Zucchini and Squash

The main part of both of our home cooked meals this week was either zucchini or squash. We made 2 recipes that I have been wanting to try for awhile now. First, on Tuesday we made zucchini cakes from Pioneer Woman, but I used squash. I followed the directions exactly and they turned out pretty good! I only used one semi large squash and that was more than enough for the two of us.

To round out that meal, we made a salad with many items from our CSA - red lettuce, cucumbers, sweet peppers, broccoli, carrots (still trying to use those dumb things up. I'm sorry carrots, but I'm just not that into you).

On Wednesday, we made Disappearing Zucchini Orzo, which I had originally seen on Liz's blog, and also saw when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I would highly recommend everyone read - it is a little preachy but a very good book!

I LOVED this dish - I was expecting it to be pretty bland, but the herbs and cheese gave it a nice flavor. We used fresh basil, and dried thyme and oregano. I also threw in some toasted pine nuts which were a wonderful addition. The recipe from the book says to "saute the zucchini briefly" but it definitely wasn't brief in order to get the juices out and brown the zucchini slightly - more like 10-15 minutes.

We also had quite a few tomatoes still left - I cut up part of one of the biggest ones, and put it in with my pasta which was a great addition. The other ones we cut up, and put in the food dehydrator to turn into "sun dried" tomatoes.

I haven't eaten them yet, so if you have any suggestions for recipes with sun dried tomatoes, send them my way!