From Asparagus to Zucchini

While picking snap beans the other day, I looked down and saw the last of the asparagus coming up.  Most of it matures quickly now as it's warming up.  It's easy to miss.  But I got the asparagus, snapped it off, and ate it raw, right there in the snap bean row.

I finished the beans and remembered that I needed to check the squash.  They're growing ever so fast as well.

I had planned on weighing the garden produce this year, just to start tracking that, but, to be honest, it's too much work, ha ha.  Here's a big basket of nothing but zucchini I picked.  There will be more coming in tomorrow.  Tricia kind of gave me "the stink eye" when I came in with this.  "What are we going to do with all this," she said.  "We're gonna eat it," I replied.

We also give it away.  Today we walked some over to one of our neighbors.  Tricia also made Zucchini Fritters tonight.  We ate an entire zucchini squash, I'm not ashamed to say.  Zucchini Fritters are like crab cakes, without the crab.  You grate zucchini, put it in a colander, salt it, and let the water drain off.  Then you add flour, cheese, eggs, garlic and seasoning and stir.  Then make little patties and fry them.  My wife made a sour cream ranch dressing that we dipped them into.  Very good!

Since we've been using the dehydrator to preserve a lot of the fresh produce coming in, we decided to dehydrate some zucchini.  The zucchini was cut into slices like you see in the measuring cup below and were blanched according to the time instructed.

Blanching aids in protecting flavor, color, texture in the vegetables.  It inactivates enzymes that cause vegetables to deteriorate.  Although the vegetables don't stay in the water for long, we were wondering if you lose water soluble vitamins during blanching?  The answer is yes.  Although it takes a little longer, the next time we blanch, we'll try steam blanching.  Steam blanching allows the vegetables to retain vitamins otherwise lost in water blanching.

After removing and putting in ice water to immediately stop the cooking process, the blanched zucchini is drained and placed on the trays of the dehydrator.  I don't know how this is going to work out.  Zucchini has a very high water content.  It seems to me this process is akin to dehydrating ice cubes.

Twelve hours later, the dehydrated zucchini is done.

Wowzers!  There's nothing left.  If I still read newspapers, I could read one through the zucchini.  It is transparent and thin.  There's nothing left to it.

Five full trays of cut up zucchini yielded a PINT of dried zucchini.

Good for adding to soups and stews, I imagine, and it'll keep.