From My Kitchen to Yours -- Zucchini In a Fruit Crisp

Oh my goodness -- is this ever a week for zucchini abundance!

Do you feel overwhelmed by the zucchini in your life? Do you feel there aren't enough meals in a day to stay on top of your zucchini? Are you sick and tired of waking up each day to find a new jumbo zucchini in your garden?

Take back your life! Enjoy stress-free family dinners again! Finally, there's a tasty way to use zucchini in a homestyle dessert! [cut the infomercial script]

I am working hard to stay ahead of the zucchini crop while ensuring my family enjoys the many ways I find to use it all. And what a delicious way I found this past week. Today I share my recipe for Zucchini-Apple Crisp.

Ingredients:

filling

about 3 cups zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and sliced 1/8 inch thick (this is 1 medium zucchini for me)
about 3 cups sliced and peeled tart apples (I used 2 Granny Smith apples)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2/3 cup granulated sugar or brown sugar.
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 3 teaspoons of your favorite thickener: arrowroot, cornstarch, or flour

crisp topping
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup room temp butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C) and grease an 8-inch or 9-inch square or round baking dish.

Filling: In a large bowl, mix the diced zucchini, apple slices, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and thickener until well coated. Transfer to the baking dish.

Topping: Combine the flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Break the butter into the dry mixture using the back side of a mixing spoon, then rub into the mixture with fingers until it looks like coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit and zucchini mixture. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbly and tender.

I was skeptical when I first set out to make a fruit dessert using part zucchini. I could totally understand anyone else thinking this is just too strange. But honestly, we all really enjoyed this one. The taste profile that comes forward is the lemon and spice. This tastes like September!

Infomercials try to convince you that you have a deep need for their life-changing product, and that you'll have to part with some of your cash to get it. Today, here's an answer to a problem that doesn't cost a cent. 

Finding recipes that help use up garden abundance feels like solving a tough puzzle. We plant our gardens with plans to use it all. But then some veggies do really well, while others do poorly. The result seems to be an overabundance of at least one vegetable every year. My family can only eat the same veggie so many days in a row. Mixing apples with zucchini changed things up enough that my family was genuinely happy to eat more of the summer squash. For this week, the problem of too much zucchini has been solved. For me, that's part of being a good steward of our resources.

How about you? Do you have any awesome zucchini recipes? Share in the comments -- links are good, so are descriptions.