Stuffed Zucchini

So, my neighbors brought over like two 15lb zucchini. No kidding. They have a huge garden with zucchini coming out of their ears. As it turns out, zucchini is Charlotte's favorite vegetable, so we had a festival of zucchini for dinner- stuffed zucchini for dinner and zucchini bread (cake really) for dessert. Here's the recipe for stuffed zucchini.
It was actually really pretty awesome.
Here's all the zucchini getting ready for all the dishes. I used the rings and one of the "boats" for the dinner, and the other "boat" got grated into cake.

I chopped up a shallot and threw that in a pan with some olive oil to get fragrant.

Then I added to that one pound of ground beef that I had in the freezer.

The beef was higher in fat than I usually get (this was leftover from some sliders we made for 4th of July) so I had to drain the fat off. The olive oil was completely unnecessary. It was a veritable cauldron of boiling fat in that pan. Yeah, that got drained off.

Anyway, to the drained meat I added a heap of fresh spinach (frozen would work too) and reduced the heat to medium low.

And some roasted red peppers from a jar went in the mix. I wanted the roasted kind, but I didn't want to have to roast them myself....

Next I threw in about a cup of leftover pizza sauce- any red sauce would do. This had some mushrooms in it.

This is my acknowledgement of salt & pepper. I always feel bad for the salt and pepper. I never photograph them. Poor unloved salt & pepper. But I do love you, salt & pepper!

And the garlic. I added a clove here. I wasn't going to, but after all the cooking and draining of the fat, I was afraid the shallots had lost most of their power.

Then I picked thyme and basil from my fabulous window garden and minced that in there. Scissors are GREAT for chopping herbs.

It all made a big gloopy deliciousness in a pan. I think this added to anything- pasta, lasagna, just eat it with a spoon; it would be delicious. In this case, it was getting stuffed into zucchini. (Note that the rings have foil around the base, necessary unless you want them swimming in a soup of juices when you take them out of the oven.
    PS. I had a suspicion that the zucchini was a little tough since it was so incredibly huge. I was right. I pre-baked the zucchini without stuffing while the oven was pre-heating and then some. All in all it started in a cold oven that was heating to 325 and it was in there for 20 minutes. It only took about 7-8 minutes for the oven to heat up. I was glad that I pre-cooked the zucchini some. It could have cooked more, in fact.

What you don't see is the slices of Gouda cheese that went on top before baking (admittedly, I also added about a cup of grated Gouda to the mix of gloopy deliciousness, but if I did it again, I would leave out the grated cheese and only put it on the top- it was a touch too heavy for me). But it baked (along with the zucchini bread) at convection 325 (which is really 300F) for 20 minutes. And here's the final product (with cheese).

Yum!

South Dakota Road Trip- Saturday

Saturday we decided to try Custer State Park to see what we could see.

We heard it was a beautiful place, and it was.

Just really gorgeous.

And there were buffalo!

Lots and lots of buffalo!

Their heads are just huge.

They were all going to some mysterious buffalo gathering place.

Here's us at the buffalo gathering spot.

Audry helped to drive-

It was inside of a national park so... what the heck? Right? 

After lunch we stopped for a picnic at a gorgeous spot

where Willy & Audry took a hike

And here's me!

After lunch we decided to go on a scenic drive where we found some interesting spots to stop and get a picture. (You can't see it, but Rushmore is in the distance)

This is me & Charlotte :)

And then we went to Keystone, where Audry bought a baby ice cream cone

and a pair of sunglasses.

Next we thought it would be fun to check out the local Mystery Area.
Here's Charlotte & Will solving puzzles while we await our tour.

Turns out Audry loves rocks- especially colored ones! There were plenty of these everywhere we went.

If you've never been to a Mystery Area or anything like it, it is the kind of place that completely messes with your sense of which way is the right way up.

Finally on our way home for the day (back through Custer State Park) we stopped at Sylvan Lake.

Purportedly, the crown jewel of Custer State Park.

And understandably so.

The pictures don't do it justice.

We stopped at the dusky time of day when the light turns golden and wonderful.

We hiked about half way around the lake and through a cave- Audry thought it was great.

On Saturday night we were home before dark to get Audry in bed by 8pm- a major achievement!

South Dakota Road Trip- Friday

Friday morning we kind of relaxed a little, slept in and then Charlotte and I did a little grocery shopping for the weekend. We got a bit of a late start. We knew we wanted to see Mt Rushmore on Friday, but we wanted to be there for the lighting ceremony at night. We broke out the local guidebooks and found some interesting things to see during the hotter part of the day.

First we went to Four Mile Ghost Town which was pretty close to where we were in Custer. It was a little plot of land that a family bought and set up a ghost town which you could tour.

The interesting part was that you could go in all the buildings and really explore all the stuff.

Here's Audry playing in the saloon.

And Willy exploring the schoolhouse.

There was lots of old farm equipment to climb on too!

They had some silly places to take your picture....

And baby goats (doats!)! Which Audry wanted desperately to pet, but they were afraid of her.

Next we were off to the Rushmore Caves.

At first Audry was a little scared of being a caver, so we helped her along.

Soon enough she was thrilled to be in the "baves"

Here's Charlotte contemplating stalagmites and stalagtites and other mineral formations.

As you can see, it is so fun to cave with Daddy!

Finally we made it to Mt. Rushmore.

I was expecting that since it is so much smaller than Crazy Horse it would seem really small

But they really didn't since we could go up much closer to the monument.

Willy, posing for his memorialization in stone.

And Audry did too.

We stayed late to see the lighting ceremony which Charlotte found to be surprisingly patriotic.

Audry was completely wiped out, yet again... too bad she didn't sleep later in the morning to make up for it!