Baked Spaghetti....Mmm, Mmm, good!!

 I love this time of the year... 

LOTS of veggies are being harvested from our garden, especially

ZUCCHINI!!  

(other family Zucchini favorite recipes...(here))

Here is yet another 

 YUMMY Zucchini recipe and 

I love that it's loaded full of veggies 

and it uses many basic food storage ingredients as well! 

It calls for Cream of Chicken or Mushroom soup, but since I try to avoid using those, I make a white sauce to pour over it instead of the canned soup and it is absolutely delicious!!    

Easy and Oh, SO yummy!!

Baked Spaghetti
1 large onion chopped

2 cloves minced garlic
1 green bell pepper chopped
1 large Zucchini thinly sliced (OR, 2 medium)
1 Tbsp. butter
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 can olives sliced
1 (4 oz) can mushrooms drained (this is optional)
1 tsp. granulated garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1 pound ground beef, browned and drained
12 oz. spaghetti noodles cooked and drained
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
white sauce...(recipe below) 

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, OR, 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

(WHITE Sauce)

2 cups water

1/4 cup dry milk powder 

4 Tbsp. cornstarch 

1-1/2 tsp chicken bouillon

2 Tbsp. butter

pepper to taste

Bring ingredients to a boil until thickened 

In a large skillet melt butter and sauté onion, garlic, bell pepper and zucchini until tender.
Add in tomatoes, mushrooms olives, garlic powder and oregano. 
Add ground beef and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.
Place half of the cooked spaghetti in a greased 9x13 baking dish
Top with half of vegetable mixture.  

Sprinkle with 1 cup of cheese
Repeat layers.  
Pour white sauce over casserole
Sprinkle with Parmesan or Mozzarella cheese.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 35-45 minutes until bubbly! 

Let sit 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Delicious topped with freshly chopped garden tomatoes.  

Enjoy!

OH and if you are in the mood for 
delicious Cherry Pie to serve as dessert  
with your Baked Spaghetti, 
here is a link to the recipe for that!!

Pasta + Pie makes for HAPPY kids!!
 (at least it makes my sons
 happy, happy, happy!)

Zucchini Favorites of our family!

YES, it's that time of the year...
time for LOTS and LOTS of the GREEN stuff from our garden;
aka...
Zucchini

Every family has their favorite zucchini recipes!
Since this is my recipe journal for all of our family favorites, I thought I had better post these.

The last time I posted about zucchini was in June 2009 when I was pulling zucchini from my freezer that I had froze the previous year and using it up.

Harvest Time
wouldn't be the same without making up these three yummy dishes.

Zucchini BREAD

We enjoy zucchini bread
ALL through the winter because of this helpful tip!!
Thank goodness for being able to preserve things through freezing!
If I were to think of my family's favorite "sweet bread" recipe, it would hands down be Zucchini Bread!

Zucchini Bread
3 eggs, well beaten
1 cup oil (I use ½ cup oil and ½ cup applesauce instead of 1 full cup of oil)
1 ¾ cup sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
3 tsp. Vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Mix first 5 ingredients.
Sift and add the rest.
Grease 2 loaf pans and bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour (OR until toothpick inserted in comes out clean.

This is always a hit with everyone
ANY TIME of the year that it is baked up!

Zucchini CASSEROLE

I just LOVE any kind of casserole
that has "stuffing" in it.
I remember being a young girl and enjoying SO much when there would be leftover stuffing from Thanksgiving dinner and we would take leftover stuffing, turkey and add in some broccoli and bake it in the oven.

This recipe kind of reminds me of that kind of a casserole.
I never buy store bought bread crumbs...
because it's just so easy to make them yourself.
I just take a few slices of my French Bread (here) and then slice them into small cubes and toast them in my toaster oven until lightly browned.
I then sprinkle on 1 tsp. sage and 1 tsp garlic powder and mix well.
Add in the rest of the ingredients and Voila...
a delicious casserole using
bread you baked and veggies from your garden!

Zucchini Casserole
1 chicken breast (cooked and chopped)
Sautee 1 onion and 1 cup of celery until tender

Cook 3 medium zucchinis (chopped) and 3 chopped carrots until tender.
Drain well.

Take 4 cups of bread crumbs and
season well with sage and garlic powder (I use 1 tsp of each)

Mix altogether and add 1 can of cream of chicken soup.
Cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

This is delicious and really easy!

Zucchini QUICHE

We recently had a bad frost and even though we covered our garden, it still left the leaves of our squash plants looking pretty ugly. Ethan overheard Tracy and I talking about our garden and he chimed in and said:

"I'm so sad! Does this mean you won't be able to make anymore of that Pie with Zucchini, Eggs and Cheese... I was really looking forward to having some more of that!"

