Why zucchini? Well, why not zucchini?

You see, it is my favourite vegetable. A little butter, a little salt and lots of pepper and zucchini. Divine! You are not going to believe this, but when I visited the first born last year, I had zucchini for breakfast every single day…. umm almost every day I mean. I would have had them for lunch and dinner too, except that there were other things to try out. Anyway, that’s how much I love my zucchini.

The zucchini in the US is nothing like what’s passed off for zucchini here in my city. They are healthy specimens bursting at the seams as it were, and manage to be both crispy and juicy when they land up on your plate. In contrast, he ones here are sorry specimens. What’s more, they cost if not the earth at least the land it is grown on when compared to other veggies here. What finally ends up on your table is not even worth the salt you sprinkle on it when it comes to taste.

Sigh.

Is in any wonder then that I was picking up zucchini each time I went to the store with the First Born? If he was the one going the conversation went somewhat this way:
First Born: What do you want from the store, Amma?
Amma aka me (without missing a beat): Zucchini.

Also New York cheesecake, but then that’s a different story and needs to be told separately on another day.

By the way how many of you know that zucchini is a loaned word from the Italian and that there it is actually the plural form? Yeah, came as a surprise to me too. Zucchino is the singular masculine form. Oh yes. The feminine is zucchina and its plural is zucchine. Don’t kill me if it is wrong. That’s what I could gather from my reading online about my favourite vegetable.

Zucchini is not your new kid on the block but comes from old, very old stock. They are descendants of the grand old squashes domesticated 7000 years ago. Whoa! Impressive I must say, though zucchini itself is young in comparison, having been bred only in the late 19th century. I gathered from my reading that zucchini has aliases, courgette for one, and baby marrow for another. But personally I prefer zucchini. How else could I have written a post on Z day?

And now to the zero in the title. ‘What’s a zero zucchini?’ At least some of you must have that question on your minds. Well, it is the number of zucchini in my refrigerator right now. Zilch. Zero. Zero is also the number of alphabets left in the a2z challenge of April. 😉

©️ Shail Mohan 2024

I am embarrassed to have taken so long to finish the April blogathon. But age is catching up and scheduling too many things to do is not working in my way. May be I should cut down on some of my activities, but which ones? I love them all. Oh what a dilemma! Anyway, I am not going to think of it now. I will just be thankful that I was able to finish the blogathon. Thank you for reading! 🙂