Find Any Pesky, Large Veggies? Here’s What You Do!

In the game of garden hide-and-seek we don’t always do a good job of seeking. It’s hard to look under EVERY leaf! Sometimes the better hiders get to be bigger than we would really like. For instance, we planted some zucchini plants in a row of earlier summer squash. Once the summer squash stopped producing we moved to the next planting and forgot about the poor little zucchini plants. Well… they weren’t so little when I found them… Here is a picture of one of them sitting in my fridge at home.

I’m sure this is a popular problem. I know that the nice folks that run our store don’t like it when I bring them squash or cucumbers that are “too big.” People don’t like to buy them. The seeds are too big, they’re tough and hard to eat, just a pain all over. Some places (just like Piedmont Produce) actually sell the larger stuff at a discount to try and get rid of it. Well, I thought it would be helpful to all of our wonderful readers to do some research and experimentation to find out what we can do with these monsters!

The first thing I found (actually from scrolling through Facebook) is my favorite. I have yet to try it but I’m excited for it. A site called delish.com came up, or at least wrote about, making pickle subs. I really love dill pickles, and I love subs, so I will definitely be trying this one in the future.

Basically find yourself a giant cucumber and pickle it. Then cut it in half, scoop out some of the middle and build a little sandwich inside of it. They use ham, cheese, tomato, mayo and mustard. Stick a toothpick through it and you have yourself a tasty sub! Follow the link for the video. Make sure to wear a bib for any drool that may occur.

http://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a54178/pickle-sub-recipe/

Now, back to our friend the giant zucchini in my fridge. Originally I brought it home as a joke. In my household we always talk about how we like the bigger veggies. You can fit more ranch dressing on a bigger cucumber! So when I brought home that gallon-sized vegetable I didn’t entirely expect to eat it. But waste is never good either so we decided to fix it up and see what happens!

Since there was so much of it to go around we actually cooked it two different ways. Half of it was cut into thin semicircles and baked with some olive oil, salt, and pepper (among other seasonings). The other half was chopped into small pieces and mixed into a vegetable stir fry with peppers and onions, also from the Piedmont Produce garden of course!

Baking was definitely my favorite. I’m not a huge fan of zucchini to begin with, I find it bland. When baked the zucchini keeps its firmness, the oil keeps it moist, and all the seasonings mix together for a great flavor. Plus, as an added bonus, the large semicircle cut was an easy way to eat your veggies. The only downside was the massive seeds that were the size of pumpkin seeds… Next time I will be sure to remove them. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures. I was busy stuffing my face with delicious zucchini.

I have an idea in the works for what to do with large summer squash also but you will have to stick around for that one. It involves a large squash and maybe some chicken parmesan… To be continued

The moral of the story is that size doesn’t matter and large veggies have feelings too. Come pick some up at our store and share your creations!

Get to know your farm!