How Mila Would Like to Spend Her Entire Vacation

Earning My Mother of the Year Award Again

Because she has to be the opposite in every way, Mila's love for birds precisely mirrors her sister's disdain for winged creatures. While Alexis literally screams and runs away if a pigeon looks in her general direction, Mila is all in. "Bird! Ook! Bird!"

And then she chases the bird. Because of course she does.

Kennywood is a most excellent place to see a few birds. If you're lucky, you might even get to dine with a baby duck or ten. They hang out near the little lake, often wandering to the tables near the back. They're searching for food, obviously. Mila understands this fact, so she's certain to make a few friends by handing over some French fries.

And then she chases the ducks.

It's not that I let her antagonize the ducks, it's more that her enthusiasm flies out of body and takes off running. She either has to follow her enthusiasm, or forever let go of that part of her. I'm kind of glad she hangs on to her enthusiasm so tightly.

But Alexis isn't.

"Mortified" isn't a strong enough word for Alexis' reaction to the duck chasing. I'm certain that one of these days, Alexis is going to literally puke from anxiety as she tries to figure out how to help corral Mila while also maintaining a safe distance from the terrible, horrible birds.

And I'm going to stand there laughing.

Baked Zucchini Fries

I've been telling her that Fried Zucchini is all that then some for YEARS, but suddenly Alexis decided to believe me. She's been trying to skip dinner and make Fried Zucchini be her everything for the past few weeks, which is unfortunate because "Fried."

I don't do "Fried" at home. We also haven't eaten out much, so that whole thing hasn't been working out.

Sorry, Alexis.

In my quest to make it up to her, I decided to give Baked Zucchini Fries a try. There have been about five variations made in the past few weeks, and finally we decided that we had a favorite. Okay, we have two favorites.

The redder ones have a bunch of parprika on them, so they're flavorful, but not spicy. The lighter ones, on the other hand, have some bite. There's a fair amount of red pepper flakes involved, making them HOOOOOOOOT.

Everyone in our house likes HOOOOOOOT except me, so between the two kinds, we had some happy campers.

This is my base recipe for making Baked Zucchini Fries. Feel free to add whatever you like to it to twist them a bit. The parmesan, flour, and panko are purposely equal parts so that it's easy to make more or less depending on how much zucchini you need to use up.

(I need to use all of it up. ALL OF IT.)

Baked Zucchini Fries

1 medium zucchini, cut into fries
1 egg
1/3 cup panko
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
Ground black pepper
Salt
Your choice: 1 teaspoon paprika or 2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Spray olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. You can cut the zucchini by hand, or you can cheat. I like cheating (in this situation, anyway). I've had this fry cutter for about 10 years and counting and really like it.

3. Crack the egg into a bowl and use a fork to scramble it.

4. Add the remaining ingredients to another bowl and stir them all up.

5. Dip the cut zucchini into the egg then into the dry ingredients. Shake them up a bit to coat them all around then place them in a layer on a large cookie sheet. Spray them with a bit olive oil (nonstick olive oil spray works fine).

6. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes then flip them. Bake for another 10 minutes. (Total bake time is 20 minutes.)

7. Laugh hysterically when a bunch of kids guess wrong about which ones are hot and end up running around looking for water.