Zucchini is not the apple of my eye
Entering the grocery store this week, I passed a big display of zucchini. I don’t recall the price; what struck me more was that people actually pay for those things at this time of year.
We are inundated. Everyone is inundated. One of the truths of summer gardens in Western Pennsylvania is that nobody wants your stupid zucchini.
I believe the zucchini is actually a weed that some marketing genius convinced consumers was desirable and edible. And don’t talk to me about zucchini fritti; I know it’s delicious, but if we’re honest, we’ll admit it’s not the vegetable we’re after, but the greasy fried part and the dipping sauce. You could put that coating on almost anything else, including pigweed or grass clippings, and you’d eat them until they were gone.
I write a lot about zucchini for the same reason I write about growing older: It’s annoying. Right now, there are two large, green dirigibles on the counter, the zucchini I found in the garden while out there picking tomatoes.
Tomatoes are friendly and lovable. They announce their readiness by turning red. They pop right off the vine and fit in the palm of your hand. Neighbors are always happy to take your tomatoes, and after they do, they report back to you about the dazzling pasta meals they became.
You cannot give away a zucchini. Sure, maybe some diehard vegan will take the small ones off your hands. The small ones can be cut up and hidden in salads and vegetable lasagna. But because they grow under gnarly, spiky vines, zucchini hide until they are bloated and beastly and require two arms to carry them to the house.
I found one in the garden last week. It was the size of a full-term baby. It sat on the kitchen island for a week. Sometimes I cleaned around it and other times I’d move it to other surfaces in the house. But it was always there, daring me to do something constructive with it.
My dear mother is an outlier in this realm. She doesn’t waste zucchini. I think she feels sorry for them. We took that fat squash to mom and she turned it into chocolate-zucchini cake and, miraculously, apple pie.
Turns out that, when peeled, cubed, spiced with cinnamon and baked in a piecrust, zucchini can be a dead ringer for apple. Mom served her imposter pie to family, offering it as “apple,” and they bought it. Ate the whole thing.
And so I tried it for myself, turning a zucchini into “apple” crisp. As I chopped and seeded, I was thinking there’s not enough cinnamon, sugar and butter in the world to pull this off.
I might have gotten away with it, but in my carelessness I left a bit of dark green peel on some of the chunks and my family busted me, something along the lines of “What kind of apples are these?” I am not the baker my mother is.
When I told them the squashy truth, they pushed the plates away. Not wanting to waste the three cups of sugar and pound of butter the recipe used, I scooped off the crisp part and ate it. What was left was a pan full of sad, naked cubes.
Still, if that sort of thing sounds good to you, give it a try. Just google zucchini “apple” pie and you’ll find a bunch of recipes. And if you need the zucchini, for heaven’s sake don’t buy it. Ask your neighbors if you can take some off their hands. They’ll love you for it.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.