It’s our first harvest from the garden… a zucchini!!  Shocking, I know. 😉 (For those of you who read the original garden post, go and check it out again; I’ve added some updates near the bottom! Or just check it out if you want inspiration for starting your own garden!) The recipe below was inspired by the Quinoa Stuffed Zucchini recipe already on the blog, which wasn’t my recipe at all, but I loved it so much I posted it anyway – and of course gave the book credit! Check out that page when you are done here, for another amazing stuffed zucchini recipe. I was also inspired to stuff our first harvested zucchini, because my mom was telling me stories about how she would stuff zucchinis from our garden when we were kids! “They would hide under the big leaves and grow as long as your forearm! I had to scrape out the seeds and stuff them!”I kept telling her I think that happened before I was born… because I barely remembered it happening… being the youngest of 5 isn’t easy sometimes.

This lunch came about because we needed something quick during the work week – we both work from home so that makes cooking healthy lunches on the fly much easier! It started as just beans and rice, so we could get a complete protein cheap and easily… then I decided to stuff them! Since the only other stuffing of a zucchini I’ve done is the one I just mentioned above, I think this qualifies as a recipe I’ve never made before, so I’m using it as my week 3 assignment for my Whole Foods Cooking Class at SWIHA. 🙂 I felt very excited as I was whipping this up in the kitchen and therefore it was a “little dash of this, a little dash of that” measuring system. 😉 Below is a quick breakdown of the recipe.

1 c. uncooked brown rice, cooked in 1 3/4 c. water for 40 minutes (yields ~ 2.5 cups cooked rice)
1 tbsp. coconut oil (stir this in after the cooking is all done)

1 – 7″ zucchini, cut lengthwise, with seeds and some flesh gutted and baked in a 350ºF oven, in a pan with 1/2″ of water for 10 minutes

For the filling, combine in a warm skillet:
1/2 c. onion, diced (cooked alone until somewhat translucent ~5 min on low-med heat)
1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained
zucchini guts

Season the filling directly in the skillet with the following spices to taste:

• cumin
• parsley
• chili powder
• cayenne powder
• freshly ground black pepper
• favorite salsa (can use as a seasoning and stir into skillet, or use as a topping; pictured below)

This is one of my favorite salsas! It really packs a punch in the spice department, but the flavor is SO GOOD – which is rare to find.   

The end result of this new recipe experiment was very tasty, filling and easy to prepare – with little hands on time. The brown rice of course took about 40 minutes to cook, but it takes about 5 minutes to get it started and then you just leave it and do other things!

This recipe serves two and I will definitely be making it again! Yay for my Whole Foods Cooking class and a winning recipe this week! (albeit a little late… whoops!)