Gadzukes!

I ate the last zucchini last night - thank God!

Actually, I enjoyed trying different recipes this summer, my favorite being two from The Student's Vegetarian Cookbook by Carole Raymond: Pita with Creamy Zucchini and Zucchini and Cheese Pizza. Another easy fave is to shred the zucchini, stir fry with a variety of chopped veggies (and optionally a can of chicken), and serve over rice.

This year's overabundance of zucchini was brought on by homemade compost, a lack of insect pests, and good weather. When creating hills for squash and cukes, I dig a hole approximately one foot by one foot by one foot and fill it with compost; the excavated dirt then becomes the hill, on top of which go the seeds. The plants get off to a slow start, but you can tell when they hit that compost. My other trick is successive plantings - one hill every two weeks, starting after June 1. This late (for our area) start usually bypasses the first flush of squash and cucumber bugs. But this year there were NO bugs. There were not many wasps, either. Is this a good sign or a bad omen?