Zucchini Pie

Last Summer, while sharing my Zucchini Diaries, I shared a recipe that is a favorite, but I never got around to making.  This week, in addition to needing something scrumptious to serve to some dinner guests, I decided this would be a creative new way to preserve some of our zucchini.  Production is slowing so it's my last few chances to get creative with it.




First, I peeled and sliced a TON of zucchini (4c is enough for one recipe, i wound up with 20, enough for 5 recipes).  Then i simmered in lemon juice and mixed with spices and flour to create the apple pie-like filling.  Then I evenly distributed it into 4 foodsaver bags and a tupperware container.  I set the container aside to make a pie out of another day (today) and got out the vacuum sealer for the bags.  Technically, the recommended procedure for vacuum sealing something so liquid is to freeze it first, then seal it.  The problem is I want to lay my bags flat in the freezer like the rest of my frozen veggies.  That means they have to be sealed first.  The trick is to set the sealer on the edge of the counter, so the bag hangs over the edge.  (make sure you hold on!)  Start vacuuming, but be ready to hit the instant seal button the second you see it start to suck liquid.  Then lay flat in the freezer.  Each bag is enough to do a 9 in. Pie.  Just defrost and pour into a crust when you want to make pie.

This morning, I rolled out a crust to bake the 5th batch of filling.  Since we're having company this evening, I wanted to make sure the pie was pretty.  My pinspiration:

Isn't the honeycomb pattern pretty?  Well, I forgot to re-read the tutorial that accompanied the pic this morning and tried to punch the holes AFTER the crust was on the pie.  BAD idea.  Because I had started, i finished up a small honeycomb pattern, then augmented it with some strategically placed cutouts.  What do you think?

Certainly not identical, but I don't think it looks bad either.  Wonder if our guests will be able to guess they're eating zucchini? I'll update on that tonight.  

UPDATE: They guessed, but only after much debate.  I think if I had kept our abundance of zucchini a secret (a difficult thing to do, I assure you) they'd have been clueless.