Moooove over Betty Crocker!

I feel like I'm nesting in reverse. Today I was a fool in the kitchen. A lean-mean-cooking-machine. A grating-shredding mess. And I mean that quite literally...I am NOT clean in the kitchen.

The vacation in the kitchen was sponsored by the copious amount of zucchini that I discovered when I visited the garden this morning. As it had only been 2 or 3 days I never imagined that the zucchini would have grown to mammoth size - but they had. Some squashers were ready too, so I grabbed them and hustled them up to the house.

I've been hoarding recipes the last couple of days, realizing that a zucchini and squash baby boom was on the horizon. I was super excited to try this Baked Couscous with Summer Squash and Herbs, as well as try my hand at this Pineapple Zucchini Sheet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Really. Excited.

So I made the Summer Squash dish for lunch today.

This picture doesn't do it justice. At all. I used Quinoa instead of Couscous (didn't have any), 1 real egg instead of egg substitute (yuck), and a shredded cheese blend instead of the fancy stuff (didn't have any). But both dishes contained a grain, summer squash, egg stuff, and cheese, so really I did follow the recipe. Really. And it was really good, even with my variations. I had 3 servings. (shush it, i'm not a pig, i'm lactating.)

Then I spent an extended amount of time trialing methods of grating zucchini for freezing. Hmmm. First, I tried my trusty little chopper - a $5 device that I bought one Christmas thinking it would be good to have around. And it has been, it is my best friend for making baby food. Unfortunately it is not friends with zucchini. The zucchini looked like a watery blob when the chopper was done with it...not cool.

But, it gave me a very good excuse to make the cake. And it was fabulous. And I didn't even frost it. Trust me, it'll trick your little ones to eat a veggie - Adalynn dove in and didn't even notice. Adalynn, the recently turned anti-veggie eater, ate 1.5 pieces. (i took a picture of it, but the picture is U-G-L-Y. so go to the pioneer woman's post about it, she took some beauts)

While the cake baked, I realized I still had 4 zucchini to deal with. 4 Very Large Zucchini. I tried a manual grater - I don't recommend it. Then I pulled out this circa 1960s food processor that Linda has graciously let me borrow for an extended period of time.

It is a GODSEND!!! I flew through those 4 suckers so fast they didn't know what hit them.

The best part? I have exactly enough Zucchini in each bag to make that cake ALL WINTER LONG. MmmmmMMMMM.