ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Roanoke gardener Jeff Wood doesn't plant zucchini. He and his wife, Nancy Maurelli, grow arugula, chard, rue and other hard-to-spell gourmet greens in the back yard of their Southwest Roanoke home.
However, reclining on their kitchen counter is a green oblong cylinder the approximate size of a policeman's club. ``It was a gift,'' Jeff explains, from one of his wife's clients.
``We're considering keeping it by the door - for security purposes,'' he adds.
Down the street, gardener Katie Hughes grows several varieties of tomatoes and peppers, five kinds of thyme, four kinds of basil. She has more garden than lawn. And yet ...
``No, no, absolutely not here!'' she shouts, when asked to point to her zucchini patch. ``Zucchini is worse than Barney.
``Zucchini is,'' she states in her most dramatic voice, ``the anti-Christ.''
Neighbors of backyard gardeners everywhere, be forewarned: The time has come. The zucchini has arrived.
It is fruitful and it has multiplied.
Like those recycled tins of fruitcake, it's the gift that keeps on giving - especially when tossed on the compost pile.
Hughes claims that zuke-growing friends will go so far as to leave their gifts of green on her doorstep - in the middle of the night.
As the sign outside the Back Creek Rescue Squad building so aptly puts it: ``Lock your car doors, it's zucchini time.''
In defense of the squash, zucchini is nothing but consistent, my vegetarian friend informs me. It's the everyman of vegetables.
Too much rain, it perseveres. A drought, it still comes through for you.
``It'll do whatever you ask it to,'' she says. ``Quietly and modestly. It's a metaphor for ordinary people.''
It's also a metaphor for overzealousness, which reminds me of my very first garden:
Picture rows of corn and cucumbers, mounds of potatoes, cages of tomatoes. Picture herbs, flowers, even beets.
And in one little hill in one tiny corner, picture me spreading two, maybe three, seeds of zucchini.
Now envision early August, when the zucchini became the Jack's beanstalk of cucurbits - and the only remaining species not decimated by bug, critter or lack of attention.
``But you can cook it into a dessert,'' my friend tells me. ``You can mince it up in place of chili meat.'' It can serve as a side dish all by its lonesome, or it can pinch-hit for noodles in a pan of lasagna.
Its ability to take on the flavor of whatever it's paired with reminds me of that other culinary delight: tofu. And don't even get me started on that.
I'm sure that McGuyver, that temple of testosterone, could fashion a pipe bomb out of zucchini.
Martha Stewart could turn one into a brooch.
Jenny Roberts, a Bedford County gardener, knows the heartiness of which I speak. She waited until relatively late - June 1 - to plant her garden this year.
``My neighbor lady told me I could catch up if I planted it on the full moon,'' Roberts says. Naturally, it worked.
Roberts has so many zucchini, she's given a bunch away to her neighbor lady, who in turn bakes it up in a bread - and gives it right back.
``I guess you know my brother was in the paper a few years back with a tomato that looked like a devil,'' she adds. Alas, her zucchini can't even compete with that.
Hughes, the Barney-basher, claims it's the texture - not just the tenacity - that's turned her against the green squash. It's a gut reaction she associates with the memory of too many slimy Weight Watchers meals. ``It's always the first ingredient listed on those frozen diet dinners, right behind water,'' she says.
Even people who like zucchini are growing sick of it by now, explains Pam Kendall, who works at Sumdat Farms on the Roanoke City Market.
She hasn't received her favorite zucchini inquiry yet this summer, though she knows the time is ripe. ``There are always a few people who ask if the zucchini is this year's crop - like we have it stored in the back somewhere on life-support, and we just unplug it and bring it out again every year.''
Cryogenic cucurbits?
Now that's a scary thought.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: staff. color.by CNB