In one of my favorite books about food, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver writes about her experience with “Zucchini Wars.” You may be picturing galloping hoards hurling green, oblong grenades at each other, but in fact, Zucchini Wars are the annual challenge in the South (where Kingsolver lives on her farm) to rid oneself of excess zucchinis in July. Zucchini seems to be one of those plants that has taken to the old adage “bloom where you are planted” like gangbusters, thriving in any condition to yield a bumper crop year after year. Kingsolver contemplates the concept of an automobile engine that runs on zucchini, and–my favorite line in the chapter–recalls Garrison Keillor’s quote that “July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke.”

Presumably, this pursuit of using up all your over-abundant zucchini explains the origins of zucchini bread. I can think of no other reason why someone would look at this:

and think of this:

For a long time, I was skeptical of zucchini bread (and reasonably so, I’d say). I wouldn’t jump at the chance to eat asparagus bread or bok choy bread–at least not as a sweet breakfast–so what makes zucchini bread any different?

Frankly, I don’t really know. Except that people don’t seem to have major harvests of asparagus or bok choy to get off their hands, so those haven’t taken off in the form of quick breads (yet). But if you add sugar and other yummy ingredients to just about anything, it seems to work as a breakfast treat.

Here in Arizona, we definitely don’t have Zucchini Wars, but I occasionally end up with a zucchini or two I somehow didn’t use as planned. Enter this recipe. It does the trick of using up my zucchini without me resorting to a clandestine Zucchini Drop in someone’s car while they innocently worship at church. (Though I do live just a quarter mile from my church…wonder what else I could conveniently offload…) Once I finally tried zucchini bread, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it–the zucchini adds a colorful little crunch you don’t usually find in a quick bread. And since the other ingredients are standard muffin-y things like brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon, you still feel like you’re eating something light and sweet, not a dinner-time side dish.

And now I’m off to develop my soon-to-be famous Asparagus Bread recipe…

Zucchini Bread
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. cinnamon
3 eggs
1/2 c. applesauce
1/2 c. vegetable oil
3/4 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. white sugar
3 tsp. vanilla
2 c. grated zucchini

Directions:

1. Grease two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. In a small bowl, mix dry ingredients: whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.

3. In a large bowl, mix eggs, applesauce, oil, brown sugar, white sugar, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until just mixed. Stir in zucchini until completely incorporated. Pour into prepared loaf pans.

4. Bake 40-50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Makes 2 loaves.

When I was a student at Wheaton College, our cafeteria food was consistently ranked #1 in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Rightfully so–the food was stellar, especially for a cafeteria. I remember a Southwestern salad that was to die for, and their Texas cake–well, let me just say I would go all the way to Texas to taste it again. As a celebration of maintaining its spot at the top of the list, once a year the cafeteria would host a super-fancy gourmet dinner, complete with lobster, petit fours, and ice sculptures. Yes, ice sculptures.

But I digress…

The thing I really loved best about my college cafeteria was making my own behemoth peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In the middle of the serving area stood a cut-your-own bread station with every kind of bread under the sun. I used to hack off about a half a loaf of challah bread and slather on the chunky peanut butter and gooey jelly like it was going out of style. In a weird way, this was a declaration of independence for me. Growing up, my mom’s version of PBJ was a paper-thin layer of peanut butter and an *itty-bitty* dollop of jelly spread to its absolute limit. I don’t fault her; we grew up poor. But I always, always wanted more. So the ability to make Big Mac-sized PBJs was big news for me. And I do mean big news–I’m pretty sure these sandwiches were directly responsible for my being about 20 pounds heavier in college.

In the 10 years since graduation, I’ve definitely toned down my colossal PBJ habit, but still have a place in my heart (and my belly) for that flavor match made in heaven. Hence trying these peanut butter and jelly muffins. If you’re like me and tend to get stuck on Recipe Repeat with the same old apple/blueberry/pumpkin baked goods, this twist on the classic sandwich may be just what you need to break out of your muffin rut. They were a MAJOR hit with my kids. My 6-year-old declared them the best muffins I had ever made. And they certainly are fun with their jelly surprise in the middle. Who doesn’t like a jelly surprise?

And, more to the point, who doesn’t like peanut butter and jelly?

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins
(Adapted from Myrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 c. white sugar
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. creamy peanut butter
2 Tbsp. applesauce
1 egg
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
approx. 1/3 c. grape jelly

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Combine flours, sugars, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center.

3. Combine milk, peanut butter, applesauce, egg, melted butter, and vanilla and pour into well in dry ingredients. Stir until just mixed.

4. Coat 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Fill each muffin cup about halfway with batter, then place 1/2 Tbsp. jelly in the center. Cover with another generous dollop of muffin batter.

5. Bake in preheated oven about 20 minutes, or until muffin tops spring back when touched in the center.

Makes 12 muffins.

So the big news this week at our house is that we’re getting solar panels installed. I for one am super excited about this (clean energy! lowered electric bills! coolness factor!) The only downside of the whole process is that for the better part of one whole day, your power has to be shut off. As someone who uses a heavy duty hair straightener every day so I don’t look like Cher in some terrible ’70s Merv Griffin appearance, this news was disappointing.

Still, in a weird way, there’s a part of me that couldn’t help treating it like an experiment. With all the post-Apocalyptic story lines in recent TV/movies/books, you kinda have to wonder how you would respond if you were suddenly thrown back a couple hundred years in terms of technology. Going without power for one day is like a teeny tiny fraction of that experience, I know, but it’s one of those things that’s worthwhile as an occasional reminder of all we take for granted having electricity.

