Well, we did it again; we do it every year. Each year, I say I’m only going to plant one zucchini plant in our garden, because that’s truly all one family needs. However, each year, I plant nearly 6. I’m not sure why I can’t be content with just one squash plant. I tell myself that I’ll cull the harvest by using the squash blossoms in a frittata or by stuffing the blossoms with mozzarella cheese and frying them. However, I end up doing this exactly one time. My choices were made in the Spring, and I’m stuck with the extra plants. I guess another benefit of the extra squash flowers in the garden is that they attract even more bugs to pollinate not only the squash but my cantaloupes and watermelons. Regardless, we’ve got to step up our zucchini game! When I need a zucchini dinner recipe, I make my fried zucchini pasta or my pesto tortellini pasta salad. Both of those recipes will help you use up one whole small zucchini. For sweet applications, however, I’m dreaming of a muffin with a spicy kick and tangy lemon glaze.
A small side note on getting kids to eat their vegetables:
Have I told you guys about my approach for getting my daughter to eat new foods? It’s basically frequent exposure. The more broccoli shows up on the dinner table (and the more gusto we eat it with), the more normal it becomes for her to eat it, too. It’s a fail-proof method. Never give up on a vegetable—just keep exposing them. I speak from a bit of experience here, as I have a kid who eats cucumbers and bell peppers like an apple, and one who firmly believes cherry tomatoes are just as good as grapes. She frequently loves baby carrots as a side to her breakfast, too. My girl has a serious taste for veggies, but it wasn’t accidental at all—I work very hard at it! I expose her to veggies at every meal, and she watches me and her Dad eat them with enthusiasm. However, there’s one problem with my method. There are quite a bit of seasonal veggies that I don’t get to expose her to year ‘round. Each year, when asparagus comes in season, I have to start back with my exposure method. I take her to the farmer’s market with me, and I tell her that I’m so excited because I heard asparagus is finally in season. She sees my excitement, and I ask her to help me locate it at the market. This year, we found purple asparagus, which made my life so easy, because my daughter loves the color purple! So, we excitedly bring home the new veggie from the market together. She runs to tell Dad that we found asparagus, and Dad begs if we can have it for lunch. So, we make it, she takes one bite, and says no thank you. It’s okay—it always happens this way. It’s a new food with a strong flavor. The next day, I serve asparagus in a different way—sliced on an angle. We talk about how it looks like a pencil and maybe even use the tip to pretend to write things in olive oil on our plate. This day, she’ll usually eat two bites. The third time I serve asparagus, I chop it into pea-size pieces and try a topping I know she loves: lemon olive oil and Parmesan cheese. The fourth time I serve it, I shave it into pretty curly ribbons. I hope you see where I’m going with this—constantly exposure, excitement and hype, and a positive attitude from the parents are key with this method.
Zucchini muffins recipe:
Zucchini is usually an easy sell on kids because it has a mild flavor, thank goodness. However, one time I accidentally served it my usual way: as a side dish with plenty of garlic and red pepper flakes. I completely forgot that kids and red pepper flakes don’t get along, heh. After one bite at dinner, I ruined all of my hard work! Camille developed a fear that all zucchini was spicy and had hidden red pepper flakes! So, I went back to square one with my constant exposure method. I wasn’t making much progress. She would take two bites after confirming it wasn’t spicy, but that’s all she could manage. Since we have a long summer ahead of us with 6 squash plants, I turned to zucchini muffins with lemon glaze.
I like to use sugar slash hiding vegetables as my last and final approach. It’s not my favorite method, because I don’t think we should lie to kids about food. I still proudly call these zucchini muffins, but the lemon glaze on top makes them irresistible to her. My hope is that after a few batches of zucchini muffins, the trust in zucchini will be restored. One important step to this muffin recipe is to make sure that you wring out the extra moisture from the zucchini after grating it. Here’s the grater I use; I love it because it catches the vegetable as you grate! You can see a demo of this in the how-to video. This keeps your muffins from being overly soggy. Now it’s onto eggplant, friends. Wish me luck!
This recipe uses just an egg white; to see recipes to use up the leftover egg yolk, click here.
OXO Grater Wilton 6-cup Muffin Pan
