An Abundance of Squash

John planted a mix of 7 squash varieties in our garden this year. It has been fun to see what comes up. So far, we've enjoyed four types - yellow crookneck, zucchini (which I think is called Black Beauty, but it's just regular zucchini), tatume (the round light green one to the left of the knife blade in the first picture), and cocozelle (the dark green zucchini to the right of the knife).

We have a few ready each day, so I've prepared it steamed, fried it, made it into zucchini bread, used it in a vegetable spaghetti sauce, and in veggie pizza rolls (ala Double Daves, yum!). I was running out of ideas, so I turned to the internet. My friend Glenn said he had tried squash blossoms and they were delicious, so I looked up recipes for the blossoms, as well.

I don't think I've taken pictures of my cooking since college (remember that, Christy? we were so proud of our cooking!), but I figured it was okay for the blog.

The cutting board on the left has squash blossoms stuffed with a ricotta mushroom mixture. (There are also a few mushrooms because I LOVE fried mushrooms.) I wasn't sure exactly which blossoms to use, so we tried some of each - male blossoms (the ones without fruit) and female blossoms attached to baby squashes of 3 varieties. They were then dipped into a homemade beer batter and fried - delicious! The other dish is all 4 types, stuffed with sausage, onions, breadcrumbs, and some other stuff. I topped them with a little Italian cheese right at the end of baking. Also yummy!

When I was washing the squash blossoms before preparing them, I opened up a tiny spot at the top of the blossom and ran water into them. I was very surprised when one of the flowers started buzzing and vibrating! I came to my senses in time to make it outside before the bee came zooming out the end. I had seen all the bees in the blossoms this morning, but that was when they were wide open; I didn't expect the bees to stay inside and get closed into the flowers in the evening.

Tomorrow night's dessert: Baked Squash with Blueberries!

Here are the recipes:
http://www.seasonalchef.com/recipe0805b.htm#Battered
http://southernfood.about.com/od/summersquash/r/bl00819a.htm