August 5, 2010

Fresh Zucchini makes my day

August 5, 2010

You’re not supposed to let Zucchini or Squash get so big
Oops? In this case I fail.
The reason why is, the bigger they get, the more seeds they have (I do mean a lot) as well as they aren’t as moist, and in some cases don’t have much taste. I’ve been more than lucky though, cutting all of them up, they’ve been very good, minus the extra seeds.It’s ideal to pick your zucchini when they reach 6-8inches long.Mine have a habit of growing large, super fast, not that I’m complaining. 🙂
We finally got our yellow summer squash in!
In the back there is cucumbers, that popped up out of nowhere. My garden has a lot of surprises for me this year, including Cherry Tomatoes that I noticed in with the big beef tomato plant. We are out there first thing in the morning , the kids love to check the water, look at anything new growing. My little farmers!
Which brings me to another kid choice recipe. My kids wanted Eggplant Parmesan! I had Zucchini to use though, so it became Eggplant Zucchini Parmesan 🙂
I found this on my itouch from allrecipes, my changes are within the recipe

Ingredients
3 eggplant, peeled and thinly sliced (I found 3 too much, so used only 2)
2 eggs, beaten (used egg substitute)
4 cups Italian seasoned bread crumbs
6 cups spaghetti sauce, divided (I really took it easy on the sauce and it still came out wonderful! didn’t need six cups worth.)
1 (16 ounce) package mozzarella cheese, shredded and divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/2 teaspoon dried basil (fresh basil)
** I used one medium sized Zucchini sliced length wise, or juse 2 small ones, I sliced them a tad big, but I didn’t mind one bit, just don’t slice either Eggplant or Zucchini too thick or it will be hard to cut. The picture above shows how big I cut the Zucchini, that’s about how thick I did the Eggplant as well, next time I’ll do it a tad thinner**
Directions
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Before I cut up the eggplant I sliced the zucchini and sprinkled them with a little salt, set to drain.
3.Dip eggplant slices in egg, then in bread crumbs. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes on each side.

3.In a 9×13 inch baking dish spread spaghetti sauce to cover the bottom. Place a layer of eggplant slices in the sauce. Sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Before I poured the sauce down again I layered the zucchini (blot them dry if you’ve sprinkled with salt!) down and repeated with remaining ingredients, ending with the cheeses. Sprinkle basil on top.
4.Bake in preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until golden brown.
This was very good, top it off with some wine and you have a wonderful dinner! It’s even better if you have home grown items, and fresh herbs! Enjoy!

Don’t forget if you haven’t entered the chance to win a $40 CSN gift certificate, head on over now!

It ends August 7th at 10PM.

Advertisements

8 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.