186 animal, vegetable, miracle
ample. We kids voted for the pies but got overruled; Dad brought home
artichokes. Mom dutifully boiled and served them with forks, assuming
one would eat the whole thing. We tried hard. I didn’t touch another arti-
choke for twenty years.
But our lives changed forever the day he brought home zucchinis. “It’s
Italian food,” he explained. We weren’t sure how to pronounce it. And
while the artichokes had brought us to tears and throat lozenges, we liked
these dark green dirigibles a lot. The next year Dad discovered he could
order the seeds and grow this foreign food right at home. I was in charge
of the squash region of the garden in those days—my brother did the
onions—and we were diligent children. I’m pretty sure the point source
of the zucchini’s introduction into North America was Nicholas County,
Kentucky. If not, we did our part, giving them to friends and strangers
alike. We ate them steamed, baked, batter- fried, in soup, in summer and
also in winter, because my mother developed a knockout zucchini- onion
relish recipe that she canned in jars by the score. I come from a proud line
of folks who know how to deal with a squash.
So July doesn’t scare me. We picked our fi rst baby yellow crooknecks
at the beginning of the month, little beauties that looked like fancy res-
taurant fare when we sautéed them with the blossoms still attached. On
July 6 I picked two little pattypans (the white squash that look like fl ying
saucers), four yellow crooknecks, six golden zucchini, and fi ve large
Costata Romanescas—a zucchini relative with a beautifully fi rm texture
and a penchant for attaining the size of a baseball bat overnight. I am my
father’s daughter, always game for the new seed- catalog adventure, and I
am still in charge of the squash region of the garden. I can overdo things,
but wasn’t ready to admit that yet. “I love all this squash,” I declared,
bringing the rainbow of their shapes and colors into the kitchen along
with the season’s first beans (Purple Romano and Gold of Bacau), Mini
White cucumbers, fi ve- color chard, and some Chioggia beets, an Italian
heirloom that displays red and white rings like a target when sliced in
cross-section. I was still cheerful two days later when I brought in the
day’s nineteen squash. And then thirty- three more over the next week,
including a hefty haul of cubit- long Costatas. Unlike other squash, Costa-