July 7

First Fruits

I'm so excited.  Look at what I picked out of the garden!  It's the first time in my life to actually grow food.  It's very cool.  Since this picture was taken I have picked one piece of okra and a few more tomatoes.

See that zucchini on the left?  It got grated up and used to make this chocolate chip zucchini bread.  I hesitated to tell the girls that it had zucchini in it knowing that they'd never go for a vegetable in the bread.  It smelled so delicious baking that they quickly gave in and tasted. I think the chocolate chips won them over.  All three loaves are GONE!

Here's the recipe straight from Paula Deen's cookbook.  Can you believe there is not the requisite stick of butter? Beware though, there is 3 cups of sugar!!!

Zucchini Bread

3 1/4 Cups of flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground nutmeg

2 tsps baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 Cups sugar

1 Cup veg. oil

4 eggs beaten

1/3 Cup water

2 Cups grated zucchini

1 tsp lemon juice

1 Cup of chocolate chip or pecans

**** Preheat oven to 350.  In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.  In a separate bowl combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini, and lemon juice. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry add chocolate chips or nuts and fold in.  Bake in 2 standard loaf pans or 3 smaller ones that have been sprayed with nonstick spray.  Bake for 1 hour.