I made Lebanese White Bush Squash Pancakes for dinner. I win.

I buy a lot of my garden seedlings from a local, family-owned neighborhood nursery. I won’t name names, but even though it’s an awesome place, every one who works there is always stoned. Like, Cheech and Chong have nothing on these guys. Once, the cashier talked to me for 15 minutes about the soulfullness of soil. I’d asked for a tomato cage. Anyway, they are good people. Just living in the 60’s a little. I think it’s all quite cute.

But, sometimes you get special surprises. Like this zucchini plant that I bought which isn’t a zucchini plant. This isn’t the first time I’ve come home with a mislabeled plant.  I didn’t realize it until a week or two ago, when I was all, “Those are some funny-colored zucchini.”

At first, I thought it might be a white eggplant, but it was too yellow. And the leaves were very “squash.” After an extreme amount of Googling (some of which made me want to claw my eyes out. People do wrong things with vegetables and there is evidence of that on the internet), I determined that it’s a Lebanese White Bush Squash.

I’ve never had one of those before. Never even heard of it, honestly. But summer squash is pretty much always summer squash no matter what color the skin is, and in most recipes it’s interchangeable. One of my favorite ways to use up squash is with pancakes. One the rowdy night when Mr. Begonia had to work late and I was on my own for dinner, I made myself a big batch of these. Seriously, they are so good that I sat down on the kitchen floor and ate them as they came out of the pan. Never even made it to the table.

I also drank most of a bottle of wine. Which explains why there aren’t many pictures here, and the pictures you do see are not my most awesome. Particularly this one: Apparently I decided to cook a couple of these heart-shaped because I loved them so much.

Sooo…

You don’t need to really top these with anything, but I had some homemade 3-pepper jam, so that kicked up the awesome. These are easily made vegan by using an egg substitute in place of the regular eggs.

Summer Squash Pancakes

Adapted from my mom and Ina Garten

Ingredients

• 2 medium or 1 large summer squash (about 1 pound or 3 cups grated).
• 1 medium shallot, chopped
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten or equivalent amount of egg replacement
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 clove garlic, mashed
• handful of fresh parsley, chopped (approximately 1/4 cup)
• vegetable oil

Directions
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.
Trim out seeds from the inside of the squash. Grate the squash using a box grater. Press out excess water in a colander. (NOTE: THIS IS IMPORTANT! If you don’t let the extra water drain out, your batter will be too runny. I usually let my grated squash sit in the colander for about 20 minutes, under a linen towel weighted with a heavy soup can. In 3 cups of grated squash, about 5 tablespoons of liquid will drain).

Stir in the onion and eggs or egg substitute. Stir in 1/3  cup flour, the baking powder, salt, and pepper. Add more a tablespoon or two of flour if the batter is extremely runny.You should have something slightly more fluid than regular pancake batter, but not watery.

Heat a 10 or 12-inch skillet over medium heat and heat 1 tablespoon oil in the pan. Lower the heat to medium-low and ladle 1/4 cup of batter into the pan. Cook the pancakes about 2-3 minutes on each side, until brown and crispy. Place the pancakes on a sheet pan and keep warm in the oven. Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan, if needed, and continue to fry the pancakes until all the batter is used. Serve hot.

Makes approximately 8 pancakes–enough to serve 2 or 3 people.

An Unfortunate Fact.

Referring to “carrot cake” as “carrot bread” does not, in any way, make it more healthy.

Bummer, right? Dude, I know.

Cakes are full of fat and sugars. So if you want to make something healthier, you have to cut down on those. I’ve been using this adapted version of a recipe from the Mayo Clinic website to make a slightly healthier version of the traditional Carrot Cake Posing As A Quick Bread. You don’t need a lot of sugar when you’re using carrots; combined with the raisins in this recipe, you’ve got plenty of natural sweetness. This isn’t a toothachingly sweet like carrot cake can sometimes be;  it is mostly savory, but with a hint of sweetness. Whole wheat flour makes it filing, but the generous amount of carrots and raisins prevent it from drying out.

Why are we talking about this? Because I cleaned out my fridge, that’s why. Or, more specifically, I started to clean out my fridge and found some sad looking carrots. I subsequently decided that I’d cleaned the fridge enough for one day and wanted to make some carrot bread.

It straddles the line between cake and quick bread but for our purposes today, let’s call it bread.

Yuck. I know. Icky wimpy carrots. But a quick shave with the veggie peeler and a pass over the grater, and you’d never know.

There’s a hint of spice and warmth that comes from the orange zest, juice, cinnamon and ginger.

This is extremely easy to veganize, too. I alternate depending on whether or not I have eggs in the fridge.

Carrot-Spice Quick Bread

makes 1 loaf

Adapted from the Mayo Clinic Website

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt (optional)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/3 cup vegan margarine or butter, room temperature. Applesauce can also be substituted, but monitor baking time closely as it may bake more quickly.
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup soy (or regular) milk
• 4 tablespoons orange juice
• 1 egg or equivalent vegan Egg substitute, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 1-1/2 to 2 cups shredded carrots
 (4-5 medium carrots)
• 1/3 to 1/2 cups raisins (to your own tastes)
• 1-2 tablespoons demura sugar (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 F

Sift the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.

Cream the margarine and brown sugar. Add in the milk, OJ, vanilla, orange zest and egg (one ingredient at a time.) Blend on medium speed until the mixture is well blended. Slowly add the dry ingredients. Mix until thick and creamy.

Using a wooden spoon, beat in the carrots and raisins. 
Spoon batter into a greased 8 1/2×4 1/2×2 1/2 loaf pan. Sprinkle with demura sugar, if using. The demura creates a sweet, thinly crispy crust on the surface of the bread. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove from pan and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
If you want to slightly (or majorly) unhealthify your healthy carrot spice bread, try spreading on a bit of cream cheese. Or, vanilla yogurt. Or, um, vanilla ice cream.

Keeps well for about a week, wrapped and stored in the fridge.