mitch, they do keep a long time, they don't usually last that long, but I've kept it a couple of months, unrefrigerated. The dehydration and the sugar apparently preserve it sufficiently for some storage. pllog, the girls had as much fun with the peelers as they did making the candy, I think. sleevendog, it's easy, but takes 18 to 24 hours in the dehydrator. Here, I'll post the recipe, it's from Linda Lou, a certified master canner over on Harvest. Zucchini Candy 10 cups peeled diced zucchini 1/2 inch cubes ( I use "worms" about 3 inches long and 1/12 inch thick and wide. The little dice would be good in muffins, though. 3 cups water 2 pkgs. unsweetened Koolaid 2 1/2 cups sugar Peel zucchini, diced, removing seeds. Mix the liquid syrup together. Add zucchini. Bring to a boil and them simmer for 25 min. Drain. Put on dehydrator trays. Dry 14 hours at 125 degrees. Turn pieces over and dry another 4 hours. This will feel dry and not sticky when done. Store in jars or other tightly sealed containers.If you dip in sugar when you turn them, they will be more like "gum drops" on the outside. You can do the same thing with the zucchini but use 48 oz. pineapple juice 2 T. pineapple extract 2 1/2 cups sugar 1/4 cup lemon juice Now make candy! Here are some mixed flavors I made a couple of years ago... Annie

Lasagna is more about a method than a recipe. All of your ingredients sound good except for one thing: Moisture. You have lots of moisture and nothing to sop it up with--or, that is, I took this to mean that you want to use zucchini instead of pasta. The pasta is what soaks up the excess moisture, as well as the ricotta (if you use it well drained). Why does it have to have sour cream? Just because you have it? I think your ingredients sound fine except for the sour cream. The dish is light on protein if you don't use the meat. You could try draining the sour cream, or even adding some heat and acid to separate it from from the whey, but you don't need it to make lasagna. Okay, this might work if you really want to use the sour cream. Instead of making a tomato sauce, per se, use it to make a cream tomato sauce. Use your thicker canned tomato products, like some whole or diced tomatoes, drained, and some tomato paste. Recipe-ish: Slice the zucchini thin, lightly oil with cooking oil, and lightly season. Lay on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and roast or broil at 375-400° (depending on your oven) until well dry and just starting to get dark edges. Set the sour cream out on the counter to warm up some. Sauté a couple diced onions (or a giant one like they had at my store the other day), a diced red pepper or two, and 6 large cloves of garlic to a whole head, pressed or minced, depending on your preference as to quantity. Add any of the other vegetables you mentioned, cut to the same size as your onions and pepper--or steam them separately, and mix with dried herbs to use instead of meat. Be generous with the oil, which will help the viscosity of the sauce. Add chopped or dried Italian herbs: a spoon or two of oregano, thyme, basil, parsley, etc., plus some black pepper and, if you like a little heat, crushed red pepper. Stir in a can or two of tomato paste until you have a very stiff chunky sauce. Add the solids from your diced or whole canned tomatoes. Add salt to taste, but there may be plenty in the cans. Remove from heat. When the sauce has cooled down to no more than slightly warm, stir in the sour cream. Beat in an egg or two. Do you have any more cheese than the half lb. of mozzarella? Some bread crumbs? If you have bread crumbs--if this isn't meant to be a starch free dish--toast them on your baking tray. You're just drying them out. Or, if you have matzah meal or matzah (Cuisinart is great for grinding matzah) you can skip the toasting. The bread crumbs are there to soak up moisture and help with the gluing since there isn't much cheese. If you're making a meat version, brown the ground beef and add seasoning, herbs (try tarragon, for instance) and some tomato paste, or use crushed tomatoes and reduce out the extra water. If you're using the spinach feta chicken sausage, and it's already cooked, tear it up, or else cook it in crumbles. Make a béchamel, including the nutmeg, and stir the sausage into it. The apple sausage isn't a good idea with tomato. Or prepare the broccoli, cauliflower, maybe some carrots, and any other veg you want, as stated above, by steaming and dressing with a little olive oil and plenty of dried herbs. S&P to taste. You can use béchamel instead of the oil, but I'm losing track of whether or not there can be wheat in this dish. The trick is to chop small. Bigger than minced, but small enough not to be chunks that need to be chewed separately. Put a big spoon of sauce, without many chunks in the bottom of the pan and spread it all around, or oil the pan well. Lay out the zucchini slices to cover as much as possible. Spread on the sauce with a soft baking spatula. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, if you're using them, enough cheese to cover but being careful to leave plenty for the layers and a goodly amount for the top. Add a second layer of zucchini and sauce and a layer of your saucy meat, or steamed veg mix, or another layer of the tomato sauce, bread crumbs and cheese. Repeat the first layer and cap with a fourth layer of zucchini, or go straight to the topping, depending on the height of your dish. You can go five or six layers if you have enough zucchini, filling and dish. If you have any sauce left, coat the top layer of zucchini with it. If not, slightly dilute some tomato paste with wine and oil until it's just spreadable and use that. Sprinkle with herbs. Cover liberally with the rest of your cheese. Cover very loosely with foil and bake at 350° for about 35 minutes. Remove the foil and finish baking for another 10-15 minutes until nicely browned and bubbling hot. An alternative would be to make béchamel (besciamella) out of the sour cream. It's possible. I've done it. But it's so so so easy to make it go wrong and have it curdle or split that I don't really recommend it unless you feel very comfortable doing it. That is, it's possible if it's pure cream (ingredients says cream and enzymes). If there are stabilizers or even just added milk solids or something, don't even try. That's traditional lasagna, the besciamella is. Good luck! Buon appetito!

