Zucchini Bread

What better way to eat your vegetables then in sweet, yummy bread form with the option of chocolate? Our neighbors at Sleepy Hollow Farm have some of the biggest, most beautiful zucchini I have ever seen. Perfect for bread baking.

Zucchini Bread

• 3 eggs
• 1c vegetable oil
• 2c sugar
• 2c grated zucchini
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 3c flour
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Optional:

• 1/2 c chopped walnuts
• 1 c chocolate chips
• 1 Tbsp orange zest

Directions:
Heat oven to 350. Grease two bread pans. Stir together dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, baking powder and salt). Now you can mix by hand or use a hand mixer to add the eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla. Then stir in zucchini until well combined. Divide badder into bread pans and bake for 60-70min until a cake tested or tooth pick comes out of the loaf cleanly.

Zucchini Gratin

When it comes to food the power of suggestion beats me every time. More often then not a beautiful food photo is what first inspires me to try out a new recipe. Usually once I have seen a delicious looking picture I cannot get whatever it is out of my head and must taste it. Yes, I am a food advertisers dream. Recently I saw a picture of this Zucchini Gratin dish on another food blog (Bless Her Heart) and thought it looked delicious. I will admit that I really like roasted vegetables, especially when they are smothered in cheese. So when my mother in -law asked us to bring something as a side for dinner I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to test out the recipe. The basic recipe I used can be found at finecooking.com (follow this link). The only adjustment I made was that I really wanted a little bit of a creamy texture. So I made a garlic-lemon cream sauce to drizzle over the gratin last, just before I put it in the oven. I highly recommend trying this recipe out.

Additional Cream Sauce:
- One Tbsp butter melted in a small sauce pan
- One clove minced garlic, simmered in the butter
- 1 to 2 Tbsp cream added to the garlic
- Juice from one lemon