Zucchini

My zucchini plants are really producing well. I have zucchini overload. That is despite my dog (the maniac) who keeps eating them while they are still waiting to be picked.  Well, he ate half of this one.  He just sampled several others.

Then there’s Rocky (the monster).  He knocked the one Sky started eating on the floor and was going to finish it.  I swear, those two will drive me to the loony bin.

At least the chickens appreciate whatever Sky leaves of the zucchinis he starts (after I wrestle it away from the cat).

Anyhow, despite the monster and the maniac, I still have more zucchini than I know what to do with.  I’ve sold some at the farmer’s market (I was the first to have them and sold all I took. Last week someone else brought some and sold them for cheaper–zucchini price wars!).  I can only eat zucchini patties for lunch so many days in a row.  That means it’s time for a new zucchini recipe!

I wanted to do cinnamon zucchini rolls.  The only one I found on the Internet was  just a cinnamon roll recipe that someone shredded a cup of zucchini and rolled up with the cinnamon and sugar filling.  That just seems weird.  There’s no recipe like I wanted, so I set about making my own.

I started with peeling and boiling a zucchini.

Then I drained the pan and mashed the zucchini like a potato.

I added it to my milk and butter when I heated them.  The rest is just like any other cinnamon roll recipe.  The results were delicious!

I shared with several members of my family to make sure the recipe was blog worthy (all affirmative responses) and to keep me from eating them all.

Cinnamon Zucchini Rolls

In a medium sauce pan heat the following to about 120*F

• 3/4 cup of milk (I used whole goat milk)
• 1 cup mashed zucchini (see above)
• 1/3 cup margarine (cut in pads)

In a large mixing bowl measure

• 3 cups flour
• 2 Tbsp of rapid rise yeast (you could do one packet)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt

Add the warm liquid to the flour mixture and stir.  Add

• 2 eggs

Mix in another 2 1/2 – 3 cups of flour.  When it gets too stiff to stir, dump it onto the counter and continue kneading and adding the flour until it is a soft but not sticky dough.

Let the dough rest for ten minutes.  Then divide it in half.  Roll each half out in a rectangle that is about 9 inches by 12 inches. Spread with margarine and a mixture of 1 cup brown sugar and 2 Tbsp. cinnamon (that is for both rolls).  Roll the dough on the 9 inch side.  Slice it into 9 1-inch pieces and place them in two sprayed round cake pans.

Put them in a warm place and let them rise 30 – 40 minutes or until they’ve nearly doubled in size.

Bake at 350* for 35 minutes or so.  I had to cover mine with foil that last ten minutes so they didn’t get too brown.  Makes 18 rolls.

Frost with a cream cheese (or other) frosting.

I do hope you’ll come back to join me for Friday’s Hunt.  I have this week’s list at the top of my side bar.

Friday’s Hunt v1.7

Welcome back to Friday’s Hunt.  I want to thank everyone who joined in last week.  I had a lot of fun visiting everyone who linked up.  I’m excited for week seven!  It’s very simple.  Anyone can participate.  The link opens at 7pm Central time and will close Sunday at 7pm, so you have plenty of time to enter. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to visit some of the other entries.

If you didn’t participate this week but would like to next week, the topics will be:  Starts with H, Week’s Favorite, and family.  I will always keep a list of the items for the coming week in my sidebar at the top. Without furthur ado, here’s my interpretations for the week.

Starts with G:  Yeah.  I could be obvious and go with goat, but I think I’ll do geese instead!

Weeks’ favorite:  I was going to share my favorite pictures of the pair of cardinals from earlier in the week,

but then I saw the robin again!  There were two of them!  Surely, that means spring is nearly here.

In my kitchen:  I tried a new recipe this week, lemony chicken enchiladas.

The recipe:

Sauté:
•1/2 cup of peppers (I used bell peppers, but I want to try it with Anaheim chili peppers)
•1/2 cup diced onion
•two sliced chicken breasts (I used fake chicken, but it would work just as well with real chicken)

Add:
•2 Tbsp soy sauce
•2 Tbsp lemon juice

Mix in one cup of Ricotta cheese

Roll into flour tortillas and place in a sprayed baking dish.

Cover with enchalada sauce:
•1 pint tomato sauce (I used my homemade pizza sauce for half and homemade tomato sauce for the other half)
•1 cup vegetable stock (or chicken if you went with real chicken breasts)
•2 Tbsp flour
•1 Tbsp olive oil
•1 Tbsp chili powder
•dash of black pepper
•dash of onion powder

Mix and cover the enchaladas.  Bake at 375*F for thirty minutes.  Cover with cheese (I used a taco blend) and bake until it’s melted.

Now it’s your turn!

I’m also sharing with Bird d’Pot, Camera Critters, Saturday’s Critters and Fun Friday Favorites.

Making Cheeses

I’ve been getting more milk than I know what to do with, so I decided to try a new cheese or two.  I started by making cottage cheese.

It’s not difficult if you find and follow a recipe.  The big thing is separating the curds (solid) and whey (liquid).

Then you cut the curds.

As you heat them to cook and stir the curds, they separate into little pieces.

It did add a lot of stuff back into my whey.  I’d forgotten how it did that.  I’m thinking that was not a good thing for my next cheese.

Anyhow, I got my cheesecloth over a pan.

Then I drained the curds.  I did add some milk back to them and a bit of salt.

It turned out pretty good, but I was really interested in the whey.  A friend told me about prim, a soft cheese made from goat whey.  I looked it up and found that all you do is cook the whey all day.  Yep seriously.  So I put it on to cook the next morning.

After about three hours, I called my mom and told her I might have bitten off more than I could stir on my own.  I really was chained to the stove!

Mom

Well, eight hours later, we had a soft white cheese spread.

In order to keep it from being grainy, you have to whisk it while it cools.  Seriously.  After eight hours of stirring, we cheated on the whisking by using the stick blender.  It worked!

It was pretty good, and then we added a bit of garlic and onion powders to see how that was.  That was pretty good too.

It made quite a bit, so I dug through my spices and got creative.  My sister also gave me a bag of tomatoes she dried.

I crushed the tomatoes with my mortar and pestle.

I made tomato and basil cheese dip.

Then I did garlic and chives.

Of course I had to sample all my different kinds.

I did try freezing some, and it thawed well.  I don’t know how long I’d want to leave it in the freezer, but we might try another batch before I’m done milking for the year. These will be great for the holiday season.  I might also try it with just the whey (not making cottage cheese first) to see if I can get the characteristic brown of prim.