Big Zucchini Energy
Summer food diary & My Grandma’s zucchini bread
As a regular and compulsive farmers’ market shopper (I lose all self-control in the presence of beautiful vegetables and must have them in my kitchen), I don’t plan my meals and then go out shopping for necessary ingredients. Instead, I improvise and cook based on what fresh ingredients I bring home each week. Most of the time, proteins from my freezer or grains and other staples from my pantry serve as complements to the produce that inspires the foundation of each meal.
I’ve been keeping a food diary for a year or two now. This is less of a disciplined practice than it sounds like. I simply have a running document where I make note of the meals I cook, which changes drastically with the shift of each season’s fruits and vegetables. Without my diary, by the time the next year rolls around, I’ve often forgotten about dishes that had once been regulars on our household menus.
Before I had the habit of jotting quick summaries in my food diary, a friend asked me for a recipe from several summers earlier—a period when I had a slight obsession with sausage stuffed vegetables. Eager to find new ways to use squash and peppers that were piling up, and always having sausage on hand from the butcher shop, I had tried a few variations to develop my preferred recipe and determined that while the dish was both brilliant and delicious, it was too much of a good thing for my two-person household.
For the rest of that season I would serve up veggie boats mounded with pork sausage stuffing and roasted until the mix of salty cheese and breadcrumbs on top turned to a golden crisp any time a hungry group of family or friends gathered.
Unfortunately I had no recollection of the source recipes I was referencing back then and never made any notes. Lost to me were the tested ratios of meat to egg and breadcrumbs for binding, as well as the portions of cheese, herbs, and other seasonings, and the all-important baking time. But according to my diary, I had a brief, albeit vegetarian, reunion with stuffing vegetables last fall after tasting a particularly memorable eggplant dish at an unassuming roadhouse-style restaurant in upstate NY:
Eggplant and rice stuffed eggplant inspired by smoked eggplant jambalaya stuffed pepper based on Lidia’s baked stuffed vegetables
It’s fun to jog back through my notes as reminders of not only menus past, but also forgotten habits, like when I regularly made pots of beans to have on hand just so I could refry them:
Chicken thighs and tomatillos “Tinga style” served with refried Bayo beans, cabbage and jalenpeño slaw, crema w cumin, tortillas
Or the various ways I’ve used the wealth of mushrooms we’ve foraged this summer in the Poconos:
Okonomiyaki with chicken of the woods! Sauteed and seasoned shrooms with a bit of soy sauce and sesame oil to replace the protein and used poblanos and scallions with cabbage as the veg in pancakes
Chanterelles as Gabrielle Hamilton mushroom/croutons over Deborah Madison’s Savory Way red wine lentils w/ green salad (next time add chevre)
Which led to a new obsession with making croutons:
IMO buttered pan croutons > fried bread
However, what truly feels like a gift to my future self is the documentation of little seasonal victories:
Pea and sunflower shoots are a revelation
Spring onions and slivered snap peas in everything
Blueberry cornmeal pancakes we’ve missed you
NJ family meal from the garden in early august: grilled Kookaburra Farm steaks with home-grown potatoes!
It’s now the time of year where fall weather threatens to crash into the last weeks of summer, and I'm perpetually overwhelmed by all the produce I have on hand, reflecting the abundance in the garden and at the farmers’ market. Recipes that use a lot of summer squash in a single shot are gold during this season.
I’m starting to amass a collection of favorites like this Zucchini Rice and Cheese Gratin from Smitten Kitchen, or this NY Times recipe for Caramelized Zucchini and White Bean Salad which I fixed up for a recent potluck. My ulterior motive in seeking out a bean dish that might use the giant yellow squash my aunt gave me from her garden was to show off the Zolfini1 beans in my pantry (sourced and saved from my friends at Boonville Barn Collective). When the dish received high praise and requests for the recipe, I would mention the beans, but more excitedly exclaim “...and it uses 2 pounds of grated zucchini!”
The summer of my first CSA share, two decades ago when Brad and I were living in a little apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was the first time I ever experienced the blessing of seasonal overabundance. There was week after week of kohlrabi, once foreign to us and soon a frequent star in summer salads, and an embarrassment of peaches, which became desserts and daiquiris when we couldn’t keep up with simply eating the ripe, juicy fruit in its fresh form. When it started to feel like our kitchen was too small for all the zucchini we were getting, I called my mom and asked her for my grandma’s zucchini bread recipe.
I hadn’t eaten it in many years, but still held a memory of the moist, slightly sweet and nutty bread, freshly made whenever we arrived to visit her house in central Pennsylvania. I would request and eat slices at all hours of the day, not quite of age to serve myself. When my grandma made me a plate, she would serve it to me the way I liked it best, lightly toasted and buttered.
