Zucchini Goodness

What do you do when you have giant zucchinis? I thought this one looked like a sea slug.

You make ... chocolate zuchinni cake!

First, wisk together all your dry ingredients - flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt.

Then cream your sugar, butter, and canola oil in your mixer.

I love my Kitchen Aid Mixer! My parents gave it to me for my 23rd birthday - best birthday present ever!

Next add your eggs one at a time to the mix - stir well!

Next start throwing in the flour mixture, alternating with the yogurt additions.

Remember that mondo zucchini? Grate that into 2 cups. With the size of my zucchini, it was about 1/4 of the vegetable.

Add in your chocolate chips - the cake batter should look pretty moist and gooey by this point.

Pour your batter into a prepared pan - flour and grease ahead of time and then pop it into your preheated 325 degree oven for 50 minutes.

It will emit a wonderful chocolately smell while it's baking ... so good .... even a husband who is concerned about vegetables in his baked goods will admit this is delicious!

And then when you still have a huge zucchini leftover, make zucchini bread!

Needless to say, yesterday was a baking day. I'm finally done with my ethics class and this is how I like to spend my free time - baking with garden fresh ingredients!

Here is the full recipe!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Adapted from Bon Appetit, November 2005

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup plain yogurt or buttermilk

2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)

1 11-ounce package (about 2 1/4 cups) bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Butter and flour a 13×9x2 inch baking pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar, butter and oil until they’re well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture alternately with the yogurt (or buttermilk) in 3 additions each.
Mix in the grated zucchini, then the chocolate chips.
Bake for about 50 minutes, until a tester inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan, then cut into squares.
Serves about 12-15, depending on the size of the squares you cut. Keeps well in an airtight container for at least 1 week.

Three Question Thursday

Everyone, we have air conditioning! I was so happy to have air back in our house, I thought that I could hug our new system. That's right, I said NEW air conditioning and furnace. I'm very happy to have this, after a huge fiasco with the heating & cooling company we decided this would be the best use of our money. Unfortunately ... this means no new car for our family. But like I told Lance last night, you can't sleep and do laundry in your car. At least, I can't do any of these things without the comfort of temperate temperatures. This new system is just in time too, the Saturday temp is fore casted to be right at 96 degrees - yikes! Praise the Lord for air conditioning. I was not meant to be a pioneer. Or live in Arizona.

Onto Three Question Thursday

1. Are you a morning or night person?
2. Do you, or have you ever played an instrument?
3. What was your favorite part about going back to school when you were little?

1. I am most definitely not a morning person. If my job could started at 10:30 am, I would be a better employee. At my current job, I am required to be at work and ready at 8 am sharp. I cannot lie, this can be a struggle. I am much better suited to putting in long nights and sleeping in. This is one reason why I miss being a college student.
2. I have played several instruments. I took piano lessons for 9 years, played the trombone for 8 years, and played several drums in the band. I have not touched my trombone since I graduated from high school. We have a piano at our house, but it needs to be tuned and I am in need of some refresher lessons. Once I graduate next spring and have "free time" again, I am going to try and start playing again.
3. Oh school ... I loved school. I'm a social gal, I loved seeing all my friends and I loved seeing my favorite teachers again. But I also loved purchasing new folders, pens, binders. And planning my outfit for the first day of school. Thinking about all these things, I miss all of this just a little bit. I do not miss the blind panic of studying for tests and staying up to all hours of the night trying desperately to figure out my physics homework. I do not miss my physics teacher who also was my general science and chemistry teacher too. He was somewhat of a sadist.

Heat

I know I need to stop complaining about the heat in our house, but I can't take much more of this. In fact, one more evening of not being able to do laundry, cook, run the dishwasher, or clean the kitchen is going to put me over the edge. I can't even sit downstairs and concentrate enough to try and write my final ethics paper because the heat is so sweltering. Last night was by far the worst of the 9 days we've been without air conditioning. The humidity, heat and stillness of the house was so bad that we gave in at 9:54 pm and went over to a friend's house to sleep. It was 86 degrees at 10:24 pm. God bless our friends for generously loaning their guest room to us. When we returned home at 6:55 am this morning it was 81 degrees inside.