Well a few days after the frost, we started noticing more zucchini's growing so YES, my little Ethan Kip, we definitely will be enjoying more of this yummy Quiche!

(as easy as 1, 2, 3
and you can whip up a delicious quiche for dinner)

Zucchini Quiche
(click here for pie crust recipe)
5 cups zucchini sliced thin
1 onion chopped
2 Tbsp. butter
½ to 1 cup cooked ham chopped (optional)
Cook in skillet for about 15 minutes. (may need to add a little bit of water)

Mix together:
2 Tbsp. Parsley flakes
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
¼ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp basil
¼ tsp oregano
Combine vegetable mixture and spices together

Blend together
8 oz grated Swiss cheese
4 eggs

Make pie crust and press in un-greased 10” pie plate, prick with fork and
Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes (or until lightly browned).
Pour vegetable/spice mixture evenly over crust.
Pour cheese and eggs over the top.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

Feeling SO grateful,
that even though we got the latest start ever this year in planting our garden
(didn't get it in until the first week of July...yes, it was a busy summer),
we are still enjoying a bountiful harvest
of cabbage, LOTS red potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, a few ears of corn and
LOTS of Zucchini!!

YES, we planted too much Zucchini!

It's a good thing we like it so much!!

Well, we are still learning all of the ins and outs of gardening and last year we expanded our garden and made it bigger. We weren't sure if the soil was amended enough and I wanted to make sure we had some zucchini to enjoy, so what did I do...I planted 4 zucchini plants and they ALL grew!!

However, aside from the fact of sharing some with family and friends we enjoyed it in the fall and have been enjoying it all winter. I have made up 4 different batches of zucchini bread just this winter/spring alone and I am sad (and my kids are sad as well) because we are down to the last 2 packages of shredded zucchini that I had in the freezer.

Just this past week I made up Zucchini Bread and Zucchini Quiche and I was able to do this because we had frozen some in the fall when we had such an abundance of it and so I thought I would share these 2 recipes AND also some helpful tips that help me with enjoying zucchini all through the winter!

We are able to enjoy
the YUMMY smell that comes from baking zucchini bread all through the winter because of these little bags in the freezer!

By slicing zucchini and also "chunking" zucchini
and then freezing it you can pull these bags out of the freezer and make a quiche, casserole, OR, I pull them out and put them in Minestrone soup as well!

The secret to a MOIST bread...applesauce!
I am always trying to find ways to "cut the calories" in our meals and so by having these nifty little applesauce containers on hand I just dump one of these in the mixing bowl and then fill it up with oil and I have 1 cup of oil (and I've only had to actually use 1/2 cup of oil) AND it makes the bread SO moist!

Tracy said at work last Fall lots of people were bringing in zucchini bread for his department to enjoy and when they tried what Tracy brought they kept commenting on how moist the bread was. I attribute it to the secret ingredient 1/2 applesauce/1/2 oil mixture...
"Secret's in the sauce"!
(can you guess what movie that's from)
Anyways, I digress.

THE RECIPES!

Zucchini Bread
3 eggs, well beaten
1 cup oil (I use ½ cup oil and ½ cup applesauce instead of 1 full cup of oil)
1 ¾ cup sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
3 tsp. Vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¾ tsp nutmeg
3 tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Mix first 5 ingredients.
Sift and add the rest.
Grease 2 loaf pans and bake at 325* for 1 hour (OR until toothpick inserted in comes out clean.

***********************
(as easy as 1, 2, 3
and you can whip up a delicious quiche for dinner)

Zucchini Quiche
5 cups zucchini sliced thin
1 onion chopped
2 Tbsp. butter
½ to 1 cup cooked ham chopped (optional)
Cook in skillet for about 15 minutes. (may need to add a little bit of water)

Mix together:
2 Tbsp. Parsley flakes
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
¼ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp basil
¼ tsp oregano
Combine vegetable mixture and spices together

Blend together
8 oz grated Swiss cheese
4 eggs

Make piecrust and press in un-greased 10” pie plate and
bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes (or until lightly browned).
Pour vegetable/spice mixture evenly over crust.
Pour cheese and eggs over the top.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

************************

Pie Crust

½ cup REAL butter
2/3 cup shortening
1 Tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
1-teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon dry milk
3 cups flour
½ cup cold water
Mix butter and shortening together.
Add half the flour and all of the dry ingredients.
Mix.
Add the rest of flour and water. (Makes 2 double crusts)
Roll out very thin with plenty of flour.
Carefully put in pie plates and prick with fork all over.
Bake 400 degrees for 8 minutes, or until lightly browned.

*****(OR you can use ALL butter instead of butter and shortening)