Dear Kid,

Dad has grown a bumper crop of zucchini this year. And by “bumper crop” I mean the zucchinis are big enough to be used as bumpers for Jeeps.

Faced with a giant number of giant-sized zucchini, I decided to make zucchini bread.

The good news is that the kitchen is still intact and even (mostly) cleaned up.

Also, the zucchini bread tastes good (even if it doesn’t taste overly zucchini-ed).

Being the kind of mom I am, I decided to share my methodology.

First look up a zucchini bread recipe. My Friend the Internet was happy to provide several options, and after considering the options for .000012 of a second I chose the first one that popped up.

I am so predictable.

I then proceeded and continued (extra points if you get the reference) to collect the ingredients. I decided to make two loaves (did I mention the jumbo sized zucchinis?) so I doubled everything.

Six cups of flour is a fair amount of flour, and it seems like even more when you sift it and occasionally miss the bowl. Once again, the Puppy (who was hovering hopefully) turned slightly whiter than usual. The baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon all made it into the bowl.

Then I mixed six eggs with 2 cups of oil (holy cow that’s a lot of oil) and some sugar while we held a group discussion about whether or not to include walnuts (no nuts, final answer).

As I added the dry ingredients, I glanced at the recipe.

And realized the original recipe was for two loaves, so I was making enough for four.

Oh.

I only own two loaf pans.

Ignore reality and continue.

The batter, however, didn’t ignore reality and it became pretty obvious that we were about to run out of space in the mixer.

Which meant we had partly mixed batter in one bowl, flour in another bowl, shredded zucchini pretty much everywhere, and I needed a plan to somehow convince everything to come together without exploding the mixer.

I tried talking to the batter. “Stay down. Stay. Down!” The batter ignored me and continued to climb the beaters.

I tried teeny bursts of power. The batter climbed in teeny bursts.

I gave up and stirred all ingredients in by hand.

I looked at the loaf pans, then at the batter. “You will fit. You WILL fit.”

Turns out I had larger than usual loaf pans. The loaves baked up and over but didn’t cause an oven disaster. An hour or so later, we had two HUGE zucchini breads. Another super yummy kitchen mess.

And with all that, we still had half a zucchini left over.

Did I mention the size of the zuchs?

Love, Mom