Kitchen Adventures: The Zucchini Are Everywhere

Joyous Sparks
Aug 24
3 min read

Well, hello! It's time for Kitchen Adventures again! This week's began like this:

Box: >arrives< >contains three zucchini<

Joy: Oooh, zucchini! Awesome! Now, what cool recipe did I see the other day that required loads of zucchini?

Joy: ...

Joy: >still cannot remember, adds zucchini to everything else instead<

Well. It didn't quite go like that. But it didn't not go like that, either, so ... I'll let you guess where I hid the zucchini! 😃

First, we start off with a salad:

Loaded carrot salad, reloaded

AKA carrot salad, with cucumber and green olives. Dressing is based on protein powder, mixed with tamari, oil, vinegar, ginger juice, and water. Also some olive water/juice. Less protein-heavy than last weeks's, but it seems this week I need more fat.

It is also very delicious, crunchy and savoury and I'm getting hungry again.

Next up, we have the star of our show:

It was time for my signature dish, aka throw veggies in pan, stir-fry, add protein source, enjoy.

In this case, the veggies are: carrot, half a cabbage, mushrooms, onions; the protein source are yelow lentils.

They cooked down to mush again, because 12 minutes on medium heat is still too much energy for these softies to handle, so the whole thing turned a little ... less than aesthetically appealing. But as you discern from the tell-tale taste-test-gone-nommy-want-more on the lower right in the pic above, the combination is fantastic.

It might be the tamari and the chili paste, but I don't care. This is great.

Also? Adding tamari to yellow lentils has now become the Thing To Do When Cooking Yellow Lentils. The combination's just chef's kiss

And then the Kitchen Muse went a little crazy and convinced me to try pancakes. Despite my pan not really being all that useful for cooking anything that isn't a vegetable.

But there were still potatoes from last week, and half a cabbage, and the Mystery Ingredient, so ~ despite my misgivings, I felt super excited about the whole thing, so gave it a try.

Now, you might wonder: potatoes? mystery ingredient? pancakes??

Yeah! Japanese style pancakes, Okonomiyaki. You throw veggies together, mix in the dough, cook in a pan ~ voilà, awesome pancakes!

So, yes, I tried that. Because there was a time when pancakes was my go-to for every meal, usually savoury, or simple plain pancake instead of bread, and I miss that. I want my pancakes!!

Well. Five minutes in, it became clear that my pan is really not meant for anything but veggies. I had the heat medium-low, planning on a slow cooking, but ... nope. The dough got burn-stuck to the pan, and I gave up and threw the whole thing on a baking tray and popped it in the oven for, like 40 minutes:

oven-baked Okonomiyaki (because the pan refused)

It's actually pretty good! So now I have pancake from the oven. Not quite the same, but yeah: vaguely remembered recipe? changed trackes half-way through? tasty end-result?

Three checks, three time's the charm, this is a Kitchen Adventures classic! 😃😃😃

And while the ovencake was baking, I was able to clean the mixing bowl and start on the next thing:

Seed loaf!

Got the recipe from a friend years ago, and this is kind of my go-to-bread now to make. It's super versatile, because you can use whatever nuts, seeds, and grains you want. Also experiment with spices for seasoning. Making this right up my alley.

It can also be turned vegan and/or gluten-free super easy, without needing to buy, like, hundreds of Special Products, so. I'm a fan!

The recipe required the bread to rest for at least two hours before baking ~ or spend a night in the fridge. This one spent a night in the fridge, and then got made fresh on Saturday morning, while I was drinking my tea.

Fresh bread scent in the morning is a nice thing.

And because I'd run out of spreads, and the weather was not at all inviting to go out and go shopping ~ I turned the rest of the veggies in the fridge into ... bread toppings? sandwich fillings? Nommy stuff you put on sliced bread!