Barbara Kingsolver & Camille Kingsolver & Steven L. Hopp by Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Author:Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life [Life, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Literary, Appalachian Region; Southern, Farm life, Autobiography, Sociology, Social Science, Biography & autobiography: literary, Anecdotes, Biography: general, Country life, Organic, Food habits, Essays; journals; letters & other prose works, Personal Memoirs, Rural, Technology & Engineering, Gardening, Home Gardening, Biography & Autobiography, Agriculture, Biography
ISBN: 9780060852566
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

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 restaurant 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-z u c c h i n i l a r c e n y

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tas are still delicious at this size, though daunting. We split and stuffed

them with sautéed onions, bread crumbs, and cheese, and baked them in

our outdoor bread oven. All dinner guests were required to eat squash,

and then take some home in plastic sacks. We started considering dinnerguest lists, in fact, with an eye toward those who did not have gardens.

Our gardening friends knew enough to slam the door if they saw a heavy

sack approaching.

Camille gamely did her part. Before her sister’s birthday she adapted

several different recipes into a genius invention: chocolate chip zucchini

cookies. She made a batch of about a hundred, obliterating in the process

several green hulks that had been looming in the kitchen. She passed the

tray around to Lily’s friends at the birthday party, with a sly grin, as they

crowded around the kitchen table to watch Lily open her presents.

Fourth-graders hate squash. We watched them chew. They asked for seconds. Ha!

Camille dared them to guess the secret ingredient, slanting her eyes

suggestively at the dark green blimps that remained (one of them cut in

half) on the kitchen counter.

“Cinnamon? Oatmeal! Candy canes??”

We’ll never tell. But after the wrapping paper had flown, with all dust

settled and the hundred cookies eaten, we still had more of those dirigibles on the counter.

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