Zucchini, zucchini, and more Zucchini

When Jared discovered the menu for this week, he was less than pleased. He hovered in the kitchen throwing skeptical glances my way. I was tempted to boot him out, but he was using unloading and loading the dishes as his cover for spying on me, so I let him play his little game. He could throw all the comments and glances he wanted, as long as the dishes continued to get done. Besides, I have four kids and am becoming a master at tuning my family out.

I started by baking the cake before church. The girls were helping me since they are really into cooking and baking. When it was time to add the zucchini, I slyly sent them up to get dressed. I had added the zucchini to the batter when I had to stop to take care of something else. They foiled my plan when they got dressed quicker than normal and came down before I had poured the batter into the pans. "Ew, gross, mom put worms in the cake!" (Points goes to whoever correctly guesses who that came from) The cakes baked, and were cooling when we left for church, forgetting all about the "worms" in the cake.

When we got back, I set to work on the zucchini soup. Jared's skeptism did not damper my mood. I was thrilled. I love zucchini and was excited for a healthy soup. Jared was still hovering nearby when I pulled the blender out. At this point, his face turned to pure panic. [One time Jared's mom tried a cold broccoli recipe in the blender. As Jared tells the story, his Dad sat down, took one look at the food in the blender, refused to taste even a bite, stood back up and asked "who's coming to get hamburgers with me?". Jared is now very wary of anything green in a blender. ] Since it was Sunday, I was relieved to know that he couldn't go get fast food.


Guess the girls weren't the only ones forgetting things though, I had forgotten that this soup called for half and half, cheese, and sourcream. So much for healthy soup, hello heart attack in a bowl. The addition of these ingredients greatly calmed Jared's anxiety. He let out a breathe of relief. "Now, that looks more like something I could eat" he announced.

The soup was good, but nothing spectacular. In fact, the girls thought it was the broccoli soup we had the week before. Although, its nice to have a recipe to use up the zucchini from the garden. Not that we had any this year though. Most of my plants died over my 2 1/2 week vacation.

I frosted the cake with the frosting recipe recommended in the book. It turned out more like a glaze though. That would have been fine if I had listened and made a 9x13 inch cake. But, I had made two 8 inch cakes instead and it was a challenge to frost the cake with that frosting. I'm not really a fan of the taste of most frostings either. It wasn't bad, I just wasn't real fond of it. I really liked the cake itself though. It was very moist and I loved knowing I was sneaking more veggies in our food. Jared told Xandy there was zucchini in cake just like there had been in her soup. She was convinced he was lying and said that would be disgusting and this cake wasn't disgusting. Katy replied "haven't you ever heard of zucchini bread before? Thats good, and it has zucchini in it."