What to do with your Zucchini: Part Two

So last week, our garden exploded with zucchini. We gave three away to different friends (hopefully we didn't seem too desperate) and kept three for ourselves. We made a delicious zucchini parmesan recipe that was super tasty and super filling. It also worked out really well because the zucchini we had was 5-6 inches in diameter....huge! We only had to eat one or two pieces for each meal. I love meals that can stretch out over a couple of days!

Since we still had zucchini left over, we decided to try another recipe for dinner. Since some lovely friends bought us some spices for our wedding, we've been getting the Penzey's Spices catalogue each month. Despite tempting me with their delicious spice blends, I love looking through it because costumers always send in recipes. I am a sucker for new recipes and these always look so gourmet and wonderful. This Easy Cheesy Zucchini Bake definitely lived up to its name: it is easy and delicious! The recipe is attributed to a Karen Niessing and I hope she doesn't mind that I'm posting it here.

What you need:
2 medium tomatoes, cut into wedges *
2 zucchini, sliced
2 yellow summer squash, sliced **
1/2 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 cup mozzarella cheese

* The recipe says to peel them, but I like the skins.
** We used one large zucchini for the whole recipe (so no summer squash) and it was still great!

Preheat oven to 350. Combine tomatoes, zucchini, squash, seasonings, and cheddar cheese. Place in a 1 1/2 quart baking dish or 9 x 9 glass pan (we used a bigger pan because we had a LOT of zucchini). Top with Parmesan and bread crumbs. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese over the top and let stand 5 minutes so the cheeses melts before serving.

Enjoy! This is a good one. And pretty healthy too--just go lighter on the cheese if you want to make it even better for you!

Here is a picture update of our tiny onions. They are tasty though!

What We Believe

Matt's profile:

Jessica's profile:

River and Cabin Adventures

This past week, Matt and I went to a family reunion with my Mom's side of the family. With my grandma, five kids and spouses, plus 14 grandchildren, it was a pretty big group! We all met at a wonderful river house owned by my Uncle Matt's family (there are a lot of Matt's out there!) on the Colorado River. It is so beautiful down there! We spent the week swimming, boating, riding jet skis, wake surfing, and playing games. It was so so fun. Matt also got to go fishing with the uncles, which he loved. Now, he is stoked to go as often as he can. It is always fun when the family gets together because my little cousins are all growing so fast! And, not to be too biased, but my family is so funny! Once you get my uncles together, hilarity is soon to follow. We had so many adventures, but I forget to take pictures sometimes. So, I have taken a few from Jeanette. I hope she doesn't mind.

Matt and I holding hands in the car over Jeanette's lap (photocred: Jeanette)

 Fishing in the dark. I'm holding the hotdog (bait). A very important, underrated job. (photocred: Jeanette)

 On the jet ski. Matt looks hilarious in this one! (photocred: Jeanette)

I like this one of me. Matt and Jeanette are looking awesome too :)  (photocred: Jeanette)

 On the river. So beautiful! (photocred: Jeanette)

Matt wake surfing! He looks awesome. (photocred: Jeanette)

Me touching the wake. So fun! (photocred: Jeanette)

Matt kissing the second fish he caught. Fortunately, he loves me more :)

We went to visit Granny before and after our river trip. We stayed at her cabin near Cedar City for a night and went on some fabulous hikes. Southern Utah is so beautiful! We also enjoyed smores with gigantic marshmallows, dutch oven cobbler, and a yummy mexican casserole with quinoa. We passed Navajo Lake and a few other fishing spots on the way, so Matt decided he really wants to go fishing up there. We're planning a trip in September for a few days. There are way too many things to do up in the mountains for just one day!

The family looking out onto Cedar Breaks. 

 Cedar Breaks. So gorgeous!

 Matt "hanging" out with a tree. Too bad the picture is so dark!

 I'm pointing at something. Maybe the waterfall?

 The red rock is so beautiful.

 The rains have really done their job. This waterfall was definitely moving fast.

The beautiful hillside by Cascade Falls. What a great hike!

Our Little Creperie

One of our dreams for the future is to retire and open a little creperie (a restaurant that sells crepes!). We started planning after we visited the cutest creperie in Charlottesville, VA during our honeymoon. It is called The Flat and you can see a picture here. The menu is really simple and features both savory and sweet crepes. Matt and I stopped there for dinner one night and fell in love. My crepe had ham, fresh brie, and apple slices. Matt's crepe had sausage, brie, and spinach. They were both delicious! Of course, the dessert crepes were to die for as well. Who can beat Nutella and fresh fruit? (As you can tell from previous posts, I am definitely obsessed with Nutella).

Matt and I have made crepes a few times now. Usually, we eat them in the morning and just mix fruit, jam, honey, Nutella, peanut butter and such for a wonderful breakfast. Today we made some crepes for dinner. We decided on ham, swiss, and apple as the dinner combination. They were fabulous! The great thing about crepes is that they can be very inexpensive. The cost depends entirely on what you decide to put in them.

The talented chef.

Here is the recipe we used to make the crepes. We got it from a book called Teens Cook that I got for Christmas many years ago. It actually has some great recipes in it. I use it all the time.

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
2 Tb. oil
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Place eggs in a blender. Add the milk, oil, flour, and salt and blend until smooth. Since we don't have a blender (see the smoothie post), we just beat the mixture really well. A blender would probably make sure there are no lumps though.

