He's a handsome devil.

When someone asks you if you want a homegrown zucchini, say "Yes." Or even "Yes please!" Or possibly even "HECK YES!" You won't regret it.

Because here's the thing about zucchini. You can make zucchini bread with it.

It's been a year or two since I visited zucchini bread. This time around I really wanted to try something different, maybe even vaguely healthy. And heaven knows, with such a gorgeous specimen I certainly have plenty of opportunity to experiment.

I've seen recipes for Chocolate Zucchini Bread, which, of course, begged for a try. But the other thing I wanted to experiment with was cutting the amount of sugar and oil that most recipes call for. So. I scoured the internet for appropriate recipes and found these likely candidates:

Smitten Kitchen's Zucchini Bread
Joy of Baking's Chocolate Zucchini Bread

BUT. I cut the amount of sugar in both recipes in half. Anything can be tasty if you add enough sugar, but you take the chance of losing the real flavor. Plus it makes my kids crazy. Also, in the Smitten Kitchen recipe I took her advice and used 1/2 applesauce. Here are the results.

I took the candidates to work with me and introduced them to the ladies. And they willingly sampled a bit of both. Here's the verdict: regular is better. The Smitten Kitchen recipe is really, really awesome. Excellent flavor and texture, even with the changes. The Chocolate Zucchini is just, well, chocolate and zucchini. It's not bad, it's just not as good as old faithful. Probably with the addition of the extra sugar it would have been a lot better, but, as I've established, that's cheating. At any rate, they're both gone, so they must have been okay.