Zucchini Muffins: An Experiment in Cryogenics

What is it about zucchini.  It seems that every fall some well-meaning neighbor (the one with the big vegetable garden) brings us a gift of a home-grown zucchini.  They are always ginormous things (we have friends whose pet dogs are smaller than some of the zucchinis).  I know we have received this gift because gardens always produce more zucchinis than one person knows what to do with, so they are passed on to neighbors and become someone else’s problem to solve.

This has been going on since the beginning of time.  I remember my mom, who never grew a zucchini in her life, grating zucchini to freeze for “future baking.”  So, that’s what I do.  Grate it, freeze it and forget it’s there.  And, judging by the Ziploc baggie full of grated green that I found in the bottom of our freezer, that’s what happened this time.  It was dated September ’11.  It had just sat there in frozen limbo, for over 2 years, waiting for a purpose.

I didn’t actually see the date on the bag until after I had defrosted it.  At that point I was committed to making muffins so I just hoped that we wouldn’t die from some horrible people-killing scourge that grows in frozen zucchini after 2 years.

If it looked a little sad and dilapidated when I took it out of the freezer, it looked utterly pathetic after it thawed.

Ewwwww.

Two years of freezer frost created a lot of water when thawed.  So to take care of that problem, I just opened one end of the baggie about an inch and squeezed until all of the liquid was gone.

And, here we are.  Two years and two hours later enjoying a delightful zucchini chocolate chip muffin made from a homegrown zucchini. I have to admit, this isn’t a bad way to get a serving of veggies.

Happy Entertaining!

Click here to get recipe