Zucchini-pocalypse: Sneak It Onto Neighbor’s Porch, Into Recipes, More

ACROSS AMERICA — Admit it. You’d do this even if there wasn’t an (unofficial) holiday for it. Aug. 8 is “National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.”

The origin of this not-really-a-holiday seems to lie in this riddle:

Why do people in small towns suddenly start locking their cars in August?
So their neighbors won’t fill it with zucchini.

Anyone who has ever grown zucchini knows this happens. They also know we are nigh on zucchini apocalypse time, when you may be plagued with nightmares of being taunted by a humongous squash, a refusal by even field mice (critters that normally love zucchini) to snack on it, and leaving your excess zucchini in the neighbor’s mailbox.

Stashing excess zucchini in the neighbor’s mailbox is illegal, for what it’s worth — despite its being listed by Gardeners Nets as one of the top 10 signs you may have too much zucchini. The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t specifically mention zucchini in its postal box restrictions, but the prohibition is implied.

It does happen.

“The lore of zucchini in your mailbox is true!” a Facebook user declared after finding three zucchini in her mailbox.

Creative uses for zucchini demonstrate the sheer desperation of gardeners to get rid of it. Some people turn zucchini into summer craft projects for their kids. Zucchini race cars are a thing, and what child of a gardener hasn’t whiled away summer hours making a fleet of zucchini boats? Making a boat is simple. Just scoop out the meat, attach a sail and launch the craft.

Sneak Zucchini Into Recipes

Instead of sneaking zucchini onto a neighbor’s porch, try sneaking it into some of your favorite recipes. For starters, zucchini can be baked, roasted, grilled, deep fried like a potato, stuffed with other garden bounties, sautéed with other vegetables, cut in slices for dipping, chopped for a salad, juiced with apples and mint, hidden in desserts, or used in other creative ways.

The point is, there are as many ways to cook zucchini as there are zucchinis in your garden.

Zucchini can become noodles with a spiralizer, julienne peeler or mandoline slicer.

Bridgette Schroeder, of Yorkville, Illinois, shared her recipe for a tangy shrimp dish, “Tequila Lime Shrimp Zoodles,” on Taste of Home. She said zoodles are a smart way to cut carbs without giving up flavor. Get the recipe.

Zucchini can also be a meat substitute no kid saw coming.

“With just picked-from-the-garden-zucchini, your kids won’t even know these burgers are meatless,” Kimberly Danek Pinkson, of San Anselmo, California, said on the Taste of Home site. Get the recipe.

Or, zucchini can be used to cut amount of meat used in sloppy joe sandwiches.

“I’m always looking for ways to serve my family healthy and delicious food, so after I started experimenting with my favorite veggies and ground beef, I came up with this favorite that my three kids actually request! This healthy take on sloppy joes reminds me of my own childhood,” Megan Niebuhr, of Yakima Washington, said of a concoction that stretches ground beef featured on Taste of Home. Get the recipe.

A Google search will unearth dozens of zucchini bread recipes. This one from Sally’s Baking Addiction is based on a family recipe that won a Maryland State Fair award. It has elevated ingredients such as applesauce, which works with the oil to keep the bread moist, and the applesauce can be substituted with sour cream, Greek yogurt or mashed bananas. Get the recipe.

If not for the dessert’s name, those savoring it might not know zucchini is an essential ingredient in Zoë François’ decadent chocolate cake, one of the recipes in her cookbook Zoë Bakes Cakes.

It’s inspired by a cake she ate while working as a photo assistant while attending college in Burlington, Vermont. The cake was a centerpiece of a spread of food she was photographing for a magazine article offering tips on using up zucchini.

“That cake blew my mind,” she wrote on her website. “Not in a million years would you guess there was zucchini in it, and the result was moist, sweet, but not overly so, and intensely chocolate.” Get the recipe.

Don’t Sneak It, Donate It

If you can’t cook it all, consider donating zucchini and other excess garden produce directly to a local food bank or community refrigerator.

Feeding America, which operates a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks feeding 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens shelter and other community organizations, has committed to accepting significant amounts of excess produce from growers in member-led cooperatives as part of its goal to provide 1.7 billion produce meals by 2025.

• Read more: Hunger In America

Local hunger-relief organizations also have programs that connect growers with excess produce with the people who need it. AmpleHarvest.org has a free online registry to find local food pantries. Before donating, contact the pantry to confirm they accept produce, ask about preferred drop-off times and how the produce should be prepared.

‘A Poor Excuse For A Cucumber’

Zucchini is the Rodney Dangerfield of vegetables — although, technically, zucchini is a fruit masquerading as a vegetable.

A 2022 survey of more than 2,100 Americans by OnePoll on behalf of Bolthouse Farms found only 45 percent of respondents said they were likely to eat zucchini — although the summer bounty performed better than other types of squash (39 percent) and well ahead of Brussels sprouts (36 percent).

For the record, Americans were most likely (70 percent) to eat broccoli. Who saw that coming? Carrots came in second (69 percent) and spinach third (55 percent).

Someone on Reddit dismissed zucchini as “a poor excuse for a cucumber.”

“Have you heard of natural selection?” the person said. “Well, the zucchini is the opposite of that. It’s a piece of crap mutation that came out of the cucumber family.”

That’s true.

Besides cucumbers, zucchini, mirliton and other squashes, the Cucurbits family also includes watermelon, cantaloupe, cushaw, cucuzzi, pumpkins, gourds and luffa.

Someone else compared it to “dirty water.”

A zucchini champion stepped in and said people only think they hate zucchini because they’d only had it cut into large rings and cooked with butter “until it was phlegmy and gross.”

Zucchini may deserve better than this online bullying. It’s a hydration heavyweight that is 94 percent water. It’s high in fiber and low in calories, with a large zucchini coming in at around 55 calories. These non-starchy, nutrient-dense vegetables are touted for potential anti-cancer benefits and are also associated with improved eye health and decreased joint inflammation.

Some people even call zucchini harvesting season “the most wonderful time of the year.”

Zucchini are practically canonized in verse, the word appearing in more than 300 songs. The “Green Zucchini: Storytime Song” and “Sesame Street: Veg Side Story,” in which the long, green gourd has a starring role, are kid-friendly. Erik Evermore goes in a different direction with his Led Zeppelin-inspired “The Zucchini Song” isn’t like that at all. Neither is “Tim Currey — The Zucchini Song,” as seen on “Saturday Night Live” on Dec. 5, 1981.

“The Zucchini Song” by, wait for it, The Zucchini Brothers, is breezy and fun. We’ll leave you with that.

Editor’s note: This story includes excerpts from one published on Aug. 3, 2023