To me, zucchini defines summertime. Growing up in my parent’s garden in Chico (where squash could grow into baseball bats in a weekend) there was always more zucchini than we knew what to do with. Thus, I have a really hard time paying for zucchini – but here in the fogbelt, a girl has to do drastic things like wear wool socks in July and buy zucchini at the farmers’ market if she wants to believe that summer does exist, somewhere.

I love zucchini in many forms, and never really tire of it, but this has become one of my favorite ways to eat them. Zucchini pasta is the ultimate summer dish; you can use something that is abundantly available and you don’t even have to cook it. It is as fresh as it can get, super healthy, extremely easy to make and has a wonderful pasta-like texture that takes on sauce very well. Skeptics, try it before you hate on it. I have brought this to potlucks before and people didn’t even know that it wasn’t “real” pasta. I also think that this pasta would hold up well in a stir-fry if you were going for a Chinese-style noodle dish.

All you need is a veggie spiralizer like this. I purchased mine at the Living Light Culinary Institute marketplace in Fort Bragg. You can also order them through the Living Light online store.

It’s very simple to use. You just mount the zucchini and turn the handle to crank out the noodles. It’s easiest to use straight squash, or cut them into smaller chunks if they are crooked. This is what the spiralized zucchini noodles look like.

You can use any kind of sauce or dressing on your noodles and add other veggies, herbs/seasonings, and cheese. This time I mixed in some of Mom’s famous parsley pesto and sea salt. *Pesto lovers: using parsley is a great option when the basil isn’t growing yet.

Topped off with some sungold cherry tomatoes and ready to enjoy!