And so my mom called her mom, who read her the recipe over the phone, then called back and relayed it to me. This was a successful game of telephone, and I’ve been making my grandma’s zucchini bread ever since. Over the years, I’ve tried variations (less sugar, different nuts, a bit of spice, and most recently a successful substitute of the AP flour for a 1-1 gluten-free alternative), but ultimately it always comes out the best when I make it just like my grandma told me to.
This recipe is the reason why I own three loaf pans. It’s pretty much foolproof and freezes wonderfully. I recommend following the eat one now, freeze two for later rule so you can enjoy it when the zucchini is long gone.
HUNGY HEART RECIPE:
My Grandma’s Zucchini Bread
(makes 3 loaves)
3 cups grated zucchini
3 eggs
1 cup olive oil
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups sugar
3 cups AP flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 325º. Grease 3 loaf pans with butter or oil.
Whisk the eggs, oil, and vanilla together in a large bowl, then fold in the grated zucchini.
In a separate bowl, measure and mix all of the remaining dry ingredients, then fold into the wet zucchini mixture to form a batter.
Fill each pan half-full with batter (just distribute the batter evenly between the pans) and bake for 55-60 minutes until golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.
Tips:
If you don’t have enough loaf plans, you can also distribute the batter into greased muffin tins, filling them halfway. Bake for about 35 minutes until they are golden brown and pass the toothpick test.
Take care not to overmix your batter, and allow the loaves to cool before you shake them out of the loaf pan and cut your first slice.
What I’m Currently…
Reading:
This lovely essay, “In Defense of Whole Foods, and a recipe”, includes an essential recipe for any whole food pantry: Breadcrumbs. An excellent waste-saving ingredient made from unused heels or forgotten, stale bread that will up your game when you have them on hand. I never make mac and cheese without breadcrumbs, and they’re also a key ingredient in my meatballs. And if you ever find yourself in a we have nothing to cook moment, but have some pasta and breadcrumbs, you can always make David Tannis’s spaghetti with breadcrumbs, an all time favorite of mine from his cookbook One Good Dish.
Watching:
After an unusually busy stretch of summer spent entertaining family, Brad and I finally settled down for a quiet night at home to watch a movie. As I put the finishing touches on dinner and he browsed our options, Brad shouted from the living room, “Heather, it looks like there is a new movie with all of your favorite people in it!” That would be: Awkwafina and John Cena. I adore them both and yet never imagined they would be cast as an unlikely buddy duo in a film directed by Paul Fieg (you know him from Bridesmaids, Knocked Up, and hopefully Freaks and Geeks, just to name a few gems). But this happened in Jackpot, and while I’ll mention as a PSA that it scored a lowly 33% on Rotten Tomatoes (I don’t usually indulge in films rated lower than 50%), I thought this movie was comedic gold. I laughed out loud, a lot. I think you might too.
Hoping:
Years ago, Brad and I were talking one night about an interview I had just done with a journalist about the recent launch of Primal Supply Meats. I was vocalizing my annoyance about how I had been asked (for what would be the first of many times) what it was like to be a female butcher. Brad, proud of me, his wife the butcher, asked “why does that bother you?”. And my response was this: “Has anyone ever asked you what it’s like to be a man and do your job?” He had nothing to say in return.
I became a female butcher without ever having women as mentors in my field. I got used to being underestimated by the men who surrounded me simply because I was not one of them. This can sometimes be an advantage, but it’s also exhausting. So when I hear this question being asked, “Is a woman capable of successfully serving as president of the United States?”, because only straight men have been given the opportunity to be the leader of our government since its inception, I can’t help but take it as a personal insult.
While I never imagined it would be meaningful, or let’s be honest, possible, to view the person who is our president as being like me, I now find myself full of hope when I look at the female candidate before us. I am hoping that come November, respect for others and positivity will be victorious over the negativity and bullying rhetoric that has captured our country’s attention for far too long. Most of all, I can’t wait for the world to see how well Kamala Harris can do this most important job, as a woman, with grace and a smile on her face.
If you still need to see a bit of yourself in the current Democratic candidates, you should know Kamala cooks. And Tim Walz supports farmers.
For my final PSA: Please make sure you’re registered to vote on November 5th. And then actually do it.
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As always, thanks for reading and just being here.
XX,
Heather
My friend Krissy, grower of the Zolfini beans first introduced me to okonomiyaki, the savory Japanese pancake, an incredible kitchen sink of a recipe template that I've followed ever since thanks to her copy of Japanese Home Cooking.
I later read Bryan Washington's gorgeous novel, Family Meal, in which this dish is a recurring theme of comfort and resourcefulness. You can find his recipe and reflection on okonomiyaki here.
So jealous of that Chicken of the Woods. When do I get to come out and go mushroom hunting with you?