Mini-vacation: Holland

Holland as in the country?? No silly - Holland in Michigan! Not nearly as exciting, but just as much fun! Lance and I just returned from our trip to visit our dear friends Mandy & Aaron. I met Mandy as a sophomore at Northwestern and we've been good friends ever since. She was the maid of honor at our wedding 4 years ago. She and Aaron are so much fun, I wish that they lived closer. I didn't really know Aaron very well until they got married, but he is very similar to Lance in tastes and disposition. Again, I wish they lived closer! Last fall I mentioned that we might come and visit, which of course Mandy took to mean "we're coming to visit!"

We had a great time with them, touring Holland, sampling fun restaurants, shopping, mini-golfing, banana-grams and Wii games. All in all it was a blast and 4 days (with 8 hour travel days) is not enough. Now it's time for them to visit us!

Here are some photos from our adventures in sand dune buggy rides

Lance, Aaron, Mandy preparing for the sand dune buggy ride in Sagatuck, MI. It was wild - later that night I was still finding sand on my body!

This was the tone of the entire ride - very corny and silly. But fun!

The whole group mid-way through the ride!

Sunny day and sunglasses

The guide had suggested running down a sand dune. Granted the only way back up is hiking ... the boys were the only ones foolish enough to embark on this adventure. They did say that it was a lot harder coming up than going down!

View through the canopy of trees - very restful.

Garden

Every year I cease to be amazed by my garden. Usually my wonderment is at both ends of the spectrum's - at how well some plants do and how poorly other plants do. This year I'm busy being amazed by the ginormous amounts of cherry tomatoes I'm getting as well as the huge zucchinis and crookneck squashes. I love cherry tomatoes, I can eat them as a snack if allowed. Because my garden has allowed for it, I've been really into cucumber sandwiches lately - made with 1 block of cream cheese mixed with 1 packet of Good Seasons Italian dressing mix. I spread that on rye cocktail bread and top with a thinly sliced cucumber and a smattering of dried dill. Delish!

The crookneck squash I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it. I think I'm going to slice it up and grill it.

I would make some zucchini bread but the air conditioning is still on the fritz. And it's 91 degrees outside and Lance does not allow the oven to be on even when the air conditioning does work. We've said several prayers in the last 24 hours that Lance would be able to repair the air conditioning. He took a half day off today to go home early to work on it some more. In Lance's exact words "It's supposed to be 91 degrees out. If I don't get the air fixed we will die." Let's continue to pray this is not the case when I get home at 5 pm!

UPDATE: It's 9:33 pm and there is no air in my house. At least today I haven't cried.

On a different note, excellent PURE bar give away taking place at Iowa Girl Eats - check it out!

No Air

Gads. We came home from a weekend away to find that our air conditioning was malfunctioning. To me, this is one of the worst things possible in the world. I do not do well in the heat. I have bad allergies and the heat just makes me crabby (this is why we don't do camping). I know that it's rather high maintenance of me to insist on air conditioning, but really, it's for the benefit of everyone. We had a repair guy out to the house on Mon. to give us a quote on how much to fix and yikes, was it expensive! Yesterday we had a guy out to quote how much it would be to replace the air conditioning and furnace unit all together. Also very expensive. But an expense that I am willing to pay - even if it means that we won't be able to afford a new car. And trust me, I would really like to replace Lance's car, but air conditioning for the house is 10x more important. We head off to visit Michigan tomorrow, so the air won't be fixed until sometime next week. Everyone better keep praying for cool weather. We have been blessed with friends who have offered to let us sleep at their houses' and if the weather is hot when we get back, I might just have to take them up on their offers.

