Day 24: food is emotional

Cooking is an emotional thing. I probably enjoy it because I often get very good feedback. I made soft tacos for my husband and me for dinner last night. I used up the taco meat, the refried beans, the very good tortillas I had frozen the last time The Produce Gathering offered them. One of my tacos had an odd bit of salad. My husband got the leftover queso fresca and chipoltes, which I am going to start keeping on hand but therefore need to be used regularly.

My dh praised the dinner...and honestly, it was just leftovers, repackaged. I enjoyed the "eating what I have," and it was quite tasty. [Insert feelings of success here.]

Not everything lately has been so affirming. I didn't want zucchini for a vegetable the other day. I felt like a pouty two-year-old: "I don't want zucchini [imagine the hanging lip, stamping foot]." I had not purchased broccoli at the store, which is what I really wanted, because I knew I had the zucchini. But I didn't make it as a sidedish.

Instead, I decided to make chocolate zucchini cake. My youngest loves it, and she's hard to please. However, that recipe takes an hour to bake, and the temperatures were feeling like July in Oklahoma, so I opted for chocolate zucchini muffins, a new recipe I found online.

They were amazing! The best way to eat them: peel off the muffin liner and enjoy the soft, chocolaty bottom. Then munch into the muffin top. It's a little crunchy, like a sugar cookie...really fantastic!

The recipe made 24, a huge amount for our zucchini-muffin-eating crowd. And it only used one of my remaining zucchini.

Never fear! They were very, very good, worth the effort, worth adding to my already full freezer. Until...

My youngest didn't like them.

I could have made the stupid cake, and she would have gobbled it up.

I could have just pan fried the zucchini with parmesan, and everyone would be healthier.

Now I have two dozen muffins to add to the freezer, to eat slowly in the morning instead of biscuits and honey.

Think for a minute about which side you fall on with your family: everyone raves about your cooking, or people turn up their noses. Even apathy can work against how much time and thought you spend into feeding your people.

If you want to talk further about this, please stop by. I have some delicious chocolate zucchini muffins to share with you. If you come, you have to eat one. And probably take two home with you. And tell me how wonderful they are.

Addendum: the next night for dinner, I made zucchini fritters with the last zucchini. My youngest came downstairs and asked what I was eating. "Zucchini cakes," I said. "But they're not sweet. Just a vegetable." She tried a bite, and then proceeded to eat the remaining cakes. I felt very victorious. Celebrated with a chocolate zucchini muffin.