“But there sat this pile on the kitchen counter, with its relatives jammed into a basket in the mudroom – afloat between garden and kitchen – just waiting for word so they could come in here too: the Boat Zucchinis.
Sometimes I just had to put down my knives and admire their extravagant success. Their hulking, elongated cleverness. Their heft. I tried balancing them on their heads, on their sides: right here in the kitchen we had the beginnings of our own vegetable Stonehenge. Okay, yes, I was losing it. I could not stay ahead of this race. If they got a little moldy, then I could compost them. And the really overgrown ones we were cracking open for the chickens to eat – that isn’t waste, that’s eggs and meat…
Could they design an automobile engine that runs on zucchini?
It didn’t help that other people were trying to give them to us. One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of them hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, or course, was nowhere in sight.
‘Wow,’ we all said – ‘what a good idea!’
Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke…”
-Barbara Kingsolver, excerpt from 'Zucchini Larceny,' Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
I did not plant any squash this year. I’ve learned my lesson – one too many squash casseroles last year. But I am accepting donations from those of you still in the hot and heavy zucchini race to the end of summer. I'm here for you. Drive-by-squash me, please. I’m ready, willing, and waiting.
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