Great, tasty, delicious zucchini recipe

This should beat out the Poodle haircut search. We (all those of us with a food garden) are being inundated with Zukes. They quietly grow to enormous proportions in an afternoon, it seems, and they are so easily grown that the gardener in search of almost instant gratification feels she MUST grow zucchini.

So, we cut the prickly little stems and drag them into the house and flop them down on the counter and wonder just how much room is in the freezer for 237 loaves of zucchini bread? Should we put the loaves into Food Saver bags and suck them down to pancake thickness, and if so - could we reinflate them with the air compressor in the trunk of the car? NO - this does not work - if it did, I would reinflate the top layer of my daughter's wedding cake - which I "Food Saved" after thoroughly freezing the cake first.

I didn't realize there were dowel rods in the cake for support, so there are three little wood pegs - still covered with fondant - standing tall in the midst of a cake which is 1 1/2 inches shorter than it was when I started. I food saved it upside down (because I wasn't sure which part of the bag had to touch the melter bar) and didn't notice this while it was happening. My daughter still loves me, but I wouldn't recommend doing this for a daughter-in-law. You may never see your son again!

So, anyways - back to the zucchini. I have 2 zucchini ideas for you. Not really recipes, because I don't measure stuff unless I'm following someone else's recipe.

First - Zucchini skillet dinner - Yumm

Cut a large zucchini in half and take out seeds. I left the skin on. Take 1/2 and cut into thin slices - not paper thin, but not chunks either. Put in a skillet with a little olive oil, 1 pound of ground beef, and a diced onion. Sprinkle a little garlic powder in, and sprinkle oregano over the entire surface. Add a little salt and pepper. Cook until meat is browned and zucchini is tender but not mushy. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce and some parmesan cheese. I don't like Prego because it's too sweet. I didn't drain this, so don't use the cheapest ground beef out there. I used ground chuck.

Cook 6 servings of instant rice - adding 2 beef boullion cubes to the water and rice before cooking. I recommend adding boullion to your rice always - it livens it up. I also cook pasta with boullion sometimes or a can of broth if I'm out of boullion.

I covered the skillet mixture with mozzarella cheese when I turned off the stove, and a few minutes later we ate. Spoon the skillet mixture over the rice on your plate and YUMMMM!

IDEA 2:

I had shredded zucchini left over from zucchini bread - threw it in the skillet with olive oil, a little garlic salt, pepper, onion, and fresh diced tomato. Cooked this until everything was tender and still didn't really LOVE it - so I threw some shredded cheddar cheese in, and it was very good!

So, there you go Zucchini gardeners. Please feel free to leave additional ideas in the comments, as I have 6 more to harvest in the next couple days!