Zucchini Forever

Zucchini Forever

           How many ways can you cook zucchini?

           Growing up my sister and I where slave labor on our families mini farm. My mom grew up in Alabama on a farm of several hundred acres. I believe she wanted to make our two and a half acres into a mirror image of the old home place. Forty to fifty chickens, two steers, a couple of milk cows, six pigs, and at one time, one hundred and fifty rabbits. The chickens laid eggs, and sometimes got fried. The steers became steaks and roasts for the dinner table. The two cows worked my mom and dad half to death keeping them milked. We sold the milk, cream and home churned butter. The pigs provided tenderloin, bacon and ham. We had a smokehouse where dad worked the meat up. I can testify that fried rabbit is good.

Then, there were the gardens, three of them, and they were huge. I didn’t mind doing the plowing. The first plowing was hard, the tiller bounced on the hard ground and it was a fight to hold it. The second plowing was easier and the third plowing, you had to help the tiller along or it would bury itself. That’s when the ground was ready for planting. We would drive stakes at the end of the garden so we could make a straight row. We used a push plow to make the rows. I remember pushing the potatoes into the ground in these long furrows and mom would come behind me and cover them. Corn, potatoes, beans, peas, eggplant, okra, watermelons, strawberries, cantaloupes, even one season peanuts. We ended up with barrels of peanuts which eventually the squirrels stole. We put scarecrows up in a couple of the gardens to discourage the crows and other animals. Of course dad and I would hunt the groundhogs and at night the raccoons.

           My mom believed we needed to be self-sufficient. Everything was canned as its season came. She had a big wood stove in the basement where she would do the canning. I don’t know how she handled the heat. When I walked in I just wanted to turn around and get out. One thing grew really well in our gardens, ‘weeds’. That’s how my sister and I became slave labor. She would start us at opposite ends of the garden, row by row we would pull weeds. Not just some of the rows would be covered in weeds, all of them were. On our knees we would work our way down the row, pulling weed after weed. Working around the plants that were growing and trying not to pull the vegetables up with the weeds. Once they were pulled they had to be carried to the end of the row and placed in a pile. Through the summer and into the early fall again and again we would attack the rows to get rid of the weeds. We had good crops. My mom made sure of that, but it was a lot of work. Year after year, until I left home we would spend much of our summer in the gardens. I planned to never have anything to do with a garden after that. I believe that’s why I don’t like vegetables.

Married with three kids we decided to move out into the country. We received enough money in a settlement to put a down payment on a house and seven acres of land. We had the same problems my parents had. Just like so many others, we were trying to figure out how to feed the family on a limited income. In the fall I would hunt and usually bring a couple of deer home. Everybody loved deer steak and my wife is a great cook. There were times she would be cooking steak and the kids would line up with forks waiting for it to come out of the skillet.

Spring came and we decided to plant a garden. I barrowed a tiller and plowed a field by the house. We laid out the rows and began to plant. Corn, beans, potatoes, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, and zucchini.  

           We had good intentions. We tried to work the garden. Taking care of the kids, working, and life in general took our time. The weeds won. Our great crop was weeds. They choked the things we had planted. By late summer we didn’t even want to look at the garden. One evening walking out through the weeds we found that there were survivors. Seven zucchini plants were alive and producing. I don’t really know why we planted them in the first place. My wife was the only one in the family that even liked zucchini. We picked all that was ready and went to the house to figure out what to do with it.

           This is really where our gardening journey got exciting. I’ve never seen anything produce like these seven plants. Day after day we would walk out into the weeds and collect zucchini. By the time it was over we had given zucchini to our neighbors and even to the local Food Bank. Meanwhile we were figuring out the different ways to fix it. Zucchini cake and zucchini bread were the first things that came to mind and my wife fixed them so much we got tired of them. We even gave some of what she fixed away. The cake with a cream cheese icing was delicious, but you can only eat so much. The bread warmed with butter made a great snack.

           My wife figured out how to make zucchini cookies. Cutting it into thin slices, she’d make a batter adding cinnamon and nutmeg than fry them. I remember her bringing a plate of them into the living room where the kids and I were watching TV. We sat in the floor and ate the whole plateful and were looking for more they were so good.

           Going through cook books we searched for recipes. Fried zucchini, zucchini relish, zucchini casseroles. We had so much more than what we could use and the plants kept producing. People at the Food Bank asked where we were getting all the zucchini. I don’t think they believed us when we told them it all came from seven plants. It felt like they would never stop, but eventually they did. We haven’t had a garden since. My wife has tried planting a few things but nothing has ever been as successful as the zucchini.