Zucchini: Miracles, Jokes, Crimes, Tall Tales, And Other Summer Musings

 Zucchini?  You Must Be Joking

There’s a joke going around whose entire premise is that there’s just too much zucchini in the world.  It assumes zucchini’s usefulness and abundance are disproportionate.

I don’t buy into that premise, recognizing meanwhile that my more moderate–ok enthusiastic– stand on zucchini is peculiar, unpopular… maybe even unprincipled.

Taking Counsel Of Your Fears (Today is Not That Day)

I love zucchini.  It is a kind, gentle vegetable… or fruit, depending on who your horticultural heroes are.  Easy and soothing on anxious stomachs, ambidextrous and adaptable in recipes.  During my last month of pregnancy with Ezra, zucchini was almost all I wanted.  And I didn’t know yet then how delicious it is in cake, nor did I have Steph & Seb’s revolutionary zucchini salad recipe.

While I’m well aware that one healthy zucchini plant is probably all my family needs, this spring I planted four.  Just in case one or two succumbed to any kind of insect mayhem, like the tent revival/bra and book burning party the squash bugs threw amongst the Hubbards last year.  For goodness sake.

I’m married to a man who plays with enterprise networks; I totally get the benefits of backup and redundancy.

Therefore, four zucchini plants.

Tangent…

They did show up again this year, by the way, the squash bugs— despite my scattering diced citrus peels like confetti in the borders as an organic deterrent.  This time they appeared on a volunteer pumpkin vine in the middle of the garden. 

One clambered out of the shadows and up on top of a ripening pumpkin as I was watering the garden the other day.  It rubbed its eyes in the bright sunlight and asked me querulously for an aspirin, still shaky from all its rioting and carousing down below.  In answer, I hit it with water from the hose.  Drenched, it rushed back into the pumpkin’s shadow, sounding the alarm for family and friends to take cover.  

I felt absolutely no remorse, and wished the bug and his family bad health to the end of their days.

The thing about this year’s squash bugs is that they don’t seem to be packing their usual viral punch, the infected kiss-of-death vampire bite that topples the entire plant into utter meltdown, leaving unlucky gardeners with a yellow brown mass of wilt within days of the bugs sucking juice from even just a couple of the leaves.  No, this year, thankfully, while the bugs are present and partying in my garden, the virus they often carry with them isn’t.  Some leaves show signs of decline as the bugs suck the life out of them, but the vine itself keeps the faith, sprouting new leaves and new fruit, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no pumpkin has gone before. 

Of Mice And Men and Rabbit-Whales

But the zucchini… I weeded one hill out  because I’d planted it too close to a tall Ravenna grass and it wasn’t getting enough water.  This weeding was a preventative measure:  I didn’t want the languishing plant to be that one wounded gazelle at the back of the herd, the one that lures the predators in.  The one that ultimately, after being half-devoured, gets left to molder on the savannah while its murderers pursue the cute baby gazelles that have strayed too far from their mamas.

I apologized to the runt zucchini as I pulled it.  It was cruel, this culling of a plant whose intentions were all about fruitfulness and abundance and exploration of the universe, simply because it was on the puny side… but I had to believe it was for the best.

The three remaining zucchini plants became as substantial as shrubs, which was nice, and prolific as rabbit-whales, which was… I feel conflicted about this.  It was amazing (as any rabbit-whale would be).  So amazing… I can see how garden profusion leads naturally to fairy tales about beanstalks and pumpkin carriages/townhouses/dormitories.

This summer’s zucchini abundance was also sobering.  I felt great responsibility for the use and care and dispersement of my miracle produce.

Finally, the abundance was perhaps even a little embarrassing, given the local culture… the jibes and jokes and cliches.

Speaking of…

Here’s the joke, shared by a good neighbor (hi, Mike) who called us (ironically) to share his own zucchini.  A man (let’s say he’s from New Hampshire) visits his friend in Utah.  The Utahan takes the man grocery shopping (it sometimes happens; men do go grocery shopping together).  When they leave the car in the parking lot, the host doesn’t lock his car.  The New Hampshire tenderfoot wonders why his friend doesn’t lock up, and the Utahan replies, Well son, this is Utah.  No need to lock up.  Later the Utahan takes his friend to church.  They’re heading inside, leaving the car in the parking lot, and the Utahan clicks his key to lock the car, and his friend says, wait, I thought we were in Utah?  And his host tells the New Hampshirian that yes, we are in Utah.  If we don’t lock the car at church, it will be full of zucchini when we get back.

Only imagine what might happen at funerals here.

Zucchini Incident Management

My parents visited during the zenith of my zucchini melee, and I shamelessly begged/coerced them to carry some off with them as they meandered south to see more family (my dad looked both perplexed and alarmed when I loaded him up with three- four-five large zucchini).  Once zucchini reaches a certain size, the only thing anyone can think to do with it is make zucchini bread.  One big zucchini can make four-five-six loaves—and not everyone likes zucchini bread.  Literally or metaphorically.

My friend Steph tells me I should pick my zucchini very young, when it’s barely an inch in diameter, tender and succulent and small, and then it won’t get away from me.  Like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout’s garbage did to her.

