Jim Durst will tell you that good vegetables begin underground. Feed the soil, he likes to say, and it will feed the plants. Jim came to that idea early, falling for organic farming as a young man and going on to help spark the sustainable farming movement that took root across the Capay Valley.
While zucchini is technically a fruit, almost no one treats it like one. This summer squash has a mild, slightly sweet flavor and a high water content that make it as refreshing as it is easy to cook with. It crisps into chips, disappears into a cake, holds its own in a quiche, and turns delicate when sliced thin for a summer salad. These four recipes include savory and sweet ways to use zucchini and will inspire you to keep zucchini in regular rotation all summer long.
It was the early 1990s when Nan McEvoy fell for a quiet stretch of rolling hills outside Petaluma, Calif. The 550-acre property had been a dairy farm and it was still zoned for agriculture, which meant she had to grow something. Friends suggested she keep it simple — maybe plant a few trees and leave it at that, but Nan was not a simple-project sort of person.
