Aug 162013
 
The Squash Racket

NOTE: FOR SOME REASON, THE FIRST PART OF MY LAST POST EVAPORATED IN CYBERSPACE AS IT WAS ON ITS WAY FROM ME TO YOU, SO PLEASE HIT THIS LINK TO READ IT NOW–-AND THEN, COME BACK HERE! Right, so as I was saying, every August food writers feel compelled to tell their readers what to do about “zucchini fatigue,” as my NPR radio host called our zucchini abundance only yesterday while interviewing a couple of food experts and myself about “the problem.”  The first interviewee speaking on the program, a fine cook and fellow cookbook writer, accused the poor vegetables […more…]

Aug 152013
 
Zucchini Need Live Up to Their Name: "ini" Means Small, Very Small

  Zucca, in Italian, means squash; zucchini, the diminutive, “small squash” (the Italians snap them off the mother vine at three-and-a-half inches). So why are zucchini so often the size of baseball bats? You’ll have to ask the British about that, who call them “marrows,” and win the world records for growing giant vegetables at the Great Yorkshire Showground every summer. To read about the long and short of it, and learn to look forward  to a bumper baby zucchini crop every summer, go to my new article for Zester Daily. There you’ll find the whole story of America’s gift to Italy, and the recipe […more…]