Squashed Bread

Ingredients

3 cups unpeeled zucchini coarsely grated
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
3 teaspoons Vanilla (4 if vanillin)
Squirt of Black walnut flavoring
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (rounded 1/2 tsp)
3 teaspoons Cinnamon
1 cup Black Walnuts

Directions

Use zucchini on the biggish side, if you can; don''t bother to peel. Grate, grind, smash or squash it until it is squishy but not runny. Two cupfuls, the usual recipe says, but use three.
Set the oven at 350 degrees and rustle up a couple of loaf pans. Bust 3 eggs into your biggest bowl, and beat until gooey. Dump in 2 cups of sugar and stir around. When your arms get tired, spill in a cupful of oil, any kind except cylinder or castor. If you don''t have a cupful, piece out with shortening or something.
Pour in 3 teaspoonfuls of vanilla, or 4 generous ones if you use vanillin instead of the real extract. Then put in the squishy squash and mix together.
In another bowl put 3 cupfuls of flour. Add a teaspoon of salt, 1 of baking soda (to offset upset stomach), 3 teaspoonfuls of cinnamon and a generous teaspoon of baking powder. Mix it good. You can tell how well you are doing by the way the cinnamon is dispersed.
Now mix the dry stuff with the wet, and you should have something between a batter and a dough. If real runny, add a little flour. Finally dump in a cupful of nuts. No matter what the recipes say, I never chop them.
Grease the pans with shortening; push and shove the mess into the pans. Place about midway in the oven and arrange to spend the next hour doing something useful.
You can peek from time to time, and when the top splits open and begins to spring back when touched, you''ve just about got it made. Test by sticking something in the center. If you use a dirty broom straw and it comes out clean, the bread isn''t done, the dirt washed off. If you use a clean straw and it comes out clean, the stuff is done. I prefer a toothpick, previously unused, if possible.
This could come out smelling and tasting pretty good. Needs to cool a bit before slipping from pans. Freezes well and is easy to cut even when frozen.
(bake 1 hour at 350 in 2 greased loaf pans)

Source

Gramma Bobby (Oregonian 1978)