I tried this.  All summer, I was pre-emptive in my zucchini picking.  I peered and squinted into the zucchini shrub shadows and picked handfuls of tender succulent squashes still cradled in their infancy, and ate them all mostly by myself (steamed, with olive oil salt and pepper yum).  I did feel a little guilty that at least one of my motives was about zucchini population control, and that I seemed to be on the big bad giant end of a folk story.

Also I felt selfish– my squash feasts are usually solitary affairs.  But there were always the zucchinis that I missed, ones that hid beneath leaves or camouflaged themselves in the tangle of stems.  Ones that within just a few days of my missing them had grown gargantuan and were bulging out beyond the reach of their parent shrub.  Ones that were probably making up their own jokes as they basked in the sun.

Wheat Germ Woman Rides Again

And so this summer I lived the zucchini cliche.  No, I didn’t leave them in people’s cars at church (tempted, though. I did ask Frank to leave some in the nearest foyer for people to take while I was safely off visiting my sister in Montana.  He didn’t.).   I texted a couple of people to offer zucchini, and their responses were kind, but no thank you I have my own to worry about.

So I used it in every way I could think of.

Here is the list:

In salad (thanks again, Seb & Steph).  Paper thin zucchini, lemon, salt, olive oil, cracked pepper.  Probably best with a little fresh grated parmesan too.

As Zoodles (zucchini noodles).  Delicious when they’re mixed 1:1 with normal noodles (rice noodles, even better), and white sauce… or red.  Adaptable to both vegans (hello, Mary) and carnivores (that means you, Frank).

In Tacos.  Shredded or chopped and added to the meat, zucchini absorbs the flavor and extends it further.  So you use less meat, a compromise between the vegans and carnivores.  Delicious regardless.

As the base for curry, pureed in coconut milk.  Zucchini is a natural in green curry, because it’s green.  I recommend making the curry spice blend from scratch with the freshest possible spices and ginger, and using lemon grass.  Also fresh basil.

In morning oatmeal.  Finely minced (the least egregious texture), with cinnamon, raisins, nuts, and honey— it is the breakfast approximation of zucchini bread.  I had it a bit too often; thinking about it now, I feel slightly nauseous.

In chocolate chip cookies.  Not bad.  Not great either… I have a memory of chocolate chip zucchini cookies, made by a roommate in college (hello Jody).  She shared them with the rest of us and we all loved them and bonded over them and honestly couldn’t get enough, but this was not how this summer’s batch turned out for me.  Probably one of those things that memory enhances.  Love the memory, anyway.

In lemon zucchini bread.  Much better last year… how did that happen?  Oh I know, I am a haphazard recipe follower.  So lovely lemon zucchini bread two years in a row is the equivalent of being struck by lightning twice inside a dentist’s office in Boise.  Wednesday, Tuesday.

And then… thinking healthy natural thoughts as we prepared for a camping trip, I made energy balls with zucchini bits in them (never ever again… it’s been over a month and there’s still some left).

Zucchini energy balls? Yes, please!

Finally, I dried zucchini, thin sliced with chives and a sort of salty tomatoey garlicky vinegar painted on, hoping for a veggie chip approximation.  After sampling a handful, I had to wonder… who in their right mind would want to eat them?  (I might eat them, and probably will…but not in my right mind).

Meisha Takes Some Off My Hands

Meisha made zucchini chocolate cake for her own birthday… a big enough batch to produce both a cake (with a Gravity Falls motif, thank you very much Merrin) and a plate of cake pops.  (She had a fan-girl theme going; the pops were meant to be hogwarty/quittitch golden snitches).

Given space in the kitchen, Meisha  turned out to be an over-achiever… well, except for maybe with the snitch frosting.  What the heck, Meish!

And That Chocolate Cake Again

A few days ago, I followed Meisha’s example and made some seriously delicious chocolate zucchini cake.  It has three cups of pureed zucchini in it.  Roughly half a rabbit-whale!  That’s much more than the typical recipe for zucchini bread.  I subbed in coconut oil and butter for the vegetable oil, and forgot the eggs, which turned out to be serendipitous.  The cake was fudgy, almost brownie-like… and with ganache?  Irresistible, intoxicating, addictive.

(It is highly unlikely that I will ever be able to make it exactly the same again, which I think only adds to its charm).

There was no time to take pictures of this marvelous confection/mistake.  No other thoughts besides eating it right away occurred to any of us when we looked at it.  I know that sounds all spooky and mysterious, but actually it’s great news.

Because it is The Answer!  To The Zucchini Question!  Yes, you can use those billions and billions of zucchini!  Make Chocolate Zucchini Ghost Cake with it!  Right now today! Seven-eight-nine-ten dozen batches of it!

billions and billions and billions

The Way We Were—Or, And Then, They Died

It’s September now, and the zucchini shrubs have contracted mildew.  Situated along our back border, their water was supplemented all summer by the neighbor’s sprinklers, which kept them lively and statuesque through July and August’s rising heat.  It appears now that this water gift will be their undoing.  Their decline became noticeable earlier last week, as temps dropped and the first gray-white leaves (which, if you don’t know why they’re white, are actually kind of pretty in a dusty miller/artemisia sort of way) multiplied from a couple to many.  I may have a few rabbit-whales out there yet, but I imagine this week may be my last for baby zucchini feasts.

I’ll miss them, and the crazy way we were together, but I won’t complain.

Next year, I will probably plant four zucchini hills again.