Southerners are the givin’est bunch of people you’ll ever meet. Anytime we visit one another, we always want to “take a little something.” And even though the “little” is often quite small, it’s truly the thought that counts. Unless of course, it’s zucchini.
No one wants to look out their window and see you coming down the drive with a mess of the overplanted, overabundant and greatly underused squash.
National Sneak Some Zucchini on your Neighbor’s Porch Day is observed August 8th, although here in Alabama, Zucchini season comes early and we start piling up the abundant vegetable in July. Why we plant so much when we know we can’t possibly eat it all is just another quirk in our long line of agriculture heritage. It’s like being able to name and cook 453 dishes that come from a pig. It’s just something ingrained in our DNA that happens without thinking.
Zucchini itself is a fine, if not tasty food, but when you have to cook it 40 times a week — because we’ve also been taught by our frugal ancestors not to waste anything for fear of slipping into another Great Depression and having to go to work for the TVA, it becomes a heavy burden. The summer of ’84, was a particularly prolific year for zucchini, Mama used . . . click HERE to finish reading the story at al.com.