This week, Rick and I returned home from teaching out of town to find that many our small, six-inch long zucchini squash had grown to over a foot long! There was quite a bit of heat in our area while we were gone, so we weren’t too surprised, but now we are left with a dilemma – what to do with so many huge summer squash. Here are five ideas:
1. Shred into salad – Simple and one of our all-time favorite ways to enjoy summer squash. Rick especially loves summer squash in his salad.
2. Use in dressing – Summer squash is a great ingredient to help add volume to a salad dressing. For example, we use summer squash to increase the volume of our miso-tahini-lemon dressing which is a great strategy to decrease the fat content per volume of a higher fat dressing.
- Our recipe: Juice of ½ lemon, 2 tablespoons tahini (we like raw tahini), ½ teaspoon chickpea miso, 2 cups chopped summer squash. Blend in blender until smooth.
3. Make spiralized summer squash pasta – Have a pasta party! Here is a blog post with recipes for squash pasta and sauce.
4. Steam them – This helps to soften the toughness of large summer squash skin. We enjoy steaming large summer squash and adding some avocado for consistency and flavor. This recipe reminds me of the steamed summer squash mom used to make when I was young.
5. Share the wealth – We are now in the process of trying 🙂 to share our squash with neighbors and friends. Resoundingly, they have said “hey, thanks for the month supply” (smile) and asked “how can we prepare these?” See 1 – 4 for ideas.
Nutrient analysis of summer squash – all varieties:
| Summer squash – 2 cups chopped (226 g) | Adult Daily Values | |
| Beta carotene | 271 mcg | |
| Vitamin B1 (Thiamin) | 0.11 | 1.1 – 1.2 mg |
| Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) | 0.32 | 1.1 – 1.3 mg |
| Vitamin B3 (Niacin) | 1.10 | 14 – 16 mg |
| Folate | 65.5 | 400 mcg |
| Calcium | 33.9 | 1,000 – 1,200 mg |
| Magnesium | 38.4 | 310 – 420 mg |
| Potassium | 592.1 | 4,700 mg |
Summer squash may not be a nutrient powerhouse, but it certainly can provide contributory amounts of certain key nutrients, such as the B vitamins listed on the chart above, calcium, magnesium, and potassium.
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Raw food recipe for heirloom tomato marinara sauce and summer squash noodles
Last night, Rick and I had a couple of friends over for dinner to share in our heirloom tomato harvest. 🙂 We made spiralized squash with some sunburst squash from the garden and a marinara sauce from garden tomatoes, sundried tomatoes and some other simple ingredients:
Marinara Sauce (one serving)
2 medium fresh tomatoes (2 cups chopped)
6 soaked sun dried tomatoes (1 ounce dry or 28.3 g)
½ tsp. dried oregano or other Italian spices
1 medjool or other type of date
¼ ripe avocado or one tablespoon of chia seeds
We blended the fresh tomatoes, spices, date, and avocado in a high powered blender, then added soaked sundried tomatoes and blended until smooth. For a lower fat recipe, one could leave out the avocado or chia seeds. For garlic lovers, one could add ¼ clove of fresh garlic. We used heirloom tomatoes from our garden for this recipe, but popular red varieties would work well too.
To make squash pasta, we used a vegetable spiralizer. The resultant “noodles” had the consistency of linguine al dente, since the squash used was mature – we let some of the summer squash in our garden get a little too big this year.
In general, for spiralizing, we like to use squash or zucchini that is younger in order to create softer noodles. We added the noodles to a bed of romaine lettuce mixed with chopped red bell pepper:
Summer squash pasta and salad (one serving)
4 cups spiralized yellow summer squash served on a bed of 4 cups of lettuce mixed with 1 cup of chopped red bell pepper.
Here are some nutrients in the sauce, pasta, and salad:
| Recipes | Adult Daily Values | |
| Calcium | 245 | 1000 – 1200 mg |
| Iron | 8.4 | 8 – 18 mg |
| Magnesium | 239 | 310 – 420 mg |
| Potassium | 4125 | 4700 mg |
| Zinc | 3.7 | 8 – 11 mg |
Here is a picture of the final dish:
It was sooooo good 🙂
One of the best ways to keep in touch with us is to join our email list. You’ll receive a free copy of Our Top 12 Strategies for Long Term Success on A Raw Plant-Based Diet eBook along with regular information about raw food and plant-based diets and periodic promotions for our classes, events, and other offerings!