Hi there! I am still healing from my surgery. Thank heavens for scheduled posts, right?! Anyway, I am going to recycle this post from the family blog. I hope you’re okay with that. If not, then we can’t be friends! ;) Joking!
Welp! Enjoy!
I have recently come up with a new recipe. It’s a kind of hybrid lemon-poppy-seed-orange-zested-zucchini bread. Making it was quite the experience. A simple recipe wouldn’t suffice, so I will provide you with the full tutorial.
You will need the basic ingredients and supplies for zucchini bread, but in order to get the same results as I did, you’ll also need:
~four boys suffering from the worst case of Summer-Time-Boredom that has been seen this century
~one screaming baby who refuses to take a nap
~eleven phone calls
~six loads of laundry you’re trying to catch up on
~one Kirby salesman
~one neighbor stop by
~not enough clean dishes because those bored-silly boys still haven’t done the dishes yet. Be sure to nag them during the baking process. It will help with your results.
~and 40 cups of pureed zucchini—because the zucchini was the ONLY thing that survived the flood. Go figure.
P.S. We had a flood in our yard last year. Heavy rainstorms mad some of the canals in the canyon above our house break. It wasn’t pretty.
…back to the tutorial…
Since you have so much zucchini, you’ll want to triple the recipe and freeze a couple of loaves for breakfast on busy school mornings.
Great.
Now go find your recipe for Orange Zested Zucchini Bread. Note that the recipe for Lemon Poppy Seed Bread is on the other page.
Be sure you have half a dozen different lenders (we’re refinancing the house and shaving a ton of years off of our mortgage) AND an online college program call (twice) while you’re assembling your ingredients.
It is key to accidentally add a few ingredients from the Lemon Poppy Seed recipe at this point. You also MUST confuse the baking soda with baking powder.
Tripling the recipe? Just be sure that if you do this, you choose a bowl that is up to the challenge.
Now is the point where you remember that you have tons of cute aprons, and that while they are cute; they also keep your clothes clean. Go change your shirt before you put on your apron.
On your way back to the kitchen, break up a fight between two of your boys, tell someone else to quit playing with the soap and water in the bathroom, and answer the door. It is a neighbor. This visit will take a few minutes, but at least your shirt is clean. When you’re finished, head back to the kitchen and start mixing your ingredients again.
Forgot the apron? Figures. Go change your shirt again, only this time take your apron into your bedroom with you. It will be easier to remember it if you have it with you.
Go back to your recipe. As soon as you finish mixing your ingredients, realize you don’t have enough clean bread pans to bake your tripled recipe. This is the point where you realize that this is hopeless and you might be better off if you just forget the whole thing.
BUT you are NOT a quitter!
You will see this thing through to the end, dang it! Pour the rest of the batter into muffin tins. Bake your bread and muffins, and hope all goes well.
While everything is baking, clean up your kitchen, hunt down the boys who are hiding from the dishes, make them do the dishes, and get your house in some sort of order.
If you were smart, you’d have four of the boys watch a movie while the ornery baby naps. I mean, good grief, it took a long time for him to give up that fight and go to sleep! BUT you are NOT smart. The baby wakes up ten minutes later and is crankier than before.
Answer a few more phone calls. Start another load of laundry. Be sure to include the two shirts you slopped with your zucchini batter.
Take the muffins out of the oven.
Huh. They look more like cookies than muffins, and they don’t smell right, either. Oh well. Let them cool and taste test them in a few minutes. Take a picture of your mutated muffin-cookie and realize it is on Lindsay’s plate. Note to self—return Lindsay’s plate and ask her how long you had it in the first place.
Fold a load of laundry. Bribe the boys with a movie if they help you get it out and sort it into everyone’s baskets.
Soon, the minute timer will ring and as your head into the kitchen, you’ll have to answer the door again.
This time it is the Kirby guy. He’s pushy. He doesn’t care that your timer is going off. Try your hardest to send him packing, and when that still doesn’t work, cut him off mid-sentence and say, “Do you smell that?” You’ll notice a burning smell and the smoke alarm will accompany the smell. Slam the door in Kirby Guy’s face and get to the oven before the house burns down.
Open the oven, grab your bread, open the doors and the windows, wait patiently for the batter fire to burn itself out, and send a mental apology to Kirby Guy.
At this point, a few neighbor kids will stop and ask if you need help because they know how to dial 911. (Bless them) Assure them that everything is fine, even though smoke is billowing out your house.
You’ll now have four loaves that look like this:
Such a waste. Taste the mutated muffin-cookie and realize you forgot the sugar. You’ll now have twenty four muffins and four loaves of bread that are burned AND disgusting!
Your hubsters may come home for lunch and sneak what he thinks is a cookie. Not only have you forgotten to make him lunch, but you just poisoned him with a sugar-free-mutated-muffin-cookie. No worries, he still loves you, and makes himself a peanut butter sandwich.
Dump your disaster into the trash and applaud yourself for finishing and NOT bursting into tears. Your shirt is clean, AND you remembered your apron! Way to go!!
