Zucchini: Summer’s Somewhat Overwhelming Bounty, and Zucchini Boats

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook!

This week, we’re going to be focusing on what I can only call a rather “devisive” vegetable: zucchini:

I have always enjoyed zucchini, and this week, I’ll be featuring some fun recipes. However, a lot of folks don’t like zucchini, or squash for that matter. I once invited a boss of mine to a dinner party at my house and asked if he had any food allergies or aversions. He said “both my wife and I avoid salt, and I do not consider zucchini to be a food.” Ok–message received! He was kind of a jerk. I should have served zucchini for all four courses. But then, I guess that would have made me kind of a jerk, huh?

My mother used to plant zucchini in the summertime, so we ate a lot of it. One summer, mom’s zucchini plants, along with all of her friends’ plants, were particularly abundant, and everyone had so much of it, they couldn’t give it away. She and her friends scrambled around and found recipes to share that would use up as much of their abundance as possible. This week, I’ll be sharing some of those childhood favorites, as well as some new recipes.

Zucchini does have the reputation of taking over backyard gardens. I have heard that one healthy plant in the right hands could feed a small village. My garden has never been one of them, but that has more to do with my and my husband’s four black thumbs than anything else. When it comes to plants of any kind, we are hopeless–we go to garden centers, and plants tremble in fear that they will be picked to come home with us to a life of certain humiliation and ultimate doom. We have many fine qualities, but gardening just isn’t one of them. I mean, when you can’t keep a zucchini plant alive, I just don’t know what that says about you.

And that’s why I’m so grateful when friends and family, or friends of family share their bounty with us.

This year, my friend Paul’s boss has been sharing the fruits of her bountiful zucchini garden with me and I have been enjoying making an assortment of fun recipes with them.

But first, let’s take a little closer look at this vegetable–and let’s start with the fact that it’s actually botanically a fruit! It comes from seeds and it is from the flowering vine part of the zucchini plant, making it technically a fruit.

Although not generally classified as a “superfood,” it is very nutritious. A serving of zucchini contains 40% of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A, which supports vision and the immune system. It also boasts 16% of rda of manganese, 14% of Vitamin C, 13% of potassium, 10% of magnesium, 9% of Vitamin K, 8% of folate, 8% of copper, 7% of phosphorus, 7% of Vitamin B-6 and 5% of thiamine.

Zucchini is also high in antioxidants, being rich in lutein, zeaxanthin and beta-carotene. It also contains lots of good soluble and insoluble fiber, making it good for your digestion. All that good fiber also promotes healthy blood sugar levels, and all the good potassium in zucchinis may help reduce high blood pressure.

So–you folks out there who are evaluating fruits for eligibility for “superfood” status, I would urge you to take a closer look at zucchini!

The first recipe I’ll share for the week is one that I’ve shared before, but it’s a good one–zucchini boats: