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In 1993, one community garden in Pittsburgh exploded with zucchini. Chris Fennimore of WQED saw an opportunity to engage the community by requesting zucchini recipes. Thus, Pittsburgh’s beloved QED Cooks program — not to mention the dozens of cookbooks that it spawned — was born.

Zucchini is a favorite in my house, and it’s one of very few vegetables my kids get excited about. We’ve used it in so many recipes over the years from stir fry to chili to grilled zucchini boats. Once, I caught my little guy taking a bite out of a raw one right in our garden, so I cut the remainder into strips and served it up with some hummus and ranch.

This summer, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get any zucchini in my little home garden. Then, late in the season, my zucchini plants exploded. I had a fantastic time baking multiple loaves of zucchini cheddar bread, spinning out pounds of zoodles, and serving up some pan-fried parmesan zucchini for a quick side dish.

Before turning over my garden bed for the winter, I discovered one last massive zucchini hanging on the vine. So I busted out my QED Cooks: C is for Casseroles cookbook and searched for one of the original QED Cooks zucchini recipes.

There are three versions of zucchini casserole in this edition, and I chose the one that had the most simple ingredients. Since my zucchini was so big, I decided to double down on (most of) the original recipe. Who doesn’t love leftovers?

The original recipe called for the following ingredients:

Since I was already prepared to use my whole giant zucchini, which yielded closer to 6 cups of chopped zucchini (not sliced because the slices would have been pancake-sized), I decided to also double down on the onion, sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese. Okay, let’s get real: I quadrupled the cheese.

This was very easy to put together. But I also changed the preparation from the original for food safety reasons, e.g. cooking the raw sausage separately from the onions. I also added some of my homemade pesto to this dish because why not? And despite the fact that I doubled down on most of the ingredients, this casserole still fit into my 9” x 13” casserole dish. Instead of taking 20 minutes to bake at 350 degrees, it took about 25-30.

Here’s everything you need for this recipe in a printable PDF:

I give this recipe 4 out of 5 stars. My update is more flavorful than the original, and I salted and peppered each layer as I built it. And the doubled-down version produced tons of leftovers, which we love.