A couple of weekends ago, Carlo and I went up to North Las Vegas to check out Gilcrease Orchard, where you can pick your own produce. We didn’t really know what to expect but they had loads of zucchini, squash, cucumbers, eggplant, and apples. They had hundreds of tomato plants too, but unfortunately, we had gotten there too late and all of the ripe tomatoes had already been picked. At $1 per pound for tomatoes, we are going to try and go back early one morning to pick some fresh tomatoes for canning.

We got quite a few cucumbers and zucchini, and I found this enormous black squash. It was so big and awesome that I had to pick it even though I had no idea what I was going to do with that much squash. Unfortunately, this photo doesn’t do the size of the squash justice since my hands are covering the top and the bottom of it.

When we went to pay for all of our veggies, we found out that the bad boy squash weighed just over 2 lbs, and only cost 50 cents!!!! Hands down the best valued squash I had ever bought. To figure out what to make with 2 lbs of squash, I turned to the index of my new cooking bible, and looked up different squash and zucchini recipes. As usual, I found some great ones, including this Zucchini Pesto Pancake, which feeds 4 people at 32 cents per serving.

Zucchini Pesto Pancake, from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
1 lb zucchini, or 1/2 of the giant squash, grated
1/2 onion, grated
fresh pesto, around 1/2 cup
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup flour
salt and freshly ground pepper
milk, half-and-half, or cream as needed
olive oil for cooking

Grate the zucchini by hand or in a food processor. Mix the vegetables, pesto, onion, egg, and flour together in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper, and then add just enough milk so that the mixture drops easily from a large spoon.

Heat up a large frying pan with a bit of olive oil in it over medium heat. You have a couple of options for making the pancakes: you can either drop spoonfuls of batter in the pan and make mini pancakes similar to the Thai Style Corn Pancakes, or you can pour in half of the batter to make a large and thick pancake, which I decided to make.

Let the pancake cook for around 10 minutes until the bottom side is nicely browned and then flip over the pancake with a spatula so the other side can brown. The more cooked the pancake is at this point, the easier the flipping will be so let it cook until the pancake is ready to be flipped.

The recipe made enough batter to make 2 large pancakes, which we cut up and served with some salad. This Zucchini Pesto Pancake makes a great lunch or light dinner, and can be served either hot or cold. We kept one pancake to eat the next day and it held up well as a leftover too.