Giant Zucchini!

My garden has been hit or miss this year. The zucchini starts I got just did not do well in the backyard. I'm not sure if it was because they had a little too much shade, or if it was because we used steer this year instead of compost. Who knows? I am going to use compost next year because I think that's part of why my tomatoes didn't do the best. 

For Easter I got some fun seeds so I started those in the kitchen window and some of them made it and some didn't. I ended up with two pumpkin plants. I was super excited to not have to get pumpkins at the patch this year. It's so fun to grow your own stuff anyway. I planted the two starts in the front next to Michael's car. I really isn't a vegetable garden....it's where we have some of our bulbs planted and a few other ornamental bushes. It is a nice sunny spot though and it has a lot of room to stretch out. 

After a few weeks I realized that one of the plants wasn't a pumpkin plant it was a zucchini plant. Super cool! I didn't really need another zucchini plant, but that was okay. Thankfully I didn't decide to pull it out because the zucchini plants that were in the backyard gave me zero zucchini! This zucchini plant on the other hand has been a zucchini producing machine! My case in point.... 

My giant zucchini!

Giant zucchini next to an average grocery store sized zucchini! 

I had walked in the house holding it like a baby because seriously it was the same size as baby Jaymes! I swear the zucchinis can go from normal sized to jumbo overnight! I left this bad boy on the counter for quite a few days. I knew it wouldn't taste the best since the middle section would have so many seeds and be too watery. Then my mom made my grandma's zucchini bread and it was by far the best zucchini bread I've ever had. I have made lemon zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini bread....you name it and I never like them! This recipe has nuts and raisins and it's amazing!!! 

So I hacked up that jumbo zucchini and was able to get 10 cups of shredded zucchini even with not using the seedy center part. I separated them into 2 cup portions. Each of these bags will make 2 loaves of zucchini bread! I'm so excited to have all this in the freezer so I can make zucchini bread during the winter months. 

I did have another smaller zucchini on hand so I shredded that and made up a batch of bread right then. Oh my the house smelled so good! And just in case you'd like to make this deliciousness for yourself....here's the recipe! 

You're welcome!