Anyway, we belong squarely in the 21st century, and tend to rely heavily on our toaster for breakfasts. That being the case, I decided to bake this carrot apple bread the night before the power outage–since I wasn’t up to the challenge of attempting it over an open fire the following day. (Yes, we could have had cereal and milk. I felt like baking anyway.) The funny thing is that before breakfast I drove to Starbucks for some coffee (again, not willing to MacGuyver some camping-style version of coffee in my fireplace) and was approached by a barista standing in the drive-thru handing out samples. She was handing out–you guessed it–apple bread. Well, Caramelized Apple Cake, to be more precise. Of course it was super tasty, as cake for breakfast always is. So when I got home and sat down to this bread, the contrast in sugar content seemed drastic. There was probably as much sugar in one ketchup-cup sample of Starbucks’ apple bread as in this entire loaf. After I got over the sweetness disparity, though, I felt proud of myself. Why? Because I have learned that breakfast doesn’t have to be drenched in sugar to be delicious and satisfying. (I didn’t used to know that. Years ago I would buy those giant trays of grocery store cheese danish, stick them in my freezer, and hack one off every morning.) And believe me, this bread is plenty sweet! It’s just not Stabucks-drive-thru-breakfast sweet, which is actually a good thing. It has both a fruit and a vegetable, a beautiful, fluffy texture, and that soft-but-firm exterior I love so much in a well-done breakfast bread. Substitute up to 1/2 cup of the white flour with whole wheat to make it even heartier.

All in all (if you were wondering) we survived our day without power. No one died, and no one had to cook anything in the fireplace. No one even had to poop in the woods! So it was way better than camping. Now let’s just hope no zombie Apocalypse happens in my lifetime. I’m not ready to go that hard-core.

Carrot Apple Bread
(Inspired by How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)

Ingredients:

2 c. all-purpose flour
2/3 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. butter
1 egg
3/4 c. milk
1 c. loosely packed shredded carrots
1 small apple, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

Stir the dry ingredients together. Cut the butter into pieces, then use a fork or two knives to cut it into the dry ingredients. (I used a food processor to make this step faster.)

Beat together the egg and milk. Pour into the dry ingredient mixture and stir until just moistened. Fold in the carrots and apple. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Well, it’s mid-October and pumpkin season is in full-swing. Good thing, too, because I haven’t forgotten my previous commitment to go “pumpkin craaaaaazy“!! But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Around here, pumpkin patches are appearing on street corners faster than you can say “Why am I paying so much for pumpkins?” I do enjoy our annual visit to the pumpkin patch, though. This year, our family (plus my dad and step-mom in town from Illinois) headed out to the far East Valley to check out the festivities at Vertuccio Farms. For $8 admission, you can’t do better than this place. Their fall festival boasts games, a bounce house, pedal race cars, farm animals for petting, a barrel train ride,

and a 2-mile corn maze complete with a mystery modeled after the game Clue (in this case, it was which animal kidnapped Farmer Joe–I think it ended up being the chickens with the rat poison in the outhouse…or something similarly macabre. The instructions stated that “fowl play” was involved). The kids had a blast and we were all pretty wiped out by the end of the afternoon, so we finished our visit the way any sensible person would on a Phoenix-area fall day: with sno-cones.

At any rate, here’s another recipe involving everyone’s favorite orange vegetable. I wish I could say I made these muffins with pumpkin puree from a pumpkin patch pumpkin (try saying that three times fast), but no, they were created with the humble canned variety. But you know, they still turned out great! Very moist and pumpkin-y with the hardy texture of oats, these were super satisfying for a fall morning when you’ve been bitten by the pumpkin bug.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins
(Adapted from Peanut Butter Fingers)

Ingredients:

3/4 c. whole wheat flour
3/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (mix cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves)
1 c. old-fashioned oats
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. white sugar
1 egg
1 c. pumpkin puree or canned pumpkin
3/4 c. milk
1/3 c. canola oil

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12-cup muffin tin or line with paper liners.

In a large bowl, thoroughly mix whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, oats, brown sugar, and white sugar.

In a separate bowl, mix egg, pumpkin, milk, and oil. Pour pumpkin mixture into flour mixture and mix well to incorporate.

Fill muffin cups and bake for 18-20 minutes or until muffin tops spring back when touched.

Makes 12 muffins.

If you’re thinking about staging a Muffin Intervention for me right about now due to the inordinate number of muffin posts on this blog, well…….

…..you might be on to something.

We pretty much perpetually have a batch of muffins on hand around here. Muffins rock my breakfast world. I believe “muffintastic” should be a complimentary adjective, as in “Muffintastic pants, bro!” And frankly, I’m especially proud of these particular muffins because I came up with the recipe myself and they were quite tasty. (I’m only just learning to be adventurous in the recipe creation department.)

The other thing I like about this recipe is that it gives the often-overlooked pear the limelight (or the pearlight? too many fruits in this sentence) with the more frequently chosen apple. In the world of baked goods, the pear is like the slightly-less-pretty-but-makes-up-for-it-with-spunk younger sister to the attractive, popular apple, a la Little Women or A League of Their Own. Apple strudel, apple bread, apple pie–yes, they’re all delicious, but the pear deserves a chance, people! It’s easily as sweet as an apple, and sometimes juicier. When baked, I find its graininess softens to the perfect texture. So do yourself a favor and use it in a muffin….like this one.

Cinnamon Pear Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. maple or agave syrup
1 egg
1/3 c. oil
1/2 c. applesauce
1/3 c. almond milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 large pear, peeled, cored, and finely chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.

In a small bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix brown sugar, maple syrup, egg, oil, applesauce, almond milk, and vanilla. Slowly mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined. Fold in pears.

Bake for 18-20 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.