Stuffed Zucchini

Another great vegetable available is zucchini. So many only use this great vegetable for Zucchini Bread, but there are so many other ways to use it that it can be used as a main dish, as well as, breaded and fried as a side dish.

I first made this dish when we had a summer cottage and our neighbor introduced me to this wonderful main course dish.

I liked it because we were in farm country and a vendor would come through every week with vegetables fresh out of his farm. My oldest son was industrious and would pedal his bike along the road ahead of the farmer like a town crier. He brought home vegetables as his reward for doing a good job.

For this dish you need to pick a larger zucchini. The recipe is so simple and uses very few ingredients so it can be made very inexpensively.

Cut your zuchini in half lengthwise and clean out all of the seeds.

Don't cut too much of the meat away because we are going to hollow out some of the zucchini meat and use it in the stuffing. You can use a melon baller to get out the seeds without cutting into your zuchini meat.

In a large bowl, put stuffing cubes or small pieces of heals of bread. You will need enough bread to stuff both sides of the zucchini. When you are using those loaves of bread you can save the crusts for this recipe in a brown bag. This makes the bread dry and easier to use.

Chop the zucchini meat that you cut out of the zucchini and add it to the bread cubes.

Add Chopped mushrooms to the cubes and mix.

Add enough milk to the mixture to make a soft pastey stuffing mixture.

(HINT: you can cheat and use a large can of undiluted condensed mushroom soup instead of the mushroom and milk. This gives you the right consistency without measuring.)

Sprinkle the mixture with celery salt, garlic powder and pepper for flavoring.

You can add parmesan cheese sprinkled into the mixture to give the stuffing added zing. Personally I prefer to sprinkle in Four Cheese Shredded Cheese.

Fill the hollowed out Zucchini halves and place on cookie sheets lined with aluminum foil. Cover Zucchini with aluminum foil and bake at 350° until the zucchini is softened and the stuffing is golden brown. Uncover the zucchini for an additional 15 minutes to get the stuffing mixture browned.

As Nunny Says, "Try it -- You'll Like it" -- Bon appetit

Since I published this hub, I made a variation using a box of Stove Top Stuffing instead if the bread cubes and mixing it with the can of condensed cream of chicken soup because my granddaughter is allergic to mushrooms. The flavor was altered but even my son who doesn't like zucchini except baked as bread liked it. He ate seconds!! Is that a tribute or what?

Related Recipes

• Zucchini Appetizers
• Zucchini Bread
• Stuffed Zucchini
• Italian Zucchini Pie