It’s that time of the year already – when gardeners sneak up onto friend’s porches and leave bags of summer squash before ringing the doorbell and running – hey, it happens.

As it happened in my little garden, every plant I put in the ground died except for two (yes two!) squash plants. Now, keep in mind, I live alone, and there is a trumpet vine right near the vegetable bed, which the bees really love. I’m happy about the pollination, but these babies are a little too prolific. Nobody who lives alone really needs two squash plants. Trust me. In the space of one day, the tiny squashes turned into monsters and suddenly I was harvesting about five a day. Help!

Cutting the squash into coins and sauteing it for a side dish is a cute idea, but it’s not really going to work for me. How many times a day can I eat squash? So, the theme this week is recipes that use up lots and lots of squash.

Anytime you have to shred a squash, you know you’re going to go through several of them. Here’s a recipe from Food Blogga that is an interesting twist on the usual zucchini bread. A savory version that sounds yum.

Soup is always a good bet because you know you’re going to need to cut up more than one or two of those babies to make a pot of soup. I made something similar to this recipe from 101 Cookbooks the other day. My version included yellow squash instead of green and I garnished mine with a swirl of crème fraîche and a spoonful of basil pesto.

Back to the ever handy shredding method. This recipe from How the Cookie Crumbles is one I will return to again and again this summer. The other day a friend and I demolished at least eight squash this way and it only served three people. And that’s exactly what you want this time of year.

Image: clayirving

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