As Promised: Stuffed Zucchini

What you'll need:

2 to 3 Zucchini
Sour Cream
Your Favy Guacamole
Shredded Parmesan Cheese
1/2 an Onion
1/2 a Tomato
Butter or Butter Spray
Cheddar Cheese (Optional)
Bacon (Optional)

Heat Oven to 400 degrees F.

Start out by chopping up your onion and putting it in a pan to saute. I diced mine into little squares; I don't think this is the kind of dish that you want long onion slices in. Put some butter in the pan with the onion (I used butter spray because it is calorie free) and saute the onion until it is soft and slightly browned. The more butter you put in the pan, the more the butter flavor comes out in the zucchini!

While the onion is cooking it is time to prepare the zucchini. Cut the ends off of each zucchini and then cut them in half length-wise (or "hot dog" style, as we teachers would say in the classroom!). Now, take a spoon and scoop out the insides of the zucchini, setting aside the now-empty outer part of the zucchini. Easier said than done. I almost broke my zucchini in half several times, so tread carefully! You should probably check on your onions at some point and give them a stir and then you can go back to your zucchini. Once the onions are done just set them aside. They don't need to be warm for this. Chop the insides of your zucchini into smaller bits and put it in a bowl. Your zucchini should now look like this:

Now, ignore those for a moment. Take your onions, which are probably long done by now (I hope you were checking on them!) and put them in the bowl with your zucchini "innards". Now, chop half of a tomato and toss it in with the onion/zucchini mixture. I recommend slicing, salting and eating the rest. ;-) Scoop a few spoonfuls of Sour Cream into the mix, along with your favorite Guacamole. Don't like Guacamole? Well, you're absolutely nuts, but you can leave it out. My favorite Guacamole in the whole world is Marketfresh. YUM! Now, I don't know how much of each of these things I put in there. I just eyeballed it. Put enough in to make the mixture creamy. Give it a lick and see how it tastes and be the judge if you need more of one or the other or both. Next, throw some shredded parmesan in there. Don't like parmesan? Use cheddar. I used shredded parmesan in mine. Again, I don't know how much I added. I like cheese, so I myself probably added quite a bit. If you are going for healthier, go for less. Now, mix it all together.

If you want to add some crispiness, add some bacon. Bacon makes everything better! Fry some up, chop it, toss it in your mixture and give it another stir. I was actually going to add bacon to mine, but I got busy and burnt it. We have fresh-from-the-pig bacon and it takes a bit more watching than store-bought. This is the mixture I ended up with:

Yummy! Now, cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Remember those poor little shells we abandoned earlier? We're going to use them. Fill each one with the mixture you created. Kind of twisted, gutting a zuke and then filling it back up with its own insides. They'll live. Set each one on the baking sheet. As a last step, cover the tops with more shredded parmesan. Or, if you prefer cheddar, use that. For reference, I used parmesan. 

Stick those puppies in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, letting that cheese on top get nice and brown. These are what they should look like afterwards:

OMGosh, I want one right now! I would have taken a picture of the whole pan-full, but my family had already raided them. Personally, I could have eaten a couple of these all by their selves and they would have been plenty filling to be a meal. One of them alone would make a nice, light lunch. Enjoy!

I was wondering if finely chopped pepperoni would have been good in these? Hmmmmm.....an experiment for another day!

Love and Smiles,
Chala