Dance for Me, Neil!

I must say, I had quite a lovely morning, afternoon, and this evening is shaping up quite nicely as well. The morning started off with emails from our new friends at Planned Parenthood, where our names were passed along and eventually included in an invitation to help plan this fall's beer-tasting event -- with the possibility of also creating a committee to plan future events to reach other young professionals and encourage their support. We have our first meeting early in August. Looking forward to doing my tiny part to help out. Mine and Rachel's brains were buzzing today with ways to get the word out.

Despite the crazy rain, this afternoon brought another visit to the Farmer's Market, where I met up with Krissy and Bava.

Things I learned:

• Amish kids can wear braces.
• There are different varieties of peaches. Who knew peaches aren't just peaches!
• Green onions are the same thing as scallions.

While my green beans are kind of a disappointment this week (they just don't have the crunch they did last week), I scored lots of yummies. My two favorite items of the day are my cute little red pepper, which I sliced up for my lunch sandwich and it just smelled heavenly, and the most enormous zucchini I have ever seen. It's nice to go on Wednesday when it's not quite as busy -- you actually have a chance to chat with some of the vendors. The woman selling said ginormous zucchini was quite the saleswoman, suggesting stuffing it with sausage. Who could pass that up? Both Krissy and I bought one. Oh, I also bought an eggplant. I've never had it before, so we'll see how that goes....

Dinnertime rolled around, and it was time to attack the zucchini. Check this baby out! Even Heidi wanted in on the action.

Trial and Error Zucchini

Gigantic zucchini (or small, whatever)
Links of sausage (I used sweet Italian)
Tomato
Basil
Mozzarella

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Remove sausage from casings and place meat in a heated skillet; brown
3. Chop tomato, basil, and shred mozz
4. Slice zucchini in half, longways
5. Scoop the innards (again, I used my spoked ice cream scoop)
6. In the scooped zucchinis, put a layer of tomato, then basil, then the cooked sausage. Top with cheese.
7. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes. Enjoy! Can be sliced or eaten as a sandwich. The options are endless!

Thoughts
While tasty, this ended up tasting very zucchini-y. Next time, I would scoop a little bit more of the flesh to leave a thinner shell. I would also use a third link of sausage (I used two) and mix in some of the zucchini flesh to make a more substantial filling. And, of course, more cheese never hurts.




Now it's time for So You Think You Can Dance! Weeeee!