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I told you about our friend Sam’s evil plot to drown us in Zucchini, and I asked you to give me ideas for what to do with them.  You came through!  So many of you gave me fantastic ideas for zucchini pizza, zucchini boats, zucchini bread, zucchini strata, and zucchini hash…all of them were great ideas.  I decided to try the boat idea.   I didn’t have a recipe…didn’t even look one up on the internet because I figured, ‘How hard could it be?’

Impulsively, I simply grabbed my unbelievably sharp knife,

being very, very careful so as not to…..

Augghghghghghg!

Just kidding!

Where was I?  I picked up my Cutco knife-from-hell and cut that behemoth of a zucchini in half lengthwise.

Like SO!

Then I picked up my Melon Baller.

Melon Baller?

Yes, Melon Baller.  Just go with me, I’m on a roll…..

And proceeded to

take a really blurry picture.  Look, give me a break here, I’m taking pictures, I’m disemboweling large vegetables, I’m doing the hokey pokey all at the same time here.

Until I had scooped them out.  A note…scoop them out more than I did.  It was WAY too much pulp.  Hopefully, though, you aren’t a friend of Sam’s, and are dealing with normally sized zucs.

Add some salt to the cut edges,

be amazed at how gross your hand looks in close-up photographs,

and then put both halves face down in a colander.  This is a large colander, if that gives you any sense of proportion to what I was dealing with here….

Grab your meat sauce, or marinara sauce, whatever you have on hand.  But don’t, for all that is good and holy, grab an unmarked bag, from the freezer, of sloppy joe sauce that you mistake for regular meat sauce.  DON’T do it.  (ahem.)

But if you do, forgive yourself, and move on with life.  It will be okay.

Then violently grab a tomato that you stole from Grandma Jane’s garden,

And chop that bad boy up.

Do the same with a boatload of garlic, which you then sautee.

Forget to photograph the garlic once you’ve sautéed it.

Unceremoniously dump that entire bowl of chopped, sautéed garlic into your meat sauce.  Why?  Because it NEEDS IT, man!

Then pull the 2 pounds of bacon you have cooking for tomorrow’s BLT’s, out of the oven, smell its heavenly aroma, and move the meat to your towels…drain most…but not all…of that golden grease.  And do something crazy.  I mean CRAZY.

That’s right.  Put those beautiful zucchini shells on the bacon grease, face down.  You’re going to sear the tops in BACON grease, friends.

Go back to the bacon on the plate, and caress it and murmur sweet loving words to it.

Then get your cheeses ready while the zucchini bakes in the hot oven.

I’m using mozzarella, and Parmesan.  But you could use anything.  Goat cheese, cheddar, whatever floats your boat.

Grate them, but NOT your knuckles.  Don’t ask me why I say this.

Then let your strapping husband who just got home from work at the firehouse, pull the 60-pound zucchinis out of the oven.  He’ll love the smell right about now, because it smells of bacon grease.  He’ll want to take a pastry brush and brush more on the Zucs.  You’ll let him because he is your beloved, and you can’t refuse him anything.

Look at those muscles!  LOOK AT THEM!!!

You won’t even say a word when he gets excessive with the bacon grease.  Why?  See part about beloved above.

Ok Vern!  We’re ready to assemble!  (Is it okay if I call you Vern?)

Put the meat sauce, that would never be sloppy joe sauce because you’re an airhead, into the boats.

Fill ’em both up!

A little bit of zee pepper would be niiiiice….

And some mozzarella!

Don’t be stingy!  Cheese is meant to be gorged on!

And add the Parmesan, because if some is good, more is better!

And if you are feeling sassy, add some pepperoni on top of that 2 pounds of cheese.  And by all means, make it TURKEY pepperoni, because you’re into making healthy choices….

And then add your chopped, stolen tomato…

Then bake those beautiful boats for nearly an hour, depending on the size of your Zucchini.  MmmMMmm.  Hot, cheesy, and saucy.  Just like My Captain!

Gargantuan Zucchini Boats, brought to you by Sam, and made by me, with love!

Slice them up, and make 300 of your closest friends happy; it’s a LOT of food, people!

But they sure are tasty!

Make them today!!!

We have this amazing friend named Sam.  Sam is the quintessential gentle giant.

I love this picture of him.

Sam is a musician, a brainiac I.T. guy, a devoted father and husband, and one hell of a cook.

