How to use this Page

  Alex Gee/flickr


Quack!

It's August, unbearably HOT, and I must confess something.

I miss running from zucchini.

Once upon a time, when we lived at our old house and Len had his famous vegetable garden, there'd always come a time when monster zucchini would appear out of nowhere and chase us around the back yard.

By then, we'd had our fill of their smaller relatives. After grilling, grating, slicing, and chopping zucchini for salads, breads, fritters, and frittata, Len usually tried to unload a few of the giants on our neighbors, who by then had taken to hiding guiltlessly behind closed curtains and blinds. But who could blame them? Big zucchini just doesn't taste good -- they're stringy and full of yucky seeds.


diekatrin/flickr


Spiced Zucchini Soup by chotda.

But now, living in the woods, we don't have a garden. Lots of space, but not enough sun. So we've been eating zucchini moderately and modestly, purchasing them now and again from Whole Foods or the farm market. And somehow, it's just not the same. Where's the excitement? Where's all the angst and undue pressure to keep up with the crop?

   
      photo credit: flickr

Still, a good zucchini poem makes me feel better.

ATTACK OF THE SQUASH PEOPLE
by Marge Piercy

And thus the people every year
in the valley of humid July
did sacrifice themselves
to the long green phallic god
and eat and eat and eat.
They're coming, they're on us,
the long striped gourds, the silky
babies, the hairy adolescents,
the lumpy vast adults
like the trunks of green elephants.
Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;
sauté with olive oil and cumin,
tomatoes, onion; frittata;
casserole of lamb; baked
topped with cheese; marinated;
stuffed; stewed; driven
through the heart like a stake.

Get rid of old friends: they too
have gardens and full trunks.
Look for newcomers: befriend
them in the post office, unload
on them and run. Stop tourists
in the street. Take truckloads
to Boston. Give to your Red Cross.
Beg on the highway: please
take my zucchini, I have a crippled
mother at home with heartburn.

(Rest is here.)


I've never had round zucchini! Looks good! (steph noble)

photo by Suburban Paparazzi.

Happy Autumn!

You look mahvelous! Did you know you're the apple of my eye?☺

In honor of Johnny Appleseed's 235th birthday tomorrow, I'm going all apple-y today. I LOVE apple season. Talk about a perfect fruit. "A" is definitely for Apple, and an apple a day keeps writer's block away (hee).

I'm looking forward to gorging myself on apple cider, pie, muffins, crumble, fritters, dumplings, and pancakes. I love apples in fresh salads and relishes, and with a little peanut butter at snacktime. And don't apples have the best names? I wouldn't mind being called English Beauty, Kerry Irish Pippin or Empress (you may curtsy now). Can't imagine the fun I could have with Rambo, Sops of Wine, Doctor Hogg. And I just learned there's an apple called Hawai'i, a cross between Golden Delicious and Gravenstein. It's a gourmet dessert apple with the fragrance and flavor of pineapples!

Yes, it's going to be a very tasty fall. :9

   
     photos by Vicky in the Colour and ART by MAR.

But getting on with our birthday celebration, I think some apple cake would be just the thing. Marge Piercy's poem is sure to make you smile; the narrator of this dramatic monologue sounds just like my mother, even though she doesn't bake.  There must be some kind of genetic "mother teaching voice" that gets handed out along with that wallop of hormones. You gotta love it.

MY MOTHER GIVES ME HER RECIPE
by Marge Piercy

Take some flour. Oh, I don't know,
like two-three cups, and you cut
in the butter. Now some women
they make it with shortening,
but I say butter, even though
that means you had to have fish, see?

You cut up some apples. Not those
stupid sweet ones. Apples for the cake,
they have to have some bite, you know?
A little sour in the sweet, like love.
You slice them into little moons.
No, no! Like half or crescent
moons. You aren't listening.

(Rest is here.)

Now for the really fun part of this post:

Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to make one of the following apple cake recipes in honor of John Chapman. If not this weekend, then sometime this fall. It's your "American as apple pie" civic duty, and your family and friends will thank you for it. I wonder which one Marge Piercy would choose?☺

How do Upside Down Caramel Apple Tea Cakes sound to you?
(Scroll down -- recipe is in the comments.)

photo by the-icing-on-the-cake.

Or maybe Dorset Apple Cake:

photo by wine_scribbler).

If you want to get French about the whole thing, Apple Cake in Cocotte:

photo by Mortimer?

Apple Raisin Cake:

photo by Amelia PS.

Apple Coffee Crumb Cake:

photo by you can count on me.

So how did you like them apples? These recipes should keep you pretty busy for awhile. Have a sweet and sumptuous autumn -- you're such a pip!

Check out all the great poems being shared today at the Roundup hosted by the lovely Susan Taylor Brown.

                                    

♥ "Apple Month" was my very first theme here at alphabet soup back in 2007. Click here for a bushel of poems, recipes, tidbits and folklore about the most versatile fruit on the planet -- 2500 species cultivated in the U.S. alone!

♥ More related entries: Apple Picture Books, Mom and Apple Pie, Part One,  Mom and Apple Pie, Part Two.

♥ Click here for even more apple recipes.

"And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it." ~ Neil Gaiman.

Copyright © 2009 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved.