We were given a massive zuchini from friends of the family recently – it was enough to feed a family of 10 (each one of the slats of wood below is 2.5-3 inches wide):

I had recently been joking with several friends about how fast the slow food could actually be and decided to take the zuchini on as a challenge.  I didn’t race around the kitchen – worked briskly and maintained quality and fun.  It took 51 minutes to prepare 5.5 jars of zuchini marmalade and a quiche for dinner.

Zuchini marmalade is a very easy preserve to make – I got the recipe from a clinic on preserving I attended last weekend (more on that later this week).  It is often done with yellow zuchini but I had this monster and needed to do something with it, so I adapted.

4 cups of grated zuchini (remove the center core first), 4 cups sugar, 1 grated whole orange (seed removed) and 1 grated whole lemon (seed removed).  Cook to the jelling point (you can see this one thicken), jar, seal and place in boiling water bath.

And there you have it – perfect for cheese or chicken and fine with toast:

My quiche was made of grated zuchini and anything else I could throw in (onions, eggs, cheese, hot sauce, garlic, tomato and anything else I could muster).

Slow, after all, can be relatively fast!