Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Cooking and Unloading

No pics to prove it, but tonite I baked up yellow squash spice cake (aka "squice cake", made two 9 inch rounds), plus another batch of the chocolate zucchini bread - which I made, took in to work yesterday, and got rave reviews! (Both recipes are from the same web page - just scroll down a little)

I got extra positive comments from at least one person who ate the chocolate zucchini bread for the super dark color and the good taste that went with it. I have to give all credit to Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate cocoa powder - that's some dark stuff, and it really shows in whatever you cook! (Note: I read one blog who said it's reminiscent of Oreo cookies flavoring - and I can TOTALLY see that... I guess this is from it being "Dutched to death"? I don't know what that means, but I'm not complaining! This is the same stuff that made the amazing biscotti earlier this year!)

Brett said his coworkers would gladly accept some goodies from the garden. Big mistake! He doesn't know it yet, but I've set him up with one of the two yellow squash spice cake rounds (lightly dusted with powdered sugar, rather than go with heavy rich cream cheese frosting!), two LOADED grocery bags with a variety of squash, and a quart size Gladware container of mostly sungold cherry tomatoes (the orange ones). And in the morning, once it's cooled, I'll also wrap up some of the chocolate zucchini bread for him to also take in.

My coworkers will also be getting some of the spice cake and choc zuke bread...but they've had some of my squash already. Maybe they can have some from the next picking. I should REALLY be working on preserving some for myself. Like Steven's garden, I'm noticing my squash plants are starting to burn out or get problems from pests...

Supposed to get together with the guys at Randy & Larry's place this Saturday. Cookout, plus maybe a chance to get to try out their new pool!?!? Since we're each supposed to bring something, I could make, oh, I don't know - maybe chocolate zucchini bread? LOL

14 comments:

Stunned Donor said...

All this baking in this heat, you're nuts.

I think my A/C is going funky, it's been going full blast and it's still only about 79 here in the kitchen.

As far as I'm concerned, once the last tomato is picked, it can snow.

Peter said...

It all sounds very good, Jeph. I have many found memories of chocolate zucchini bread and pineapple succhini bread that my Mum used to make. Get some photos of them with some homemade ice cream - that would be fabulous!

Peter said...

Have you no late autumn veg in your patch Steven?

When will this frickin' heat break anyway? I have no garden to worry over, jst my tender, pale, pasty, white hide!

Stunned Donor said...

peter

I'm not sure if I want to plant too much Fall stuff, I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Atlanta.

When you said "tender, pale, pasty and white" I immediately thought of your poached chicken.lol

Jeph said...

Heck, I was working the garden out in this heat, shirtless, for 2 1/2 hrs on Sunday! I was certainly a tastey treat for the mosquitoes and flies (West Nile, here I come!). My back's got just a little of that tingle from being slightly burned...nothing too lethal.

I'm loving the heat - we ate outdoors today! But I'm also looking forward to crisp, cool fall air and loads of snow! Y'know Steven, most people would think you were a freak for wanting the snow (I say this because that's the kind of response I get when I say I like the snow)

I dunno, when I read "tender, pale, pasty and white" I was just thinking of dead fish skin.

Peter said...

I have been known to describe myself as "fishbelly white". Another good one is "lightbulb white", but that doesn't have the foodie resonance, does it?

As for snow: bring it on. It's easier to warm up than cool down. I've been uploading and working with music files in iTunes on the new laptop, and now I can keep all 500+ Christmas songs on there all year round!

Stunned Donor said...

iTunes is addictive, I have 2567 songs on my computer, eight solid days of music. (and not a single Christmas song.)

Jeph said...

Gasp! No Christmas!? I'm with Peter - I looove having all the Christmas music!

Surprisingly, I haven't done anything with my iTunes in awhile. I think I've just been appreciating some peace in my head when I get the chance. And when I do get back to putting the headphones on, I'm sure it'll be more podcasts that I'm behind on than music!

Peter said...

With the new laptop, I've added back a lot of songs I'd relegated to external hard drive. I now have around 4600 songs on the laptop. What I couldn't figure out was how to transfer the play count and the ratings from the one laptop to the other. Being home sick has given me a lot of time to re-do the ratings and add in cover art and correct other information.

After I finish that, I'm going to start categorizing and keywording photos in ACDSee!

Jeph said...

Jeez you're bored.

Jeez you're a librarian.

;-)

Peter said...

THBTBTBT!!!!!

Dave E. said...

Jeph once called Brett a "cave fish" referring to his pallor. I just had to add that because it still cracks me up.

And speaking of music and library-type people, as I was bored at work this evening (babysitting the library), I found clips of the Swedish, French, and German versions of ABBA's "Waterloo." I was very entertained for several minutes ... then again, I *was* at work ...

Jeph said...

Luckily Brett wasn't too offended by that...he'll admit he's really pale!

I've heard foreign language versions of ABBA before - I wanna say the Swedish one? OH! And I KNOW I've heard spanish versions...

Anonymous said...

I've been way behind in reading your blogs, Jeph...forgive me!

One of my colleagues makes chocolate zuccini bread, and it's awesome! There's something about that combo :) She also puts coconut in it for variety.