Collateral Cuisine

Our first pick-able Zucchinis from our nursery garden arrived on July 1. We fought over them.  Who would get them!  What size is appropriate?   I prefer the small zucchinis less than 8” long.  Some of our workers feel they’re getting ripped-off unless their summer squash is the size of a small dog.

Now we have so many we can’t give them away!

My Wife and I look forward to the arrival of zucchini season.  She’s a vegetarian after all (occasionally she’ll eat fish and that’s how we’ve managed to stay together). In the few days since the advent of zucchini-season-2016… we’ve enjoyed fried zucchini, sautéed zucchini, zucchini pie, zucchini linguini (she just bought a device at WalMart for rendering our summer squash into pasta-like strips!).   Ahead, hopefully, lies zucchini-casserole, zucchini soup, zucchini bread (we call it booger-bread because of the green flecks), zucchini burgers…and a host of other zucchini dishes like ‘ratatouille’.  (the eggplants aren’t far behind the zucchini!)

Some folks enjoy those giant summer squash with seeds the size of Susan B Anthony dollars.  The American Public never accepted those dollars…and we do not appreciate zucchini seeds of similar diameter.  (nothing against Susan B, a great Lady no doubt, as far as we know, she must have done something notable to warrant a commemorative coin.)

The Garden Club of Greater Cleveland is launching a sale/contest which includes a blue ribbon for ‘the largest zucchini’.

This recalls competitions at our County Fair for the largest pumpkin.  The problem is…we’ve had pumpkin ‘doping scandals’… with people injecting ‘growth hormones’ into their magic squash.

Are Zucchinis headed down this path?

Maybe we can go a step further…and solicit Monsanto to meddle with the DNA.  Maybe we can produce zucchinis as big as Chris Christy.  I recall that the Governor wanted to carpet-bomb certain Middle Eastern countries.  What if we carve his likeness on these Governor-sized bunker-busting not-so-smart Booger Bombs?  We can drop them from B-52s marshaled out of a big zucchini patch on Diego Garcia.

Then, to demonstrate our humanitarian good nature, we send in our attack helicopters to drop salt, pepper and a butter substitute.

Do I have to think of everything???

Mark Gilson

mark@gilsongardens.biz