Monday, April 7, 2014

It's zucchini season!

Summer is coming.  And you know what that means.

Zucchini!!  Lots and lots and lots of zucchini!

Of course, here in San Diego it already feels like summer, so it's no surprise that my CSA boxes are already starting to feature zucchini.  I got six little ones in my box last weekend, and I couldn't have been happier.  I'm sure that by the end of summer I will feel differently, but for now I am excited to have fresh zucchini to add to our meals.

What do you like to do with zucchini?  My favorite ways to cook it include:

  • steaming (the go-to healthy method)
  • sauteed in butter or oil (coconut or olive, usually) with some seasoned salt (the significantly less healthy method, but hey, I like a little fat in my diet; when I have no seasoned salt, I usually just use sea salt, onion powder, and garlic powder)
  • stir fry, with whatever other vegetables I happen to have in the fridge at the time
  • baked goods, because zucchini bread is awesome and I absolutely love chocolate zucchini cake

And speaking of zucchini bread...


Today I made Zucchini-Pecan Flaxseed Bread, which was originally published in Cooking Light magazine but which I have in my copy of Cooking Light Way to Cook Vegetarian.  I didn't do much to adapt the original recipe, possibly because I'm boring but more likely because it's pretty amazing as-is.  I used low-fat plain Greek yogurt instead of vanilla yogurt, because that's what I had in my fridge (I added an extra half-teaspoon of vanilla extract to compensate), and I actually used walnuts instead of pecans, also because that's what I had on hand.

For the record, this recipe could very easily be made vegan.  It already calls for egg substitute instead of eggs, and you could simply use a non-dairy yogurt instead of regular yogurt.  There's very little oil in the recipe, but I suppose you could always try subbing in applesauce if you wanted to make it even lower in fat.

So have at it.  Happy cooking!