Day 185: They're Coming!!!!

Zucchini, that is. All these yellow blooms will turn into zucchini, one of my favorite vegetables. But zucchini can be sneaky! You have to watch it. Every minute. Maybe even set up camp and watch it all night with a flashlight. Or it multiplies like crazy, and goes from nice tender, little zucchini, to humongous, baseball bat size too-icky-to-eat zucchini!

When I was a kid, my Italian grandmother use to cook zucchini flowers for us. Basically, you fry the flower and it tastes surprisingly like fried eggs!

I'm amazed that I even like zucchini anymore! Some nearly 30 years ago, I planted an enormous garden. I planted it because I read a book that scared the toes off of me: "How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Times." Basically, a "we're all doomed" kind of book. So I planted a garden so my dh (boyfriend, at the time) and I wouldn't starve to death. (Trust me; we haven't!) I planted about 30 zucchini plants.

But there was so much zucchini, I couldn't give it all away! I took to sneaking it on my coworkers' desks when they weren't looking! But after awhile, they wised up and started returning it. . . .

My frugal streak wouldn't let me throw it away.

Then I decided (still, thanks to "the coming bad times") to dehydrate the zucchini. I stored all this shredded, dried, zucchini in those plastic-sealer bags. And packed it in empty coffee cans. Lots and lots of rows of dried, shredded, zucchini. Dried, leathery, bland, zucchini. Which I later reconstituted and tried to bake into breads, or cook in casseroles, or. . . . ?????

All I can say is that my darling boyfriend married me anyway!
And now, we only plant 2 zucchini plants. period.