Gad Zukes! It's Time for Zucchini Bread!

Zucchini by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When life gives you zucchini, you don't have much time to muck about. You can make zuke soup, Mollie Katzen's ZuCanoes, ratatouille, and zucchini bread, but you better be fast because fresh zucchini only lasts a few days before shriveling to primordial ooziness. Here's a zucchini bread that yielded two loaves, one big, one small. The large one made breakfast toast for a week. The baby loaf made the kids at work happy for about 10 minutes. Then they asked what I would bring tomorrow. Something about orange scones...

Zucchini Bread by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Zucchini Bread

adapted from "Bon Appetit, Y'all" by Virginia Willis

1 cup canola oil

3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 zucchini, peeled and grated, yielding 2 cups

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Grease two loaf pans with baking spray or cooking oil. I used one medium and one small loaf pans, you may do well with just one large loaf pan.

2. In a bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, whisk together.

3. In a measuring cup, place the oil, eggs and vanilla and stir together.

4. Add the wet to the dry mixtures, stirring just until combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan(s).

5. Bake until golden brown, with the cracked spine along the top, about one hour. Transfer to a wire rack to cool for about five minutes, then turn out of the pan. Keep at room temperature, well-wrapped, for a few days.

Pimento Cheese is the new gravy

Pimento cheese and crackers by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

As we approach the real dog days of summer, I can confess that it's been so long since I've really cooked! We eat so simply in the summer; I've come to the conclusion that my perfect summer meal is homemade pimento cheese on crackers; crispy, sweet watermelon slices, and iced tea. I could eat this for breakfast, lunch or dinner (and another confession: I have).

Have you seen all the buzz about pimento cheese (or, as it's known in my house, minner cheese)?  Wanda at The Teacher Cooks blog features a minner cheese biscuits recipe that I can't wait to try. There's even a tweet-bot on @pimentocheese, professing a love of the cheese spread all through the Twitter-verse. I never had homemade pimento cheese until I married; my family knew only the occasional plastic container of gloppy fluorescent orange spread. I had to ask my mother-in-law to make minner, and naturally, it's the easiest thing in the world: coarsely shredded sharp Cheddar cheese, diced pimentos, mayonnaise, and a pinch of salt (depending on the sodium in the mayo and cheese, you may leave this out).

Pimento Cheese


8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese

1 cup mayonnaise, approximately, (I've never bothered to measure)

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons chopped pimentos

1. Shred Cheddar cheese on the coarse side of a hand grater or in a food processor.

2. In a bowl, stir together cheese and enough mayonnaise to bind. Add salt and pimentos. Serve with crackers or on squishy white bread.