Whiteley Creek Homestead

The cold spring, with a snowstorm at the end of April, delayed planting my garden two weeks later than normal and the rabbits or deer continually chomping off the tender tops of my zucchini caused me to think that fall's first frost might arrive before I was gifted with any zucchini.  However, the plants have begun producing and we all know very well that, once the plants bear their first fruit , one must pull out every zucchini recipe we have to try to keep up with production. Today I picked my very first zucchini of the season from my garden… just enough to make a pan of zucchini crisp. I sprinkled a few sunnies and green pumpkin seeds on top before serving. It added a wonderful crunch and pumped up the nutrition.

Zucchini Crisp

5 cups zucchini peeled, seeded, and cut into slices to resemble apples

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp minute tapioca (Instead I used 1/8 tsp agar agar powder that I purchased online from MaryJane Butters Farm in Moscow, Idaho. Agar agar (a thickener) is normally flakes, but MaryJane’s is a powder… nice. MaryJane calls her product "Chillover Powder".) 

¼ cup lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook sliced zucchini in pan with just a little water for 10 minutes or so until the zucchini is translucent. Drain. (There won’t be much liquid to drain.) Mix sugar, cinnamon, agar agar (or tapioca), and lemon juice together then toss zucchini in to coat. Arrange the zucchini mixture evenly in an 8×8 pan.

Mix the following until crumbly:

2 ½ tbsp butter

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup flour

¼ cup oatmeal

Sprinkle over zucchini slices. Bake 45 minutes until bubbly and topping is a beautiful caramel color… like the autumn hues just around the corner. Hooray!