Moxy Thoughts

Spring is officially in full bloom!  This weekend we got our first crop out of our garden.  This year, we planted some tried and true zucchini, a couple of different types of peppers, including cayenne, bell and jalepenos, strawberries, tomatoes and tomatillos.  And, we took a risk this year and also put in 2 different types of melons.  Luckily, we have a ton of space, but so far, just a few weeks in and we are already wondering where the melon is going to sprawl out towards.  I’ll post some pictures as it grows, it’s already so big!

Now to the zucchini.  We started growing our garden the first summer that we moved to California and the incredible thing was up until that point I couldn’t even keep a simple basil plant alive (we used to live in Chicago where it was always either too cold or too hot and too much or too little water).   But, here in California there has been so much we have learned.  First, our soil at our ranch is wonderful for growing things.  We planted and things grew.  It was that simple!  The original garden had a bunch of vegetables that didn’t work together because I was very excited about the thought of fresh veggies, none of those worked, but the zucchini still grew!  That was when I first started creating a bunch of zucchini recipes as there was so much of it coming out.  The second garden year, we started to figure out we could gr0w delicious pepperoncini and also some tomatillos and that was so fun because those flavors together are tremendous!

This year, I feel like we’re pros!  Derek has really upped the game for us and put in some professional grade watering systems and straightened out our rows – we’re really growing now!  This year, I’m hoping the garden can help us in our test kitchen and so this recipe is one of our first we’re trying out this year.  I’m looking to stick with minimal sugar, only use whole wheat flour and maximum veggies.  The boys and I cooked this one last night and according to this morning’s breakfast dishes, we’ll call it a success!  Only crumbs left on the boys’ plates.  The key to making this flavorful and also healthy is to add high quality dark chocolate chips and a fresh shredded apple in place of other oils and fats.  The reason for the apple is that the amount of zucchini I threw in this bread made it necessary to avoid as many other wet ingredients as possible.

Give it a try and let me know if you’re munchkins are as excited about this healthy food as mine were!