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I make! Berry zucchini bread edition


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I continue to have too much stuff and need to find ways to get rid of it before it spoils.  This time, zucchini.  I thought it would be a good idea to buy a Costco-sized bag of zucchini.  Mind you, it would only be me eating this zucchini and I’m hardly home long enough to cook.  So of course, I had this massive amount of zucchini that was starting to go soft and I really needed to get rid of it.  And thus I made a whole bunch of berry zucchini bread and foisted that off on people.

I made a version of this recipe that I found and it’s pretty good.  I had people hoarding slices for breakfast the next morning.  I bet it would make really good French toast.  Anyway, it’s definitely something I will make again when I have too much zucchini.

Here’s my adaptation.

Ingredients:

  • 3 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1.25 cups white sugar
  • 3 cups shredded zucchini
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 0.25 teaspoon baking soda
  • 0.25 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 pint mixed berries
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Procedure:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease loaf pans.
  2. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar.
  3. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
  4. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until incorporated and then add 1/2 the zucchini and mix until incorporated.  Repeat ending with the dry ingredients.
  5. Fold in berries and walnuts (if using).
  6. Transfer to loaf pans and bake for 70-80 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
  7. Cool 20 minutes in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Notes:

  • I might do a mix of granulated and brown sugar next time for a hint of a molassesy flavor.
  • I increased the shredded zucchini to 3c, which is about 2 medium zucchini (you don’t understand, I made A LOT of zucchini bread).
  • I’ve made it with and without the walnuts.  I think I prefer the texture with walnuts.
  • I don’t remember how big my loaf pans are, but the recipe yields 2 larger loaves (as opposed to 4 mini-loaves).  But I did have to increase my baking time to about 70-80min.

The tree was feeling a bit stabbity

That was exactly how the tree felt.

You may remember that I have a slightly adversarial relationship with fruit trees.  This hasn’t changed.  But I was content to just let this relationship be what it was.  I may not be best of friends with fruit trees but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to antagonize them.  The trees apparently don’t feel the same way.

The other day, I came home from work and was taking care of some stuff around the yard in preparation for trash day when I realized that one of the green date trees had decided it would be a good idea to load up only one of its branches with fruit.  Just one.  Completely covered in fruit.  So obviously, the branch snapped and broke off.

Now I have a dead branch covered in almost ripe dates on the floor.

I thought about just throwing everything away as I’m not the hugest fan of green dates or the tree, but I knew my mother would be greatly displeased with such a decision.  She highly values her date trees.  So I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to pick every single date off the branch and then get rid of the branch.

Now, the thing about the date trees is that they’re covered in thorns.  I’ve been stabbed by them before.  I try and learn from my mistakes.  So this time, I went and donned a pair of leather work gloves before bothering the branch.

The tree was not having any of it.  It stabbed me anyway.  Through the leather of my gloves.  Into my thumb.  And then broke tip of the thorn off in my thumb so deep that I haven’t been able to get it out with a needle.  I’m not squeamish about digging around in my flesh with a needle either.  I have a hole in my thumb now from picking at the area around the thorn with a needle.  But you can just barely see the tip of the thorn.  I definitely don’t have enough of it to grab with tweezers.  Jerk tree.

Looking around online for splinter cures, it looks like maybe an Epsom salt compress might help coax the thorn out far enough so I can grab it.  Yay.