August 8th is known as "Leave Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch Day." The entire month of August, however, is an exercise in creativity when it comes to zucchini--baked, fried, grilled, turned into muffins and bread--as this crop starts to pop up everywhere. Earlier in the summer, in my eagerness, I actually bought myself zucchini from a farmer's market. However, at this point, there is no reason to pay for the vegetable. In spite of my utter lack of green thumb, pretty much every person I know is growing zucchini, and leaving it in the most unusual of places: back porches, on top of the communal microwave at work, in boxes outside empty classrooms at the university where I work.My mom had some pretty spectacular zucchini bread the last time I saw her, and when I asked her for the recipe, I promptly got a scanned copy directly from the old Lazarus cookbook. I even followed the recipe for the most part, except I had three cups of zucchini, rather than 2 1/2. I made one loaf of bread, and 12 muffins. The muffins were great right out of the oven, but became sticky after a day or two. As an aside, mom doesn't peel her zucchini, and it gives the bread pleasant green specks. For some reason I peeled mine, but it's definitely not necessary.
