The Zucchini “Problem” and My Vegetti

Posted by Julia Jones in Cooking Tips and Tricks, Gluten Free Recipes, Plant-Based/Vegan Recipes, Recipes and tagged with , , , , ,

photo IMG_0567.jpgThose of you who’ve grown zucchini know that if the plant works, you go very quickly from wondering if you’ll ever get any zucchini to stuffing zukes in neighbor’s mailboxes when they’re not looking to offload some of your surplus. For the past several years my zucchini have been decidedly in the NOT WORKING category, so I’ve not had to force squash on the cul-de-sac, but this year (largely I think because I got ahead of the bugs early), we have zucchini.

While I like zucchini, I admit that even I am not a fan of the traditional sautéed squash, so I’ve become a zucchini seeker. How else can we use this prolific nutritious gift without having it be, well, yucky? Big Sis and I have shared a few zucchini secrets in the past, but I found a new, and perfectly lovely solution, right there in the “As Seen on TV” display. If you just laughed, then you should admit that you’ve been tempted to look yourself. I just couldn’t stop myself when I saw a little gadget that claimed that it would spiral cut my vegetables for $10 and would fit in a drawer, the Veggetti Spiral Vegetable Cutter. I snatched that little sucker up.

And let me tell you what. It works. It actually does what it apparently says it does on TV. With little effort and about a minute of turning I had enough spiral zucchini noodles for 2 adult dinner sized portions – from one zucchini. Nice.
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photo IMG_0499.jpgBeing fans of Mediterranean food, we naturally concluded that we could put tomato sauce right on those bad boys and call it dinner, but we were feeling a little zesty, so we went in another direction, sort of a deconstructed zucchini chili mac.I simply prepared the fixins that I would normally serve for us to make burritos and instead of wrapping everything up in a tortilla, we served it on top of zucchini noodles. And it was delish. My vote on the Vegetti? A resounding yes, and I can’t wait to make some zucchini noodles for Pasta Sunday. Next time I post I’ll have another fab zucchini suggestion straight from the heart of Maryland. Hope you’re all having a lovely summer!

27 responses

  3. We have an overload of zucchini right now. I made some zucchini bread last night, but it didn’t even use a portion of the plant! LOL. I wish I had that machine to make some noodles for me. Looks great!

    Reply

  6. I’m overrun with squash, zucchini and and bumper crop of tomatoes this year! Funny you should post about the Veggetti because I just bought one yesterday. I tried it out last night and wished I’d known about it weeks ago – I wouldn’t have had to give so much of my zucchini away! The price was right too, and it doesn’t take up a lot of room like some of the spiralizers do.

    Reply

    • EXACTLY! I hate buying a kitchen gadget that has to live on the counter or that is heavy and single purposed. This one does a nice job and goes away when you don’t need it. Glad to hear your harvest is good. I’ve only gotten cherry tomatoes so far but things look promising. Zukes are plentiful and cukes are picking up steam. Makes the heat of summer so much easier to bear.

      Reply

  9. I hate zucchini but I insist on growing it. I have recently discovered that I love making muffins with a recipe that calls for pumpkin. Since the pumpkin isn’t really what we taste and it’s really just the moisture we need, i’ve taken to shredding zucchini and freezing them in 1 cup bags for the winter for muffins.

    I also had a spiralizer from the Pampered Chef last year and had no idea what it was, so I just gave it to my sister. Yep, GAVE it to her. I’m such an idiot sometimes!

    Reply

  15. We have the big spiralizer because we eat almost completely paleo and zucchini noodles are fantastic to replace regular grain noodles. We have replaced our Thai, Italian, and other pasta dishes with zucchini noodles. We just had a family BBQ and our all natural pesto-zucchini noodle salad was a hit. You can imagine at the end of summer, basil and zucchini are in abundance so what a way to show case both delicious foods. Thanks for the post. Enjoy your spiralizer.

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