I got up this morning and the very first thing I did (well, after I pet the cats and started the coffee, of course) was to peel and shred two more yellow squash. Every time we go out into the garden I find at least one more squash that is ready to pick, and there is no way that two people can eat this much squash in such a short period of time. So the current plan is to find ways to either preserve it, or to use it up.

The ‘preserving’ part of the equation is pretty much just me peeling one or two squash at a time, shredding them, and then flash freezing the shreds on a long cookie sheet covered in wax paper for a few hours. Once the little shreds are frozen, then they all get stuffed into a large freezer bag. I’m doing the flash freezing first only to prevent the entire bag from becoming one giant block of unusable squash; this way there’s little clumps of squash, but it’s much, much easier to just scoop out a giant handful without having to thaw the entire bag first.

So far I’ve given the three largest squash away to my family, and used up one giant squash in a chocolate cake, another (smaller) squash chopped and stirred into Sloppy Joes (by the way, this recipe is a lot of work, yes, but it is more than worth it. We double the veggies every time we make it), and last night I chopped up a zucchini and tossed it into the pan of salmon glop we had for dinner. Salmon glop is not a pretty dish, since it’s basically just a can of salmon (drained) plus a can of cream of mushroom soup stirred together and heated in a pan and then served over biscuits or toast whatever bready sort of thing you might have lying about the kitchen. But it’s very much a comfort sort of food for me (and luckily Richard loves it too), plus it is one of those perfect foods into which you can dump a whole lot of veggies, because salmon is a strong enough flavor that you really never notice the veggies are there. Usually I just toss in a few cans of mushrooms or peas and carrots, but it turns out zucchini works really well too, and hey, that’s one more squash off the counter. Only half a dozen or so left to go. For now. There’s still one tiny yellow squash lurking underneath the leaves (as of this morning), but there’s also still enough flowers that I suspect we’re not done with the squash explosion quite yet.