Heat an 8-inch nonstick saute pan over medium heat. Place a small amount of oil or butter on a paper towel and rub it over the surface of the pan. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and quickly swirl the pan,  making sure the batter covers the entire bottom of the pan (the crepe should be very thin). Cook for 2 minutes (or until the edges start curling up a bit). Loosen the edges with a spatula and turn the crepe over. Repeat the process with all the batter. You can just stack the cooked crepes on top of each other--just be careful pulling them apart when you are ready to eat.

When all the crepes are finished, put whatever you want inside. It will all be delicious, we promise.

I love that we are both wearing our BYU football shirts. I think that really highlights our sophistication and grace :)

The Flood

Basement apartments are great for a lot of reasons: they are cheap, cool in the summertime, and so on. But sometimes, a basement is NOT where you want to be, especially today. It has been raining a lot this summer, especially for Utah, which is usually a desert. Today, we rode our bikes home through a pretty intense summer rain storm. But we've done that before. Right after we finished eating dinner, however, we opened the door of our apartment to a flooding hallway. The space between the two basement apartments was quickly filling with water, dirty water for that matter. Matt opened the door that leads outside to the stairs and found the stairwell filled with four + inches of water. Both of the drains were clogged (of course). Matt grabbed a bucket and started bailing out the stairwell. I was definitely worried. At this point, it didn't seem like the storm was letting up at all. It was even hailing for a little while. We called our landlord, but there wasn't much he could do right away. We pulled out all our towels and lined the floor by the door. By that time, the water had seeped through the closet that leads to the water heater and started to flood our kitchen floor as well. At this point, we had used all our towels, but our kind upstairs neighbors, Haley and Mike, brought down all their clean towels for us to lay out on the floor in our kitchen. Matt and our neighbor across the hall tried to unclog the drains and help the water clear out of the hallway and stairwell, which eventually cleared. Mike told us that there were people in Ogden and other areas of Utah that had from 4-6 feet of water in their basements from the same storm. Wow--we are so blessed! I have no idea what we would do if our home was flooded by that much water. We're lucky that our carpet is just wet around the door and the kitchen. It could have been much, much worse. We are so glad that our possessions were spared damage. All we need to do is put a fan on our carpet and mop our kitchen floor. What a relief! It was definitely an adventure, but one I'd rather not repeat.

Matt bailing us out. The hallway right outside our apartment is at the same level as this flooded stairwell.

 Matt is throwing the water out onto the driveway.

Our wet carpet. The water spread more after the picture was taken. 

Our flooded kitchen floor.

Our First Harvest (and Zucchini Bread, of course!)

Each of our zucchini plants has at least one zucchini growing. We have four zucchini plants and some are definitely doing better than others. We have two plants that have produced giant zucchini--10-12 inches long! Today we harvested one of our big zucchinis to make zucchini bread. Yummmm! We are saving the next one for when Jessica's grandmother comes to stay at the end of this week. So, as an incentive for anyone coming to stay, we will bake you zucchini bread/cake/or anything else you may want. We also have tomatoes that are starting to turn red, so we can do salsa too. We are definitely excited to see how creative we can get once the zucchini plants really go crazy. Fortunately, other wonderful people have filled the internet with delicious recipes. We'll probably have a few more recipes to post as the summer goes on. Here are some pictures of our successful wrangling of a giant zucchini:

 It was 10 inches long!

Unfortunately, Matt has his eyes closed in this one. In his defense, it seems to be a family trait.

Here is the delicious recipe we made this afternoon. It is a favorite recipe from Matt's family.

3 eggs

1 c. sugar

1 c. brown sugar

1 c. oil

3 c. grated zucchini

2 tsp. vanilla

3 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

3 tsp. cinnamon

1 c. coconut

½ c. nuts (We left these out. Nuts are expensive!)

Mix in order given. Bake in 2 large loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. We greased the pans, just to make life easier.

This recipe is really easy and super moist. Definitely recommended!

 Pouring batter into the bread pans.

Indulgence: The 5-Minute Nutella Mug Cake

I found this recipe a while ago somewhere online and thought "where have you been all my life?". I've only made it once before because too much of this heavenly dessert would certainly be bad for my health. Enjoy, sparingly :) 

Nutella Mug Cake

Ingredients

4 tablespoons self rising flour (I used normal flour and it turned out great)
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons Nutella
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

Method

Combine all ingredients in a large coffee mug. Whisk well with a fork until smooth. Microwave on high for 1 1/2 – 3 minutes. (Mine took 1 1/2 minutes with a little yummy gooeyness on the bottom.) 

Note: Depending on the wattage of your microwave, you may have to increase cooking time. Also, the measurements aren't too delicate. I already took out one tablespoon of sugar from the original recipe and it still tasted delicious. 

Makes 1 very large serving. Or 2 normal servings. If you're anything like us, you share everything anyway :)

Here is the link to the original post: http://blogs.babble.com/family-kitchen/2011/03/15/nutella-mug-cake/

There are several other mug cakes on the site if you aren't a Nutella fan. But if you aren't a Nutella fan, you should reconsider.

Also, here is an update on our garden: the tomato plants have recently exploded with lots of little tomatoes, but none of them are ripe yet. The zucchini, however, are doing just fine. We have three that are almost there! Look at that beauty!