Sam is also the father of one of Varmint’s best-est friends in the whole world, and the husband of one of My Captain’s old childhood friends.  This is the guy at any party who cracks all the jokes quietly, powerfully, when they are least expected.  His wit is stellar.

We love Sam.

Sam and his wife, Shirley, are heavily involved in 4-H, with gardening and animals galore.  This is a good thing for US, because when their bounty exceeds their stomachs, we are near enough to catch any collateral veggies!

Enter, “The Squash from Hell.”

Sam brought this beauty (along with tomatoes and cucumbers) over a couple of nights ago.    Actually, he brought three.  This is the only one that is left.

Look at this behemoth.  What on God’s green earth was Sam FEEDING his vegetables?  And, more importantly, is whatever he used going to do the same thing to us?

I’ve already made zucchini fritters, baked breaded zucchini chips, Eggs Benedict on fried zucchini, and Zucchini Parmesan.  And I STILL have this enormous squash sitting on my counter!

I have no idea what to do with it, but I’m enjoying my creative mode.   What would YOU do with it?  I’m up for suggestions!

I wonder if Sam knew I would run into this quandary when he gave them to me.  Knowing his sense of humor, I bet he was chuckling and snickering the whole way home.

All right, Sam….Game on, my friend.

Game ON.

If you want to eat a fun and affection-filled breakfast with your loving family at a local diner,

but you like to eat scrapple, that disgusting conglomeration of every scrap of the pig that hits the floor at the trim table,

be prepared to finish your meal like this:

Fair warning.

It all started when My Captain was flinging grass seed in the rain up a very muddy hill.  He is an aggressive grass seed slinger, apparently, the mud was slick, and bada bing, bada boom, he was ass-over-teakettle down the hill.

I didn’t actually see it happen, but by the way he limped into the house, still clutching his 50 pound bag of seed in a vise-like grip, with mud on his body from stem to stern, I could easily re-play the scenario in my head.  He hit the deck.  And by hit the deck, I mean HIT THE DECK.

And very likely ripped something in his shoulder.

This was unfortunate for a multitude of reasons, as you can imagine.  1) He’s a firefighter/paramedic.  He does USE those long, beautifully muscular arms of his quite a bit.  2) He was planning to begin digging the pits for the concrete bases to the posts (that will hold up the new roof for our future patio) the next day.  A bum shoulder cannot dig through Maryland clay.

Enter Connor.

A new high school graduate, Connor is also an EMT and budding firefighter, and is always willing to work.  So we hired him the next day to do the hard, shoulder-wrenching digging while My Captain built the concrete forms.

We love Connor.

But Connor isn’t always upfront about his personal life and we found out later in the morning that he had agreed to work with My Captain on what turned out to be his 18th BIRTHDAY!   How did we find out?  Facebook.  Unbelievable.  The kid couldn’t just mention it. Nope.  I have to find out via his Mama on Facebook.  It’s a strange new world, this Facebook.

We all decided that the sailing expedition we had planned on the following day would be something Connor might enjoy as a special treat.  It also made sense to bring him along to save My Captain from further wrenching his shoulder by pulling lines and raising Jibs.

So he came along to Annapolis to meet our dear friend, and fellow firefighter/paramedic, Cupcake.

His first time on a sailboat, Connor took to it like a fish to, er, water.  He watched Varmint, a veteran student of the Cupcake School of Sailing, at the helm…

while Cupcake (who honestly is an international sailboat regatta champion) …

gave him the low-down on how things work on his boat.

And Connor learned that regatta champions love to sail FAST and Crooked.

(IE, heeling.)

They LIKE to have their boats blowing sideways in the wind so everyone has to hang off the opposite side.  Like this.

And this.

Despite this, we convinced Connor to try the helm while Cupcake instructed.  Although to be honest, in this picture, Cupcake looks like he is teaching how to play Air Guitar.

Connor was a little hesitant, as might be expected,

…but soon he got used to the feel of the rudder.

We introduced him to an entirely new world today.  All because My Captain is an Aggressive Grass Seed Slinger.    Crazy connections in this world.  Crazy.

And My Captain?  The one with what may likely be a torn rotator cuff?

Pouted.

I have a longer story for you about scrapple and drama surrounding it, but really it must wait for a night when I have more energy.  In the meantime, I will leave you with only this picture, simply entitled:

Cracking Heads

Anyone who has had children knows how hard it is to resist knocking noggins together sometimes…..