“Water, water all around, but not a drop to drink.”
I can still hear the voice of my mom, a wonderful voice containing cheer, a humorous lilt, ready to pounce on a rhythmic phrase or some silly word connection.
Even if we knew what was coming, for example setting a bowl of salad on our dinner table, she would usually say, “Lettuce pray,” it would all make us laugh no matter how many times she said it.
Today I am overwhelmed, again, by the repetition of life’s endless circles. And Mother Nature isn’t a help. She is, I suspect, the creator of those very circles that direct the days, years, sun, weather, water, plants, us. It’s both an irony and a puzzlement.
Here we are, in the midst of so much food being produced and, if you are lucky to have a garden, you cannot keep up with the arrival of warm weather-loving plant families. Yet, on television and in newspapers are stark facts that children are dying because there is no food.
How can there be such disconnect? When one can fly in a plane across the globe, board cruise ships bringing thousands of passengers from one side of an ocean to another, why can’t food be provided to starving children?
The recent fascinating, courageous rescue of the Thai soccer team caught in caves for two weeks is an example of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” There must be no will to find a way to save children and their families from starvation.
The plain fact is that as a nation we are more interested in providing bombs to secure free flowing oil from Saudi Arabia rather than dropping food to the population the Saudi’s are attacking on their border. Apparently the Brits are assisting in this endeavor, according to BBC news — the endeavor to provide armaments, that is, not food.
Now I must conclude my rant about “no will, no way” in our country’s effort to stave off starvation because, ironically, I am unwilling to sacrifice the delightful life I lead on this farm to go to Washington to change the government, to demand that they change their ways and means to filling hungry stomachs instead of fattening their own bank accounts.
The garden demands that the gardener keep apprised of the need for water, weeding, and most of all at this time of the season, harvesting. However, reader, you must know that there is always too much harvested and a need to sell or share the bounty of summer.
To help deal with one of the most ubiquitous vegetables in the pack, zucchini,
I place before you another one of Stella Guglielmo’s grand Italian recipes. You have heard of her before, but, forgotten, as she shared many wonderful recipes with me. She introduced my German/Irish/Spanish family to Italian cooking back in the fifties when my older sister married her son.
Stella’s Stuffed Zucchini
3 pounds small zucchini
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 large onion
1/4 pounds pork sausage
1/4 teaspoon Bell’s seasoning
1/8 tablespoon pepper
3 eggs
Directions:
Parboil zucchini, adding a pinch of salt to the water. Cut in have lengthwise before boiling. When partly cooked, remove from water and cool slightly. scoop out the cooked part, leaving the wall of the zucchini, like a small canoe-like zucchini shell. Chop the scooped out zucchini finely. Pat with paper towels to remove excess water. Set aside.
Chop onion just as finely and fry in a small bit of oil.
Add sausage and stir until browned, about 10 minutes.
Add zucchini to sausage mixture and stir for a few minutes. Cool mixture.
When mixture is cooled, add eggs, cheese, bread crumbs, pepper and Bell’s seasoning.
Stir together and fill the zucchini shells, which you have arranged in an oiled Pyrex baking pan (the one that your grandmother gave you because she had too many). Bake in a moderate oven until lightly browned and mixture has blended together, with cheese melted.
You can prepare this dish ahead of time and then put it from the refrigerator into the oven, so depending upon how chilled the zucchini is, the cooking time differs, of course. You know that.
Ah, but do you know the answer to my mother’s riddle of “water, water, all around, but not a drop to drink?” (The answer: the speaker is in the middle of the ocean, probably marooned in a canoe made from a giant zucchini.)
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.
