I love when people give me fresh vegetables from their garden. To me, there’s nothing better than home-grown, and free(!) produce. I love to eat fresh veggies in so many different ways, too, so it’s great when I can get them given to me (insert a quick shout out of thanks to anyone who’s blessed Wyatt and I with food from your garden, especially Grandma L!)

But, I do have to say that sometimes all these fresh vegetables can present a challenge in the best way to cook them. For instance, we had two giant zucchini to use up. And while Wyatt is very supportive of my efforts to feed him healthy green vegetables, he doesn’t love the way zucchini can be a little mushy (especially the huge squash-like ones we have).

So I found this idea for zucchini fries on a friend’s Pinterest page and immediately repinned it to my page to try later. (P.S. Do you follow me on Pinterest? There’s a link to the right.)

I thought Wyatt would like them because they would be crispy and crunchy for him, full of that fresh zucchini flavor for me, and healthy for both of us.

Here’s the original recipe, but as usual (you should know me by now!), I changed it up a bit.

Here’s how I did it.

Oven-Baked Zucchini Fries

Ingredients
Zucchini (however much you need for however many servings you want. I made enough for 10-12 fries each)

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 Tbs Mrs. Dash, or other seasoning mix

1 tsp salt

1tsp lemon pepper seasoning

2 Tbs melted butter
1 small egg
Method
Heat oven to 450ºF.

Cut zucchini into thin sticks, about 3-4 inches long. The thinner the sticks, the crisper the fries will be.

Whisk the egg and mix in melted butter.

Dip each stick in the egg mixture to coat.

Then dip the coated sticks in the bread crumb mixture. And roll them around in there very gently just to make sure your fingers don’t knock off any of the crumbs.

Spread the coated sticks onto a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.

Bake for 20 minutes, turning them once in the middle, then turn the oven setting to broil for a few minutes to make sure they’re extra crispy. Just make sure to watch them so they don’t burn.

And of course, you can serve them with a dipping sauce. I just sprinkled some salt on mine, but Wyatt dipped his in ranch dressing. I was going to whip up a special sauce, but we decided we were hungry and just ready to eat.

And then, Ta-Da! You have a meal! I made twice baked potatoes topped with some of our remaining leftover BBQ brisket from our wedding. (Don’t worry, it’s been frozen, not just sitting in our fridge this whole time…)

And now I can honestly say we have a new favorite way to eat zucchini. At least I do. Wyatt had a headache last night so it was hard to tell how much he loved them, but I’m hoping it was as much as I did. Because, yum.

What about you guys? Do you have a favorite way to eat zucchini? What about other vegetables to make fries out of?