Zucchini

I should have taken pictures.

I try to accommodate requests in our home garden and this year one such request was to forgo the beets (I'm the only one who eats them) and go for some zucchini.  I thought to myself that we wouldn't need any more than two plants since we really only contemplated using them for zucchini bread.  I have now learned that they should be more properly referred to as the garden thug.  They overshadow everything in a 2 foot radius.  Cutting them back only seems to make them more vigorous and the fruit (botanically its a fruit) is pretty insane.  We went to the mountains of North Carolina to escape the heat for a few days and came back to find a monster almost a meter long and 6-7 inches in diameter.  My daughter and her friend dubbed it Zucchini-Zilla, dressed it in dolls clothes and pushed it around in a stroller.  I had sent some Zucchini to my in-laws with my brother-in-law but this did not go as planned.  He had been visiting and was driving home and I put a few Zs in a bag for him to take to his mother who I knew to enjoy them.  A few weeks later I was talking with my in-laws and I asked how they enjoyed the Zs to which they responded that they had never seen them but that coincidentally my brother-in-law had been recently complaining about a funny smell in the car.  A short investigation turned up the liquified remains of the Zs.  We have had to expand the repertoire of Z recipes beyond bread.  We have now tried Z blueberry muffins, Z breaded fries, Z and carrot bars with cream cheese frosting, and Z in pasta salad.  Looking forward to trying Z pickles and Z chips but would welcome any other ideas.  IF I were to do Zs again next year I'm thinking it will be a stand alone outside my raised beds and only a single plant.