Kids Make Zucchini Bread

Squeezing water out of zucchini

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

The secret to a great zucchini bread, apparently, is getting the water out of the zucchini.

You don't want a wet, leaden bread. And as the kids in my food appreciation classes learned, squash--like most vegetables--is mostly water. Salt or sugar added to grated zucchini penetrates the cell walls on a molecular level, drawing out copious amounts of liquid. Left standing in a colander over a bowl for an hour (or overnight) will produce a cup of water or more from a pound of squash. You can then squeeze out even more with your hands, or by twisting the zucchini in batches in a tea towel.

(One of the kids wanted to taste the water after we'd given the sugar treatment. We did. Not bad! Green and sweet.)

So start your zucchini bread with a pound of squash. Trim off the ends, cut into manageable pieces and grate using the large holes of a box grater. Placed the grated zucchini in a colander set over a bowl and toss in 2 tablespoons sugar. Allow to sit at least an hour--or overnight--then squeeze as much of the remaining liquid out of the zucchini as you can. Set aside.

Meanwhile, whisk together 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. These are your dry ingredients for the bread.

In a separate bowl, beat two eggs. Add 1/4 cup plain yogurt, the juice from 1/2 lemon (strain out the seeds), 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar and 6 tablespoons melted butter. Combine well. These are your wet ingredients. Stir in the grated zucchini.

Add the wet ingredients to the flour mix and gently combine with a rubber spatula, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. Pour the mix into a 9-inch by 5-inch loaf pan that has been greased and dusted with flour. (We sprayed with Baker's Joy).

Place the loaf pan in a 375-degree oven and bake for 55 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Invert the pan to remove the loaf and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Scraping batter into the load pan takes teamwork

Our kids loved the zucchini bread just as it was. In truth, even though the bread is flaked with zucchini, making it quite pretty, you can't really taste the vegetable. In an ideal world, you would serve the bread warm, slathered with cream cheese and washed down with a tall glass of cold buttermilk.

Teaching Kids to Cook at the Farm Museum

Carroll County Farm Museum and fair grounds

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

On Saturday, daughter and I drove 50 miles up Georgia Avenue to Westminster, Md., and the "Go Local Fair" to give a demonstration on how kids will eagerly engage with fresh, healthful food if you give them a chance to participate in the preparation.

We arrived with three big traveling bags of food and equipment. I had agonized over what, exactly, to make for this event and finally decided on three dishes that cover some of the basics of seasonality, simplicity and essential cooking techniques that I try to teach in my food appreciation classes. We would begin with a simple "summer squash carpaccio,"--sliced raw zucchini seasoned with olive oil and lemon juice, garnished with fresh goat cheese and a chiffonade of basil--then a salad of asparagus and butter lettuce dressed with a freshly made mustard vinaigrette, and finally crepes stuffed with local strawberries and whipped cream.

I was prepared to do this without and cooking facilities or even running water on site. Good thing, because all we had under our tent were two folding tables on which spread our ingredients and prep the food. Our tent--one of several on the museum grounds--was just around the corner from grass-fed burgers sizzling on the grill. We shared the space with a local home-brewing club. Next door was a woman selling tomato plants. Other vendors were hawking rain barrels and solar attic fans.

Billed as one of the "featured presenters--along with an edible landscaping specialist, an electrical engineer on the subject of electric bicycle commuting, and a dairyman who uses robotic milking machines to produce 62 million pounds of milk--I was sandwiched between an extremely well-attended talk on bee keeping, and another on raising chickens. Fortunately, the handful of parents who attending my portion of the program had brought plenty of kids. Two young boys joined daughter in helping to prepare our three dishes.

It all went by too fast--pretty hectic, I'd say. It was all I could do to keep track of the ingredients and keep the kids busy. But they did a great job slicing the zucchini and trimming the asparagus and spinning the lettuce and finally cutting the strawberries and making the crepe batter. I had already cooked some asparagus and crepes, so we weren't exactly waiting for things to finish on my little portable butane burner. But I did give a demonstration on how to cook a crepe--except I was distracted by the whipped cream portion and the crepe got a little burned.

One of the boys, who said he made plenty of Italian food at home, reprimanded me for suggesting we slice our fresh basil. "The Italians don't cut basil," he said. "They tear it." Good for him. But that would make our chiffonade pretty difficult, I replied. Nevertheless, the kids tore and did not cut the basil.

Our plate or zucchini carpaccio, assembled by one of the boys, looked gorgeous and the vinaigrette came out perfectly. The crepes--stuffed with strawberries and whipped cream, the folded--also looked gorgeous. All of this food we were able to pass around on plastic plates, so everyone in the audience got to sample. All this in--including the setup--in 50 minutes. I had barely had time to break everything down and move it off the tables so the chicken lady could begin her talk.

What I tried to emphasize to the parents were some of the lessons I've learned teaching my food appreciation classes the last five years--mainly, it doesn't really matter much what you cook, as long as you get kids involved. They love to work in the kitchen if you give them a chance and will happily spend hours with a vegetable peeler or a salad spinner. Sometimes they will actually eat healthier foods when they are given a chance to help in the preparation.

Daughter and I washed our bowls and knifes and whisks in the bathroom, then headed for the Green Akeys Family Farm tent to sample one of their grassfed cheeseburgers. We passed on the hand-cut French fries from AW Boys Fries, but we did stop on the side of the road for a soft-serve ice cream cone. Daughter declared it the best soft-serve ever. All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a Saturday in May.

Cheese Sandwich Strategies

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I'm always captivated by the different ingenious approaches kids routinely take toward the food their served in school. Some things, for instance, simply do not lend themselves to being eaten by a plastic spork. Other foods inspire the most creative improvisation, sometimes involving a complete deconstruction of what the menu writer and kitchen cooks intended.

In this case we have what Chartwells at its menu webiste called "whole wheat toasted cheese triangles, tomato dipping sauce, seasoned fresh vegetable medley with locally grown zucchini, chilled pineapple cup."

Is a cheese sandwich by any other name still a cheese sandwich? Basically, this is two slices of whole wheat bread warmed in the oven with grated mozzarella cheese.


Some of the kids took this as a challenge. As you see here, one girl who described the bread as "nasty" pulled the sandwich apart and dove for the cheese. I watched this become quite a project as the girl attempted to separate the melted cheese as much as possible from the bread, to which it was determined to adhere.

But she was largely successful. And here's where the "tomato dipping sauce" entered the picture for her. She dipped the cheese in it. Perhaps this was vaguely reminiscent of pizza for her.

And here's one fifth-grade boy's solution. He opened the sandwich and spread the tomato sauce over the cheese. Suddenly, things are beginning to look a whole lot more like pizza.

And in case you're wondering, the vegetables were fresh and delicious. Unfortunately, kids don't go for vegetables much. Some were picking at the zucchini, while others bargained with their table mates for the broccoli. Still, it sure beats the cooked-to-death broccoli we've seen in the past.