do about it." .......................K.C. Theisen
long as a bat!
harvesting part!
>
If you have a dehydrator, zucchini chips (made with thinly sliced raw zucchini, dried) are quite tasty. In dry years they usually have enough flavor of their own (after drying, not before), in wet years a little marinade will perk them up (lemon pepper, or salt and herbs). Use them as you would corn chips. They are good enough that you may start letting them grow big on purpose.
Great idea - I never would have thought of that!
(I hate the stuff - but hubby loves it. Planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and all sorts of stuff this year. Nothing grew well but the guess-what, and I am going to make hubby eat the danm stuff until he turns green...now you've given me a way to torture him all winter...[bg])
-=>epm
Check the center before you shred them. If the seeds have formed, scoop out and discard the center. You'll still get plenty of pulp from baseball-bat-sized zuchnoids.
The shredded pulp can also be added to spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, lasagna, soup -- drain off the excess water first, and cook it long enough that it sorta dissolves.
-- Marie Martinek Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. USA snipped-for-privacy@northwestern.edu
I made a pie yesterday using a giant green squash. It was huge and tough, almost like a white-fleshed small pumpkin. I peeled it, scraped out the seeds, and cut into apple-slice-sized pieces. To about 6 cups of slices I added a cup of sugar. Meanwhile, I put about 1/3 of a can of frozen concentrated apple juice in a 2 qt. saucepan and added 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and 1/2 tsp citric acid crystals. Heated gently until it thickened, then poured in the sugarwater drawn out of the squash. Then added the squash slices and mixed well and continued cooking over low heat until everything was heated through but not really simmering. Poured into a 9.5" deep pie crust. Topped with a mixture of 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 stick margarine, 1 tsp cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp mace (1/4 tsp of nutmeg or allspice if you don't have mace) Baked at 375 for 45 minutes.
I never said what kind of pie it is, but family thinks it's apple. It would have tasted a lot better with a little more sugar and if some of the cinnamon was added to the filling. And the squash should have sat longer in the sugar.
I think this would be a nicely different treatment for pumpkin, with more spices and leave out the citric acid.
Best regards, Bob
Very interesting. Why did you add the citric acid, anyway? Maybe lemon juice might be nicer.
Pat
Because the "zukes" were not tart like pie apples, and I didn't have any lemon juice. Also, I lied about the citric acid; actually I used malic acid, the acid naturally found in apples. Someone trying to duplicate my experiment would probably not be able to find malic acid so I changed it to citric. (I probably should have said so in a footnote.) I'm not sure how much lemon juice you would use, probably 1 or 2 Tbsp.
Best regards, Bob
Thanks, Bob.
The pie sounds very nice and if the cooking fairy visits our house, maybe she'll make one for us.
The cooking fairy hasn't visited our house much recently, she's been neglecting us. Sigh.
Otherwise, I'll have to try to get enough ambition to try it.
I've been preoccupied recently and will remain that way until we know for sure whether we're moving and if so, where
- I don't deal well with uncertainty. Once we've got an accepted, signed contract to buy the [local acre of land + dilapidated trailer], I'll get back to normal. I'm not apprehensive about selling our current home, it's not (from all the indications) going to be a problem.
Pat
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