WHILE WE ARE ON THE TOPIC OF SEXING ZUCCHINIS....CAN YOU IDENTIFY THESE YELLOW, PHALLIC-SHAPED OBJECTS?

-
So here they are--the male eunuch zukes to whom these parts formerly belonged no longer have to suffer from castration anxiety:too late for that!



                                              Ant-free zucchini blossoms awaiting their fate

In removing the zucchini genitalia, I was following the advice of most of the instructions turned up by my research:that although the pollen-colored male pistils are not harmful to eat, it is customary to remove them before stuffing.

          Female blossoms pre and post-surgery;closed males in foreground

The bottom line? I learned quite a lot of useful things in my zuke sex-education tutorial:

1. Even though the female blossoms are so much more attractive than the males, to pick a female flower robs its attached baby of the chance to grow big and strong. Now given that overly large zukes can be a curse, at first I could not imagine why to stunt their growth could be a bad thing. But after seeing the result, I have to admit that baby zukes should be left in peace to realize their full potential.

2. Epicurious has some simple, wonderful recipes for what to do with zuke blossoms. To coat them with a light beer and water batter and gently fry them was not at all the messy, intimidating process I feared.

And the Epicurious recipe for stuffing zuke blossoms with any soft cheese mixed with lemon zest and fresh mint was indeed easy and molto delicioso.

3.True confession:I am delighted to admit that I have lost my own fear of zuke blossoms!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IF YOU MUST HAVE A SMALL MISADVENTURE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE IT IN ITALY?

-
Image
We try to steer clear of the mal'occhio (the "evil eye" that causes bad things to happen). But the same week of our little bumper mishap, a close friend told us about his own "contretemps." That's a fancy French word for problems that can arise when one is entering a parking lot at the same time when someone is exiting, but when one of you has the sun in his eyes.  One might say to oneself, as he did, "All I can really see right now is "niente," but what are the chances that anyone would approach during the second it will take me to cross this threshold? Well, because our local Lidl grocery store is very popular at that hour, a quasi-invisible someone could indeed be close enough for anyone entering the lot to scrape two of her car doors.  There was a witless eye-witness to this event. To clarify--the door-scraper's wife who had been following behind in another car and also had the sun in her eyes did not yet realize tha...
Read more

HOW HITTING YOUR BUMPER WHILE BACKING UP INTO JUST ONE IVY-COVERED STONE WALL CAN PUT A DAMPER ON YOUR DAY

-
Image
OOPS! Ivy-covered walls in the Italian countryside are picturesque, but not always as innocent as they look. We thought it would be a good idea to hop into our 1999 Renault to take it for a spin. After all, the poor thing had been sitting there for far too long exercising its primary function as a fruit dryer. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that the windshield of this proud French vehicle is the linchpin of our efforts to manage all the fruit we produce. The method goes like this: put the fruit of the moment in a foil-covered IKEA roasting pan on a sunny Umbrian day, and you're good to go. Or rather, you will be going nowhere for a while, while that fruit caramelizes nicely.  The red-lit "STOP OR THIS VEHICLE WILL EXPLODE!" did not deter my optimistic husband in the least. "This car is so old that it often says alarming stuff like that, but doesn't really mean it." But I was not convinc...
Read more

ON BEING A PRINCIPESSA (OR IMAGINING THAT YOU ARE)

-
Image
Looks like paradise and a great place to have to oneself for a few weeks, no? Well, it pretty much is. But only by day. The other night I went down to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find that it had been taken over by flying and crawling aliens. They were everywhere, and I had to jump out of my delicious torpor and into a killing frenzy. Last year’s invasion of the flying ants had resumed! They had made an initial appearance the other day, but I had taken what I thought were definitive extreme measures to reclaim my turf. (Just goes to show that the Ancient Greeks did not have a monopoly on hubris.) I had removed all temptations from the counter and ferreted them out of the most unexpected places. I think the other members of the family might be surprised to know that they are not the only ones in the house to love coffee. The biggest swarm of them was on top of and under the machine. But there were some tea-totalers, too, who had decided to set up residence in the...
Read more