It's Too Darn Hot

Yesterday our bachelor neighbor – we’ve been feeding him vegetables from our garden all season – brought over a bag with two filet mignons, two baking potatoes and four ears of corn in it. Of course I cooked it all for dinner, even though it turned the kitchen into an inferno*.

Tonight we are having BLTs. The bacon will be prepared in the microwave.

Since I have some zucchini to use up, I may even make this to take to work for lunch this week.

Zucchini in Peanut Sauce

4 cups (or so) of thickly-sliced zucchini
1 onion, thinly sliced

Oil your crockpot and put the onion in the bottom. Layer the zucchini over it. Sprinkle very lightly with salt. Set the crockpot to high and cook for an hour to an hour and a half, until the zucchini is limp.

A fair amount of water will have come off the zucchini. Drain it off, turn the crockpot to low, and then heat the following in a covered bowl in the microwave.

¼ cup smooth peanut butter
1 T soy sauce
1 T brown sugar
1 T Japanese vinegar
1 t. flavorless vegetable oil
1 t. sesame oil
Dash of red pepper flakes
about 1 clove of mashed garlic
about the same amount of grated fresh ginger

Thin with a dribble of water, if necessary. Wisk it all together with a fork and pour over the zucchini. Cook in the crockpot on low for another half hour. Or hour, if you forget. This is an extremely forgiving recipe. Serve over rice to soak up the peanut sauce. This tastes good with eggplant, too.

*We don’t have a/c, remember? I spent an extra hour at work Friday afternoon just so I could stay in my nice cool office.