Recipes with Courgettes/Zucchinis

Sorry, I neglected this blog for too long due to my other blogs and book promotion. Now the summer is over and everything I had planned to tell you about courgettes is out of seasonal synch. Let me sum it up in brief: Our 50 yards of zucchinis as they are called in Ireland, produced such a fine crop, abundance squared that I resorted to making zucchini relish (yum!) and sold it in jam jars in the local shops and on the farmers' market. They don't freeze very well but marinate wonderfully after grilling like bell peppers or eggplants in olive oil and vinegar, preferably balsamico. Just a dash of salt and pepper, store in a nice ceramic jar; they keep for weeks in the fridge--if you can stay away from them. I always used the small ones for this. Big zucchinis can best be turned into relish.
Have you tried zucchini fritters? Grate them like when making relish, add grated onions, a little salt and flour to bind and make fritters. Here in the US, they would be called patties. Flat like burgers. Fried in oil, the result is like Swiss Rosti. To make them totally delicious you can put a big slice of tomato on top plus grated cheese and put them under the grill until the cheese is nicely melted.
In the first years of growing zucchinis, I got totally excited when they became as big as a man's arm. Only to find out that they get mushy inside and you have to remove their big seeds. And their skin gets leathery tough. I never dried the seeds. Like pumpkin seeds, I suppose, one could have made use of them this way as well. Too much work!
But if the zucchini is not too big, let's say up to a foot long, cut them into halves, scrape out the seeds and fill with ground beef & onions (like filled bell peppers), sprinkle with grated cheese and bake in the oven until meat is cooked and cheese melted. My children called them zucchini boats.
St. Martin's day is approaching which was the death sentence for our first goose of the year.But that story has already been told. You'll find it by going into my archive and look for geese.