Zucchini Crisp

This is based on my moms recipe. She has had a vegetable garden for as long as I can remember and my brother and I were forced to eat squash and zucchini for longer than I could ever possibly remember for ever and ever and ever until the end of all eternity. It’s still pretty difficult for me to eat yellow squash. Whenever we would go out of town for long periods of time, we’d usually come home to extra large, baseball bat-sized zucchini. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away, (and I’m sure we all couldn’t bring ourselves to eat it for dinner), so she would make this ‘Apple Crisp’. She would peel the baseball bats and take out all of their seeds, then slice them to make them resemble apple slices. We didn’t find out it was actually zucchini inside this dessert until high school. It was my brother who figured it out and now whenever my mom or I bring an Apple Pie, Crisp, or Crumble to the table he always says,

Chances are, bro-if it’s summer time it’s a fake-apple pie.
When it was my job to take care of my mothers garden last week while my parents were away I (of course) overlooked some zucchini and found myself with several baseball bats of my own. So, naturally I turned to this old childhood memory. I served it when I had my family over for dinner a couple nights ago and my brother asked the ubiquitous question, although I’m pretty sure he knew the answer, and my husband somehow missed all the conversation we were having about zucchini desserts. We all finished and I turned to him and said,

And then I told him that all the fruit he was eating in that crisp was, in fact, the zucchini. He couldn’t believe it and us Wade’s all had a good laugh.

For the Filling-
-5-6 cups peeled and seeded zucchini*
-1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 tsp cinnamon
-pinch salt
–Place everything in a pot and boil, covered, for about 10 minutes until the zucchini is softened. (You may need to add a little water if there isn’t enough liquid, I’ve never had this problem though.)
–Pour into a greased 9*9in glass baking dish.
For the Topping-
-3/4 cup whole wheat flour
-3/4 cup oats
-1/2 cup brown sugar
-1/2 cup white sugar
-1 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1/4 tsp salt, plus a pinch
-5 TB butter
–Mix together everything but the butter in a bowl and then cut the butter into small pieces. Work the butter into the dry mixture with a pastry cutter, fork, or your fingers.
–Sprinkle over the zucchini mixture and bake at 350* for 45min-1 hour.
(*note-I find it easiest to peel the whole zucchini with a large vegetable peeler, then cut it in half. I then take a grapefruit spoon right down the center of each half and take out every visible seed or seed-like area, creating a deep well. Then I slice each half into ‘apple slices’)