annie1992, I agree with you about the overwhelming strong taste of traditional pesto. To me, the basil and pine nuts always seemed not to go very well together...the zucchini pesto has a milder flavor. This recipe does have a lot of garlic, I love garlic... the amount can be adjusted of course. My tomatoes are starting to ripen, I have been topping the pasta with chopped tomatoes and that is very good. The zucchini pesto is a great way to serve zucchini to anyone who doesn't like it ( its delicious on pizza) but you obviously don't have that problem :) 6 zucchini plants!! I'm impressed.....

Lars, when I have zucchini that "hides" and I don't find it until it's too big to make a nice vegetable dish, then I make zucchini candy, zucchini pickles or relish or zucchini bread or muffins. I only have zucchini that big, though, for about a month or two in the summer, the rest of the time it's just too expensive to buy enough zucchini to make bread! This recipe takes 4 cups grated, and makes two loaves. Seagrass, I knew I'd like the addition of mocha, as well as the almond extract in this recipe, but I didn't read the recipe carefully, melted the butter and just stirred everything together in the bowl. It worked for me, sometimes I just get lucky! You can use a mixer, with that shoulder. I do hope you are feeling better... Mocha Zucchini Bread 4 cups grated zucchini (from about a pound and a half of zucchini) 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (use natural unsweetened cocoa, NOT Dutch processed) 2 teaspoons baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar 2 eggs 3/4 cup unsalted butter (12 Tbsp or 1 1/2 sticks), melted 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules 1/2 teaspoon almond extract 1 Drain excess moisture from grated zucchini: Place the freshly grated zucchini in a sieve over a bowl to catch any excess moisture as it drains, while you work on prepping the other ingredients and preparing the recipe. 2 Preheat oven, prepare loaf pans: Preheat oven to 350°F, with a rack in the middle. Grease two 9x5-inch loaf pans with baking spray or butter. 3 Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, cinnamon: Vigorously whisk together the flour, unsweetened cocoa, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Whisk until there are no more clumps and the ingredients are well combined. 4 Beat sugar and eggs, add melted butter, instant coffee granules, almond extract: In a separate large bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs until smooth, about a minute. You can do this with an electric mixer on medium speed, or by hand with a wooden spoon. (I'm lazy and use a mixer but it's easy enough to do by hand.)Add the melted butter, instant coffee granules, and almond extract and beat until smooth. 5 Stir zucchini into sugar egg mixture, add flour mixture: Mix the shredded zucchini into the sugar egg mixture. Add the flour to the zucchini mixture in 3 additions, stirring to combine after each addition. 6 Divide batter into pans and bake: Work quickly, and divide the batter between the two prepared loaf pans. (Work quickly because once the dry ingredients have mixed with the wet ingredients, the leavening has begun.) Place into the oven. Bake for 50 minutes at 350°F, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean and easily. 7 Cool: Remove to a rack. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then run a blunt knife around the edges to separate the bread from the pan. Remove from the loaf pans and let cool completely on a rack. Note that if you try to slice the chocolate zucchini bread before it has completely cooled, it will be rather crumbly. It's also easiest to slice with a bread knife. Martha, my next loaf is orange chocolate chip zucchini bread! Annie