Last summer, after receiving a huge pile of zucchini from my neighbour Caroline, I needed to find a non-chocolate cake way of using it all up. I decided to try using it as a substitute for pasta and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I am almost embarrassed to admit how much zucchini I eat in an average week now. In Mexico, I used chayote as a substitute. Zucchini is pretty much a free food and has loads of fiber and vitamin A since I keep the skin on.

Making the ‘noodles’ was very labour intensive. I would use a vegetable peeler to cut strips lengthwise and then scissors to further divide the strips lengthwise, with the end result being zucchini pieces about the size of a fettuccine noodle. I like to prep four zucchinis at one time as that gives me three meals and making the noodles took me about 30 minutes.

I really wanted a mandoline, which would greatly reduce my zucchini prep time. My mother has had one as long as I can remember and I know how versatile they can be. You should see her shred a cabbage with one! So I’ve actually wanted a mandoline for years, but couldn’t justify the $50ish price point for a good one, not even when I’m churning out industrial-sized loads of zucchini noodles.

So imagine my delight when I decided to do just one last tour of the thrift store last week and found this:

It’s a mini mandoline with all the attachments! The box was sealed with lots of tape and marked just $2, so I bought it without checking out the contents. Those of you on Facebook know that when I finally opened the box, I found $7.50 in it, as well as $0.10 worth of Canadian Tire money!!!!!!!!!!

This mandoline comes from Regal, a catalogue company like Avon. My friend Donna is a Regal rep, so I’ve seen some of their products and know that they are good quality. In fact, she got me a nut chopper from them several years ago that is still working very well despite all the paces I’ve put it through. So I knew that I’d scored a mandoline that was going to serve me very well for a long time. I should add that it has clearly never been used!!!

All the pieces fit into a neat little box:

There are all sorts of attachments for doing different things like juicing, grating, shredding, and more:

Using the device was intuitive. My only complaint is that the handle bit with prongs to stick into the food doesn’t really hold the zucchini that well. I would just hold the zucchini until I had a nub left and then use the handle. It took me only about five minutes to turn my four zucchinis into little coins:

I could probably use the peeler attachment to make the noodles I can twirl around on a fork, but I thought these would be a nice change.

Next step, salt them very generously, add a weight (plate plus a couple of tins), and let the water drain out of them for several hours. Then, rinse, weight again for a bit, then toss in a hot pan with lots of garlic!

I am going to get a lot of use out of my new gadget and can’t wait to use it on all that lovely Mexican produce that shows up right at my door!