Zucchini Chips Experiments

Zucchini post, margination, sans nooch, pre dehydration.

Part three of "Stuff I Bought Before I Got Sick Therefore I Had to Find A Way To Preserve It" involves some zucchini I picked up at the produce stand. I don't even know why I buy zucchini. I made myself sick of it a long time ago and usually just buy it to let it go bad in the fridge in the next few weeks- but since I had the dehydrator out I decided to get crazy. I found a formal recipe filled with pretty pictures, and immediately decided that I didn't have the energy for that. I took my spiralizer and two zucchini, and got to work using the slicing attachment. After a few seconds I decided to cut a slit down the zucchini, so now I have something slightly resembling a chip. From there a squirted a few drops of greek dressing, and quickly decided that would be way too strong for this, so I poured copious amounts of lemon juice on the zucchini, along with some garlic infused olive oil and plenty of fresh dill I bought for a pickling project I have also dogged off. I let the mixture marinate overnight, and the next day I ground some pepper and himalayan salt over the mixture, and added nutritional yeast (nooch) over half of the mixture for a variation. I gingerly laid the zucchini onto the trays and placed them on my ancient Ronco dehydrator, given to me years ago by my dear Pawpaw, and now we wait. And wait. And wait. Patience is a virtue when you're dehydrating things. I hope all my effort and patience pays off.

Behold the Cucuzza (Googootz!)

Yesterday I mentioned I had to my daughter's utter delight, picked up a cucuzza (pronounced googootz) from the local produce stand. Cucuzza is an Italian squash, similar in taste to a zucchini, but is very long and thin. I bought it mostly for the novelty, as my father in law is Italian and I had heard him speak of his mother cooking cucuzza a few times- I thought it would be fun for nostalgia's sake. I spoke with him Saturday night, was given instruction as to how to prepare the unwieldy squash, and plans were made to cook it in a traditional Italian dish.

Look at this baby and her squash! Anyways, Sunday morning, the day we were supposed to cook, I woke up with a splitting headache, a swollen throat, an aversion to light and noise- I may have woken up a vampire. I'm not sure. I sent my husband to my inlaw's house with the prepped cucuzza and a two year old, and those dear souls did double duty cooking and caring for the sweet little one- even braving the grocery store and bringing me Sudafed. On top of all that, dear husband came back with huge bowls of spaghetti sauce and the cooked cucuzza- could they be any more kind?

It is delicious! It was served with pasta, or course, but I'm going to try it with konjac noodles, as I try to keep my carbs low and I am generally just all around weird. So delish!