This afternoon Jeanne Nolan spent time in our organic vegetable garden with Chicago Tonight host Phil Ponce.

The duo spent time examining our crops and harvesting three types of tomatoes, Haricot Vert, jalapeño peppers, and some enormous zucchini.

“I was here five days ago and this zucchini was the perfect size,” Nolan said of the enormous zucchini.

Now that the vegetable has become so large, she advised either baking or roasting the vegetable rather than sautéing it.

“It’s overripe,” she said. “It gets tough and the seeds get large. What the plant is basically doing is it’s trying to get to the point where it is ready to produce seed.”

“Baking or roasting the zucchini will break down the seeds,” she said, adding she likes to scoop out the inside of large zucchinis, roast them and then stuff them with cooked foods such as rice or tofu.

Our enormous zucchini will not go to waste. Chicago Tonight correspondent Eddie Arruza plans to make zucchini bread out of the crop.