Two New Recipes FYE (for your enjoyment)

I know that I have been a bit behind with recipes, so I'm posting two today. The first is one from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook: zucchini bread. My garden is doing very well and I'm picking zucchini and squash faster than I can eat it. To help use up all the zucchini, I tried this recipe--which ended up being a big hit!

What you'll need:
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 egg
1 c. sugar
1 c. finely shredded zucchini (unpeeled)
1/4 c. cooking oil
1/2 c. pecans

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8x4x2-in loaf pan.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, add the egg and gently beat it. Add the sugar, oil, and shredded zucchini. Mix until completely combined.
4. Add the zucchini mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened. The batter will be lumpy, so an electric mixer is not necessary. Add the pecans and mix until well-combined.
5. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes. A toothpick inserted near the center should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Remove from pan and store.

A couple of tips about this recipe:
1) It is really easy to make 2-3 batches of this at once to give away. If you do this, use disposable loaf pans--you will not need to remove the loaves from them before gifting and the loaf pans will make transportation easy.
2) If you have a small oven, do not cook more than two loaves at a time. Otherwise, you may need to increase your cooking time as much as 15-20 minutes.
3) This is great when eaten warm, and it's a perfect compliment to coffee or tea (according to my mother).

OK, now to the next recipe. This was something Scooter and I managed to pull together with no prep time using only what we had on hand. It was inspired in part by a recipe that we made one night awhile ago when cooking for my parents. This is our "Beat that Hamburger Helper!" recipe--named such because I had suggested getting Hamburger Helper from the store for an easy dinner and Scooter replying that we could do better--and he was right!

What you'll need:
1 lb. hamburger meat
1/4 purple onion, chopped into large chunks
1 1/2 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. cinnamon
2 tsp. dried sage
1 c. beer
3 heaping Tbs. tomato paste
1/2 to 2/3 c. tomato sauce
1 Tbs. brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

What you'll need to do:
1. In a large frying pan, brown the hamburger meat until almost all the pink is gone. Drain the excess fat.
2. Add the onions and saute over med-high heat until softened, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the garlic powder, cinnamon, and sage, mixing well. Add the beer and simmer until nearly all the liquid has cooked off, about 3-5 minutes.
4. Add the tomato paste and stir until mixture is well-combined. Sauce will be thick.
5. Add the tomato sauce a little at a time and mix well until sauce has thinned to desired consistency (about as thick as chunky pasta sauce).
6. Add the brown sugar, salt, and pepper. Mix well and simmer for 2-3 more minutes. Remove from heat and serve over rice.

The flavor of the beef in this recipe ends up being similar to a Greek dish I posted about before. Of course this improv recipe uses beef instead of lamb, and we used sage in place of the more traditional Greek flavor of oregano. We did keep the cinnamon, which provides a very complex and wonderful flavor to the dish, in conjunction with the beer (I would recommend a dark or stout beer) and the brown sugar. I was quite pleased with the result, and I think Scooter was too, judging by how fast he was trying to eat his dinner that night.

Enjoy!