Just Say No

I need to remind myself that it is okay to say no. In fact it's biblical! (Okay, somewhat biblical. If I don't have time to keep my head on straight, I definitely don't have time for God - therefore, biblical)

For example: Vacation Bible School. Honestly, I have no time to volunteer this year. We are going to Michigan right before VBS starts, my ethics class ends the same week as VBS and I need to take my insurance exams for work. All things that trump VBS. And yet ... I still said yes. I felt pressured to say yes. Sometimes I think that people think that I should volunteer more because we don't have kids. But ... despite what you might think I am busy. Sometimes I feel like the busiest person I know. I have worked twenty 8 hour days straight. I am in graduate school. I help run a household. I am exhausted. So it probably wasn't smart of me to have friends over for supper tonight and have had hosted people Friday and Saturday night too. I think I am losing my mind.

Three Question Thursday

My favorite blog right now is Iowa Girl Eats because 1) She lives in Central Iowa 2) She works for the company that I would give my eye teeth to work at 3) She's cool and has very similar interests as myself. She does this great thing called "3 Question Thursday" that I thought I'd partake in today.
1. What’s your favorite part about summer? Spending time at the pool/lake/ocean? Amazing weather? Summer grill-outs?
2. Did you go to summer camp when you were a kid?
3. What’s your favorite summer vacation to date?

1. My favorite part of summer is the variety of fresh food available from my garden (I actually hate the heat and humidity of summer. And the bugs. I hate bugs. Things like roma tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, green peppers, sugar snap peas, etc. I need to post some produce pictures. My husband and I struggle with our garden, but this year - year three - is looking promising!

2. I did go to summer camp and I loved it! When I was younger I went to church music camp where we sang the entire week and then did a show at the end for our parents. It was fantastic and some of my favorite childhood memories. I actually went as a counselor for a week when I was in college and it brought back some great memories - just the grounds, the buildings and the traditions. I will definitely send my children away to summer camp when they are older (and of course when I have children)

3. My favorite summer vacation ... as a child it would probably be Florida, Orlando specifically. As an adult, well, Lance doesn't do vacation. He didn't grow up going on vacation and it's been a hard habit to break in our marriage. After going to Hawaii this spring, we'll be making a small trip to Michigan to see my BFF Mandy. We've talked about going to South Korea next year and I have to go out to Spokane for school, so next year there will definitely be a vacation on the calendar!

Workplace Appropriate

At my place of employment, the dress code is undefined. I do not like this because it leaves it open to the manager's interpretation. Currently, no flip flops/"beach" wear. I can deal with that. But what I do not like is the ban on shorts. I can understand that short-shorts are not workplace appropriate. But I do think that these shorts are fine - right?

While these are probably not okay ...

I'm not asking to wear something that does not look professional. I've seen others wear skirts that are as short as the bottom pair of shorts. I think that HR should really review clothing each year and make a cohesive decision as to what will be banned for the season. Blanket statements are never going to satisfy the masses!

Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget

Anyone who knows me, knows that that I'm a bargain hunter who likes nice stuff. How do I do it? Here are a few tips, but please note, I am no frugal lady by any means. I just want to make the most of my money.

• I buy red-tape bananas from our local grocery store (this means that I purchase bananas that are a little riper and have a few brown spots - no big deal)
• I buy big containers of strawberry yogurt instead of individual ones
• I wait for the once a year liter sale at Beauty Brands to buy my Biolage Shampoo & Conditioner
• I go to beauty schools for spa treatments like facials and massages. We're fortunate to have an Aveda Institute in Des Moines and I take full advantage of it! I did get a haircut there once, but it wasn't the greatest experience. I have really enjoyed my facials & pedicures though. During Mother's Day they ran a special an Elemental Nature Facial - Pedicure - Manicure all for $50. It was a savings of $35 off their regular prices!
• Victoria's Secret runs a semi-annual sale in June & December. These are the only times when I get new underwear and bras
• The same goes for Bath & Body Works
• Gap jeans just went on sale for $15 each - I got two pairs in two different washes - $15 jeans doesn't happen every day!
• Pandora radio - heaven sent - no satellite radio for me
• And probably the thing that helps the most, menu planning. We try and plan all of our menus out on the weekend and then do the grocery shopping on Monday. I try and stay away from the grocery store ... and Target. I always end up walking away with something I hadn't planned on.