Like so many midwesterners in late August, I find myself completly overrun with monster zucchini and summer squash. I have included a recipe in this post that I made up to use up the bunnies in unique and yummy ways: Chocholate Zucchini Bread. But first, as an homage to my father, Jim Heynen, I want to share with you his short story about zucchini.
Garden Rabbits, by Jim Heynen
There were the fuzzy sharp-toothed ones that nipped tender shoots of lettuce and cabbage before they could dream of the salad bowl, the kind that multiplied as quickly as aphids and were as hard to discourage from their nibbling ways. But there was another kind of garden rabbit. These too were fruitful and multiplied in great abundance, though they did not hop. They were zucchini.
The boys did not like to eat zucchini very much. The taste was as dull as potatoes without salt or butter or sour cream, and the texture was slimy as cooked okra. But in August when the lettuce had bolted and the cabbage had died, when even most of the tomatoes had ripened and the wine-colored beets bulged from the earth ready for harvest, the zucchini caught a second breath: the yellow blossoms quickly turned into small green fingers that within a week were the size of cucumbers and in two weeks the size of small watermelons. Why couldn’t the animal garden rabbits eat these vegetable garden rabbits instead of the carrots and lettuce?
If the boys didn’t do something, they knew it would mean zucchini in eggs for breakfast, fried zucchini and onions for dinner, boiled zucchini for supper. Zucchini casseroles! Zucchini salads! Zucchini pie if there was a recipe for one hiding somewhere!
The oldest boy had a plan. Over supper, as they all swallowed the soggy chunks of zucchini, he said, We have so many zucchini, we should give some to the poor people who don’t have anything to eat.
The oldest boy had never in his life suggested giving anything to anybody, not even to his friends. And now he was thinking of poor people he didn’t even know?
The grown-ups thought it was a wonderful idea and even brought it up in their family devotions: That the abundance of the earth should be given to all, they prayed. Yea, even to the neediest of our number.
On Saturday night the boys loaded the car trunk with big zucchini before they went into town. The boys agreed that they would spend the evening giving the zucchini to poor people they met.
Look at them, said one of the grown-ups, as the boys loaded their arms with zucchini and started down the streets looking for poor people. Aren’t they wonderful?
The boys couldn’t really tell a poor person from a rich person, so they started offering zucchini to everyone they met. They figured the rich people wouldn’t take them and the poor people would. But it seemed that poor people were few and far between when it came to feeding them zucchini.
When the boys got to the big parking lot next to a WalMart that had just replaced most of the stores downtown, the oldest boy said, Let’s just put some in the back seat of everybody’s car. We might not be getting them to poor people, but at least we’re still giving them away.
This is what they did and within a half hour they were rid of all the zucchini. The grown-ups thoughts the boys’ charity had been so successful that they let the boys load up the trunk of the car with zucchini the next Saturday night too.
The boys went straight to the WalMart parking lot. But word had gotten out that if you didn’t lock your car doors somebody would fill the back seat of your car with giant zucchini.
Oh no, said the oldest boy, after they had tried all the car doors in the parking lot. We’re stuck with them. We’ll be eating zucchini until Christmas!
Then one of the boys pretended to drop one on the street as he crossed on the way back toward their car. The other boys followed suit, dropping zucchini, one after another. Whoops, whoops, whoops, as the zucchini dropped to the street.
The boys stood on the sidewalk and watched the cars pass by, some of them slowing down and swerving to miss the shattered vegetables. But in a few minutes the zucchini had been mushed up and the cars didn’t even slow doen. And that was how the last of the green garden rabbits died. Smeared out on the street like so much road kill.
Chocolate-Zucchini Bread
-1 1/2 cups brown sugar
-3/4 cup sunflower or safflower oil
-3 eggs beaten
-1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
-1 tsp vanilla
-2 cups grated zucchini
-1 1/2 cups white flour
-1 cup whole wheat flour
-2 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-2-3 tbsp good quality cocoa powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp ground cloves
Preheat the oven to 350F
1. In a large bowl combine the sugar, oil, eggs, butter and vanilla and beat well with a whisk. Mix in the grated zucchini. 2. In a separate bowl, combine all the remaining dry ingredients and mix well. Gently stir the dry mixture into the wet. Pour the batter into a well-oiled loaf pan and bake for approximately 1 hour, until firm and a toothpick comes out of the center clean. Cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.
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Scrambled eggs have a publicity problem. They are taken for granted to be boring, hurried, week day morning affairs with two eggs tossed together in the pan with nothing to keep them company. Or, they are the cold slabs of congealed bland eggs we often find in buffet lines as we scan ahead for the baked goods, or (please please!) the fresh crab legs. Today I am on a mission to put the scrambled egg dish back at the center of the weekend brunch. Forget the pancakes…who wants to be standing over a hot stove flipping those little buggars all morning and then feel their heaviness in the heat of the afternoon?