When you have zucchini, you eat zucchini.

Hey friends!

It has been an exhausting, exhilarating, extraordinary couple of weeks in Colorado for National Youth Conference. Sarah, Tim, Renee, Jenna, and I were all in Colorado for NYC and 4/5 of us are home! Jenna is still out on her workcamp adventures, but she has started her final workcamp and will come home Sunday. Ben is on the east coast—living the BVS orientation life as a BVS orientation assistant.

With all of our little family out and about for a couple weeks, we came home to an unruly garden! It was a joy to see our little baby plants full grown and producing peppers, okra, yellow beans, purple peas, corn, and ZUCCHINI. Oh my goodness-HUGE zucchinis!

When we came home we picked three HUGE zucchini’s from the garden and then found two more HUGE zukes in the fridge! I decided that we HAD to use up this zucchini in a meal this week. I decided to try making stuffed zucchini and instead of meat, we had some meatless protein donated from Renee’s family! That took 2 zukes. I also added in some zucchini yeast rolls-that are really just yummy yeast rolls…with little green specks of zucchini. They were delicious and took about one medium zuke to make.

The best part was that Tim decided to whip up his signature zucchini brownies! (Which took another half a HUGE zuke!) We have been blessed abundantly by our zucchini plants!

When I was looking for zucchini recipes, I was browsing Simply in Season. A cookbook created by the Mennonite Central Committee. They add little snippets from the contributors of the cookbook and beneath one of the zucchini recipes was a little story from a woman who had spent time in Guatemala. She was reflecting that her Guatemalan friends remarked that “When you have bananas, you eat bananas. When you have corn, you eat corn.” Their life was so dependent on their crops—if their gardens suffered their family directly suffered by not having enough to eat. So, having too much of one thing wasn’t something to roll their eyes about, instead they gave thanks for the abundance in their lives. The woman was reflecting on her abundance of zukes and having so many zukes left her feeling grumpy about having so many zukes she didn’t know what to do with them! Finally, she said she has learned to appreciate her abundances when they come and “when we have zucchini…we eat zucchini!” 

Not wanting to let our zucchini’s go to waste means we had a meal bursting with zucchini! I loved that! It’s a blessing to be away for two weeks and come home with a garden that is full to bursting with harvest to reap. It’s been a spiritual practice to spend time in the garden the past three months…planting, weeding, watering, transplanting. It’s a sacred thing to work in the garden and watch little plant babies pop up out of the ground. And now they’re producing fruit! I am one proud Garden Mama.

I don’t rely on our little BVS garden to survive from day to day for physical nourishment, like some communities around the world might. But it has helped to maintain my sanity and it’s so special to eat something that my little plant babies have grown. In small ways, our garden has kept me healthier and made me feel more alive these past three months.

So, when we have boocoos of zukes—you better believe we’re not letting one go to waste.

Peace & an abundance of zucchini to all, 

Katie

Do you have a garden? Do you have an abundance of anything? What’s your favorite zucchini recipe?