Delight

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child? ~Lin Yutang

IKEA has an “It Only Happens Twice A Year Sale”. Tonight we had one of our “It Only Happens Once a Year Meals”. We have a few of them. There’s clam chowder in bread bowls on Pikku Joulu and then there’s the Fall Meal. It is coming. Some day in October, probably a Saturday when we’ve been to a pumpkin patch, we’ll have the Fall Meal. (Pork Chops with Apple Onion Stuffing, Maple Butternut Squash…you can come over if you want.)

Today was Fried Zucchini. Last year we bought a monstrous zucchini at a roadside stand in Snohomish. This year Adam put the zucchini plant in the ground. We watered it during the (moderately) hot summer in our little yard. I fended off the slugs. It was our zucchini.

And I negated any nutritional value it may have aspired to by frying it.

Oh, it was good though.

Everyone else in our family ranged from moderately to not at all excited about the lovely fried zucchini. They didn’t grow up watching their great grandma, grandma and mom make the zucchini in sunny summer kitchens, trying to do SOMETHING with all that zucchini. I did. And I love the stuff.

And I know how to fry zucchini, just like them. You slice the zucchini, dip it in egg, then flour sprinkled with pepper.



Fry it in oil, turn it often.



Sprinkle with lemon juice.



Bliss.

If God had intended us to follow recipes,
He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.
~Linda Henley