Zucchini Grande

Zucchinis scare me. I always have the most normal intentions when I buy zucchini plants. I just want to plant them, let them grow, develop fruit, and then eat them.

But this so-called “fruit” has life of its own. As a matter of fact, I am not so sure they are not aliens. I know this may sound far-fetched to some people, but I guarantee that those people have never, ever, grown zucchini.

Last week I had a busy week, (not unlike all my other weeks and everybody else’s weeks). So when I finally got around to picking a zucchini for dinner last Thursday, this is what I found…
My son had to help me extract this 14 lbs of squash from their cage.

I turned my back on them for barely a day or so, and they turned into gargantuan squash. It is hard to convince me that they are really vegetables and not some alien life form. Why else would they grow so fast???

Momo wieghs less than this squash. Momo also seems a bit fearful of the large squash.

As I Googled what to do with giant zucchini, I noticed that even the examples featured on the internet weren’t as big as mine.  The larger of my zucchini is bigger than my older son when he was born.

What am I supposed to do with these things???

Enter my wonderful Italian neighbor Patrizia. She likes those zucchini grande!

I gave her one of the alien zucchini and then I took this portrait of her with my behemoth squash. She calls it Madonna and Zucchini. This was actually the smaller of th two zucchini.

I asked her what she was going to do with it, and she said she likes to slice up the zucchini, fry it in butter, and throw it into pasta…enough pasta to feed a small Italian village.

Basta Bene

 

Comments

[Sarah]

Wow! When our zucchini gets too big, we either make zucchini boats (like stuffed peppers, there are a lot of recipes on the internet) or, we shred it and freeze it. We usually make zucchini bread with it during the winter, and once in a while, an amazing chocolate zucchini cake (my preference.) ;)

[chigiy]

Hi Sarah,
Thank you for the ideas. I have make zucchini boats and stuffed zucchini before but that one zucchini looked so big that I thought perhaps we could make a real boat from it. One of my next posts is going to be about this yummy zucchini bread I make from my friend Elise's food blog Simplyrecipes.com. It is really good. It has lemon and rosemary in it. yum

[Nancy]

My mom always made zucchini bread. She would put the zucchini through a metal meat grinder used for sausage. We loved it as kids. Here is a sample recipe. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/zucchini-bread-recipe/index.html

[Lorie]

Love the photos.
Your "little boy" is adorable.

[Peggy]

HaHa! Madonna and Zucchini! I've always thought one should never plant more than one zucchini plant or you'd end up wrapping the surplus (giant ones) in baby blankets and leaving them on doorsteps.

[chigiy]

Hi Lorie,
Thank you
yes my little 6'1" boy.
I can't believe it.
xo

Hi Peggy,
You gave me a great idea. I know how I'm getting rid of my zucchini now. hehe

[Barbara]

Hi there. In the UK, where I live, zucchini are known by the French name, courgette. And a courgette that's gone mad is called a marrow. People grow them big by choice! If you google "prize marrow" you will see that yours are mere pipsqueaks. I love zucchini, but like Peggy have learned not to plant too many.