I'm going to turn into a zucchini

The time of the year I feel the least creative in the kitchen is when I have an extreme over abundance of zucchini staring at me from the fridge, the kitchen counter, and the garden and I'm just wondering how the heck am I going to choke down any more of this weed? But this year I'm determined not to let any of our food go to waste. Not only are we trying to save money and keep a budget but it seems just ungrateful to waste food from your garden, even if it is boring old squash.

Now the last thing I would ever want to become is a food blogger (no offense to any fabulous food bloggers out there!) for many reasons:

1) I couldn't cook to save my life until I got married because I had absolutely no interest and being one who loves to eat, I had to step up to the plate since I no longer lived with Mom.

2) I can't envision a recipe when I read it, therefore I cook only the things that have pictures, and my recipe books that have no pictures literally never get used.

3) Basically the only thing about food that interests me is eating it.

Therefore it's striking me as a bit odd that I'm blogging about food, and I doubt it'll ever happen again but as all we've been doing for the past 3 days is dealing with squash, I guess it's an appropriate topic.

Caelen has been my big helper girl. Everything we've done, she's been in on. She's a hands-on kind of gal and loves to prepare food, something I'm sure she gets from her Grandma Suzanne and the Italians in her family line.

So far we've made:

1) zucchini cupcakes. Caelen literally poured all the ingredients in, helped with the mixer and by herself spooned all the cupcakes full. I just measured quantities and told her what to do for the most part. The coolest part was when I realized we didn't have any orange juice so we went out the orange tree and juiced our own. They turned out delicious.

2) zucchini fries (thanks to Amy C.) Some zucchini wedges dipped in egg and milk mixture, rolled in a bread crumb and Parmesan cheese mixture and baked. She did all the dipping and rolling. When it came time to eat them though she just licked the cheese off.

3) fried zucchini and squash with thyme which has been one of my favorite ways to eat squash so far (I highly recommend it: thyme, garlic, onions and squash fried up in butter and oil. The recipe also added red and green bell peppers but I didn't have any on hand)

Tonight I'm blanching a ton of shredded zucchini for cupcakes and zucchini bread, and yellow squash.

The green beans look like they're coming on strong and coming up next. I've already made plans to puree it into baby food, and freeze tons. There's nothing better than pulling out some bags of garden fresh green beans during Thanksgiving!

(PS Any fabulous zucchini/squash recipes out there?? ;)