Luckily, these monsters of a vegetable are available year round to chop, saute, fry, marinate, bake, BBQ and cook in a variety of other ways to suit your taste buds. I prefer to sweeten them up and toss them into my baked goods of course.

Every summer my garden explodes with these puppies. So much that I find myself pawning them off left and right amongst my friends and co-workers in order to make room in my kitchen. That’s why this year I decided to skip the squash and go for melons, herbs and tomatoes instead. I thought I was off the hook scrambling for squash recipes all summer. Turns out, I was wrong.

A friend of mine came over a few days ago with what had to be about 15-20 pounds of squash. We’re not talking the cute little zucchini you find at the store either. These things looked like they were on steroids! A stir fry dinner for two and 4 loaves of vegan zucchini bread later and I’m still trying to find the bottom of my kitchen table.

I’ll admit, I gave myself a quick pat on the back after taking a bite of this stuff. With just a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, they were perfect!

Since I still had about 10 more pounds to get through, I started digging through my cupboards to find other goodies I could sneak into the batter for the next batch. Of course, my first thought was CHOCOLATE! It came out just as perfect, if not better, than the first batch.

I think the round 3 experiment is going to include cranberries, orange zest and powdered sugar. Round 4… maybe a sweet hint of sweet basil?

Oh, the possibilities…!