Heavely healthy zucchini bread!

 One of our neighbors has a monstrous garden and pecan orchard, so when their multiple varieties of squash, cucumbers, corn, and nuts become more abundant for their family to handle they offer some for free to the community. I was driving home from the store, and I saw the free sign...naturally, I pulled over and grabbed a monster zucchini, 2 butternut squash, a spaghetti squash, and a few cukes. Feeling very excited I began brainstorming what I could do with my fresh new goodies. Well, a few hours later my mother came home bearing 2 more butternut squash, a bag of pecans, 3 more cucumbers, and 6 ears of corn. Well shoot dang. That's a lot of produce. We chuckled at our lack of communication and again I went back to brainstorming at what on earth I could do with all of this produce. A few hours after THAT my husband walks in the door holding another monster zucchini, and 2 more spaghetti squash. We all had the same idea, except we felt kind of bad for probably unintentionally taking probably half of all the barrels of free produce. I knew how I would use the spaghetti squash, cucumbers, and corn but I was at a loss of what to do with THAT much zucchini. Granted it was only 2 zucchinis but they were huge! Good thing it was Labor Day weekend and all three of my starving brothers were coming into town. They could help me eat these, somehow. After browsing pinterest recipes for a few hours, I decided on combining and modifying a few different zucchini bread recipes to come up with my own vegan whole wheat version. When I told my husband what I planned on doing to use up half of a zucchini, he was excited and explained how zucchini bread was one of his all time favorite foods- which was news to me. I felt like a bad wife because I had never before made it. Seeing as we just recently celebrated our 5 year anniversary, that's 5 whole years of deprivation. Bad wifey, bad, bad! Nothing a few years of therapy wont fix ;)

SO off to work I went. I made one experimental batch (which yields 2 loafs), and I was super pleased with my results!

 After tasting my success I went ahead and made another batch of muffins and mini loafs to freeze for future breakfasts and snacks (thanks to my friend Meg that gave me the idea)!

On the second batch I added just a little more zucchini to moisten the bread just little bit more (because I'm a sucker for gooey moist breads)...the end result: perfection!!!! 

Both large loafs and 2 mini loafs were devoured this weekend. So when my son requested zucchini bread for breakfast this morning I had to resort already to the frozen muffins. I just pulled it out of the freezer, opened the bag to vent and stuck the bag and all in the microwave for 30 seconds. I cut them in half, smeared some raw maple almond butter and a drizzle of raw honey on it then paired it with some fresh carrot-apple juice and I had one very happy little boy, that I could feel good about sending off for another day of kindergarten!

Ingredients:

(DRY)

1 3/4 c organic whole wheat flour

1 1/2 c organic all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp of  ground Cinnamon

1 tsp ground clove

1 c chopped pecans (I de-shelled & chopped our fresh pecans from the neighbors orchard)

(WET)

3 tbsp of flax meal & 9 tbsp of water

4 tbsp organic coconut oil

1 1/2 c raw honey

1/2 c organic applesauce

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 c finely grated zucchini (use a paper towel to soak up just a little bit of the excess water off the zukes once they're grated, leaving some)

Directions:

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl, set aside.

Combine wet ingredients in large bowl. I make my own flax meal by blending whole flax seeds in my vitamix blender for about 30 seconds. The flax seeds cannot be left out of this recipe for it acts as the binding agent. Once wet ingredients are well mixed, slowly add the dry mixture, and mix until well combined. Pour into 2 oiled bread tins, 12 mini loaf pans, or 24 greased muffin tins.

Bake at 325 for 50-60 minutes for full sized loafs, or 30-40 minutes for mini loafs, or 25-30 minutes for muffins. They are done if you insert a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean.

They're sexy and you know it! ;)

With the remaining 1 1/2 Bigfoot sized Zucchini's I grilled them for a big BBQ we had with our family and neighbors this weekend. I simply sliced into long spears, marinated in oil, apple cider vinegar, Italian seasonings and salt and pepper for about 2 hours. Then just threw them on the grill, rotating occasionally until tender. They were fantastic as well. 

Check out the high nutritional value of Zucchini's here!