Dreaming of the garden

In all of my recent longing for spring (which is most definitely here-at least as a tease-Jared picked me up from work with the sunroof open today!) I have been thinking a lot about my garden for this summer. I had so much fun, and learned a lot, last summer. And I can't wait for year number two. At the end of last summer, I made a list of things I wanted to do differently next year. Right about now is when I'm feeling really proud of myself for having that foresight because I certainly didn't remember all of the other things that I was wishing I had planted last year.

I know I ended up complaining a lot about all of the zucchini that were infiltrating my kitchen last summer (and I only had one zucchini plant, it was incredible!). But right about now I'm really happy about all of that zucchini that I grated up and froze in 1 cup batches, especially for baking. This weekend, I revived/adapted my mom's zucchini bread recipe that I spent all of last summer bugging her about finding, and whipped up a most delicious batch of muffins on Sunday morning (after being shocked that I had slept until 8am, only to remember that it was even later than I thought- 9am people!). So here they are, my...

"wishing summer would come already, but I'll gladly settle for spring" zucchini muffins, aka: mom's zucchini bread gets transformed into vegan zucchini muffins:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup white sugar
1 cup grated zucchini, pressed to drain out liquid
2 tbl ground flax seed mixed with 6 tbl water
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup soymilk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350. Sift dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg). Add sugar, zucchini, flax/water mixture, oil, and soymilk. Mix well. Add vanilla, nuts and chocolate chips. Bake 20-25 minutes in a greased muffin tin (until a toothpick comes out clean-it may take longer than this, I just realized I didn't take good notes on the cooking time- sorry!). Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes or so before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!