News

Aug 06, 2023

Opinion

I have experienced two good uses for zucchini, the most proliferated weed, uh vegetable in the garden, put there ON PURPOSE for Pete’s sake. One is for exercise; tossing the neglected and bloating

I have experienced two good uses for zucchini, the most proliferated weed, uh vegetable in the garden, put there ON PURPOSE for Pete’s sake.

One is for exercise; tossing the neglected and bloating football sized fruit into the pasture is good for you . . . uh, well, I might exaggerate a bit I guess. This is not really one of my good uses for zukes (I hate exercise anyway). Fast forward to last week when Penny Piurkowski brought us some garden produce: green beans, kale and zucchini. El has always liked zucchini, so she immediately pulled a couple favorites out of her recipe treasure trove -- on top of the pile was Zucchini-Crusted Pizza.

Anyway, while I grated one of Penney’s zukes, Ellen gathered the rest of the ingredients on the list. Here it is:

3 ½ cups of coarsely grated zucchini

3 eggs - beaten

⅓ cup flour

½ cup grated mozzarella

½ cup grated parmesan

1 Tablespoon fresh minced basil leaves (½ Tablespoon dried)

Salt and pepper to preference

Then it’s important to vigorously salt the shredded zucchini and stir it up, getting the salt distributed well. Set it aside for 15 minutes. Then squeeze all the excess moisture out of it. There will be a lot.

Next combine all the ingredients in a bowl.

Spread the works into an oiled 9x13” pan (we used a glass baking dish.).

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350, until the surface is dry and firm - 23 minutes worked well.

Gather all of your favorite pizza toppings while its baking

Brush the top with oil and broil under moderate heat for 5 minutes

Remove from broiler

Add all of your favorite pizza toppings - we used Rocky Rococo sauce, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, some chopped kale, a few grape tomatoes, half of a green pepper chopped, a couple hands full of mozzarella cheese, some some turkey bacon cut into pepperoni sized pieces, and left over pork chops cut up

Bake the whole mess (her words not mine on the recipe card) at 350 for about 25 minutes

Good stuff Maynard! We had too-good-for-Bo leftovers for lunch the next day.

***

OK, now the nerds have gone too far! A Department of Energy rule banning nation-wide use of new incandescent light bulbs went into effect on Aug. 2. That means that when your old incandescent bulbs burn out, you must replace them with those pricey LED bulbs! Dang! What the?! Uh, wait, what? Ellen just reminded me that we went with LED lighting everywhere in our house and farm buildings some time ago. OK, nerds, I apologize. The only time I have experienced an LED bulb burn out is when this idiot dropped it and broke off the optics diffuser (glass bulb). Even then sometimes they still work. (Full disclosure I used super glue to reattach the glass bulb; it’s still in service up in the shop.) Anyway, the ban is part of a decades-long push to increase energy efficiency. Incandescent bulbs, though cheaper up front than LEDs, are likely to burn out 30 times faster and are more costly than LEDs to operate: in the long term LEDs last as much as 20 times longer, and use far less energy and don’t give off heat. The nerds say that over half of US households already partly or entirely use LEDs as general-use light bulbs. We even have an LED yard light. So again, sorry nerds. Good plan.

Until next time, get out -- we took a road trip in our new Honda truck Sunday and unless the computer spills out fake news, we got over 29 mpg! Not bad for almosta-truck. The next morning we hauled two hunting blinds from Spruce Hill over by Newry on a rented trailer and then took the Honda for its first four-wheeling experience up on our ridgetop to set up the blinds. The mileage dropped below 25 mpg, just sayin’. As the Beach Boys sang, “First gear, it’s alright! Second Gear, I lean right! Third gear, hang on tight! …It’s alright!” I bet some of you of a certain age were singing “Honda Honda go faster faster!” in the background. Enjoy.

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