Oodles of Zucchini

It is feeling more like Fall here these days. It's only supposed to get to 16 degrees. So I decided we would do some baking today.
My friend runs a gardening program http://www.chep.org/cg/index.html and gave me a great deal on some fresh veggies. The zucchini are pretty big so I thought I'd make some muffins and bread from them. I also tried making fried green tomatoes (from my own tomato plants!!!) and zucchini last night for supper. The tomatoes turned out soggy but I thought the zucchini were pretty good. The kids disagreed.
A friend of mine made some super yummy chocolate zucchini bread the other night and I made that on Saturday.
Then today with my kids "helping" me in the kitchen we made this:

ZUCCHINI BREAD

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

I was out of eggs so used applesauce instead and didn't add nuts because my daughter is still too young. I added some poudre douce spice with the cinnamon. I also used less sugar, about 1 3/4 cups instead of the 2 1/4 cups it called for.
I tend to do this a lot - substituting and almost always use less sugar than the recipe calls for. It usually works out- sometimes not, but I'm learning what works. We made one loaf and then used the rest of the batter for muffins.

Tonight I'm going to try pasta with zucchini ribbons and salmon. Hoping the kids will eat that as readily as the muffins.