imageI am cooking and baking today. After a week of working on my husband’s political campaign, I needed to stay home and cocoon a bit.  It’s a good opportunity to use up some of the zucchini my sister in law gave me, grown in her huge garden.  So here are the results so far: 2 zucchini loaves and some sweet potato zucchini fritters.

In the past several months, I’ve been experimenting with gluten-free living. Actually it’s been gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free and cocoa-free. Oh don’t feel too sorry for me, well maybe just a little bit about the cocoa. I do miss chocolate!  But I’ve learned to replace one ingredient for another and sometimes one flavour for another. For instance, I’ve found that baked goods are rarely suitable or satisfying, so I satisfy my sweet tooth with dates.  Avocado is my favourite new fat and makes a terrific egg salad on a rice crisp.  I am now experimenting with morning cereal, a mixture of hemp hearts, chia seeds and ground flax with almonds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds all moistened with coconut yogurt.  My favourite ingredient by far is lemon.  I add it to many dishes and found lemon sorbet is the best dessert when added to fresh blueberries.

So, back to my baking experiment. I tried making zucchini fritters with sweet potato and an egg, seasoned with salt, pepper, coriander and cinnamon.  Nice flavours but the texture is a bit off.  One of the other limitations I have is that having just moved across country, my cupboard has fewer ingredients that it usually would.  I find myself constantly going to the grocery store to stock up on something else. And the kitchen is much smaller that what I’ve gotten used to, not to the mention the fridge with the side by side freezer (not very efficient). I’ll have to see what the rest of the family thinks of these. (First taster was Earl.  He thought it needed cheese. Cheese?)image

As for the zucchini bread, that is a standard recipe that I won’t be eating due to the many ingredients I am avoiding right now.  Do you have a favourite zucchini recipe?imageimage