Hold (onto) the zucchini

Not all men are the same, not all dirt is the same, not all haircuts are the same, and not all zucchini are the same.
What they have in common:

1. You can’t leave any of them in the bottom of a refrigerator drawer and expect them to improve.
2. If you start with quality, you won’t be as tempted to leave them in a refrigerator drawer.
3. Improvements can be made

My man started out fine and remains fine. The dirt out back was a bleak misery but has been nurtured, cuddled and caressed back to life w/fat juicy worms and compost. The haircut isn’t working flat out. Cutting my hair w/whatever scissors I can find in the junk drawer is over.
I have never met a good zucchini in this country. They are either bitter and nasty or bland and tasteless. I buy them because I hope in vain that they’ll be everything I know they can be and then leave them to whither because I know they’ll do nothing but leave me wanting.
Yesterday though, I won the battle. I sliced 3 cloves of hefty garlic cloves into paper thin slivers and sizzled them up in olive oil with flat leaf parsley. I peeled two strips of lemon zest from the pith underneath and threw that in with a few red pepper flakes. 3 zucchini in a small chop. Salt and pepper and then SUGAR! Only a little a bit, only a tiny scream of it, plus a solid squeeze of lemon juice gave me enough agrodolce zing zang to make the zucchini worth eating. I pounded a few tablespoons of pignoli w/sea salt, ripped arugula leaves from the garden and tore them up. When hardly half a box of orchiette were al dente, I added them to the zucchini w/the pignoli, the arugula leaves, a few tablespoons of the pasta’s cooking water and a good handful of parm. regiano.

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