Harvesting: Bennings Tint Patty Pan for sausage-stuffed squash

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Sometimes you miss a harvest for a week and end up with a GIANT patty pan squash (Bennings Tint). You're supposed to pick 'em much smaller than this (like, as small as the little one above) or else they end up flavorless. The solution for flavorless patty pan zucchini? STUFF IT WITH MEAT! (Although, admittedly, patty pan squash, even when picked at the correct maturity, is still a little under powered in the flavor department - Italian sausage fixes this, too!)

I roughly followed ATasteOfHome's sausage-stuffed butternut squash recipe, but used this over-sized patty pan zucchini instead. I also added in a 1/4 of a chopped red pepper, and instead of microwaving the zucchini I oiled & roasted it, cut-side down for 20-25 minutes. etc. etc. Very delicious. I will say that the whole carving-out and stuffing process is maybe not necessary. In fact, we've already remade this dish without stuffing a giant squash and it's just as good:

This particular rendition also includes shishito peppers, an eggplant, and onions all from the garden. I imagine we'll be making more versions of this, because we now have a steady stream of zucchini coming in:

Once I picked the monster patty pan, the plant went on to produce one million female flowers. The more you pick, the more fruit you get!

The whole squash bed actually started out pretty yellow, due to the nitrogen-deficiency introduced by Kellogg's raised bed mix:

June 15, 2020
...But with some compost, fish emulsion, and organic fertilizer regularly applied, we're back on track!

July 13 and August 18, 2020