Crazy Zucchini Cakes

Crazy Zucchini Cakes and mango slices

The Crabbiless Crab Cakes from the Imus cookbook are a favorite in this house, but no one -- until today -- has shared zucchini with me.

Clicking on the Imus link should take you into the recipes from that cookbook.

Tonight, I'm nervous as my mixture is feeling too wet and I mixed up some ingredients big time. Using up leftovers.

So, instead of regular cheese (they recommend soy cheese), I mixed cottage cheese, cheddar and smoked gouda.

Instead of breadcrumbs, I used homemade bread crumbs, cornflakes and wegmans whole grain breadcrumbs.

Apple Butter

As soon as I dropped my husband off at his office, my daughter and I went to Wegmans. I hope to do an entry about our trip once I recuperate... But my daughter saw me throw cottage cheese in the cart and asked me if she could have cottage cheese and apple butter for breakfast. At the end cap at the end of the tea row, they had Little Barn specialty jams and among them was a jar of "no granular sugar added" apple butter. The jar was $2.99, when I'm fairly certain traditional apple butter is more in the $1.99 range. But I looked at the ingredients: apples, apple cider & cinnamon. That's it.

Neither she nor I tasted a difference, though I want to say that the apple flavor was more intense. It irks me that so many products made with fruit have no much sugar added to them. Like popsicles. Because fruit is naturally sweet, why all the sugar? And canned fruit packed in heavy syrup. I find that gross.

(Though sometimes I use that kind of fruit for my tarte tartin, and I simply use the syrup to make the sugar syrup without adding sugar.)

Okay, end of rant.

Poor Man's Calzone

I emerged from class this afternoon starving... and I also had an acute awareness that several dairy products in my fridge were approaching their expiration date. Among them was a $4 container of large curd cottage cheese. I don't have any riccotta, and we're low on cheese in general, so I thought maybe I could somehow make the cottage cheese more riccotta-like and make some homemade pizza dough and build funky calzones.

I mixed the

 cottage cheese, shredded mozzerrella, italian seasoning, fresh garlic, grated parmesan and drained c

an spinach (someone gave the spinach to me, 

I usually buy fresh and frozen). 

I also mixed in the last of the commercial spinach dip.

I can't help but think it won't be gross as Mimi used to always use cottage cheese for such things. I don't know if she didn't know about riccotta or what but...

I made my usual pizza dough and made five little calzones to serve with sauce. Hopefully they are edible because I have a freezer bag of stuffing for another batch.

The verdict is in. The family loved

 them. It made so much we have enough for lunch AND one to freeze. For dessert, we're having Lindor Truffles from Valentine's Day.

Morning snacks: Cottage cheese with apple butter

In this house, breakfast usually comes around two or three times a day. My daughter starts her day with about 4 ounces of chocolate soy milk (more if it's one of those Horizon organic milk boxes) and a small meal, today a New York gala apple. (Which while leaving me relieved that it wasn't shipped from outside the country, I still had to ponder the relativity of shopping local.)

Then, at 8 a.m. she made "blueberry muffins" in her Easy Bake oven (which did not include blueberry just imitation blueberry). Around 9 a.m., I needed to eat and I didn't feel like it so I had a couple fig newtons. Yeah, bad Mommy. But then it became apparent that I needed real food and at 10 a.m., I had apple butter and cottage cheese.

Now, apple butter is a very Pennsylvania Dutch condiment. I've only seen it used for two things, even in my Pennsylvania Dutch in-law's house: cottage cheese and scrapple. I find scrapple unappealing. But apple butter and cottage cheese is a nice mix of carbs and protein to keep me stable from a food perspective. And the calcium benefits me too.

My daughter and I both had a serving (hers with more apple butter than mine). Then, my inlaws showed up with watermelon. She ate that too.