Healing with Food Article

Zucchini

Accompanying recipe: Zucchini Blossoms Stuffed with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Summer squash—be they zucchini, crock neck, yellow or patty pan--are a welcome warm weather vegetable. Tender fleshed and brightly colored they are charmingly flavorful when small and garden fresh.

Used medicinally, summer squash are cooling and help balance a person with too much inner heat. What are the symptoms of such a person? Someone with a florid or red complexion, who feels hot, fears or dislikes the heat and is attracted to cold foods. See Thermal Properties of Food.

The flavor of summer squash rapidly diminishes as their size and/or time past harvest increases. Mentally compare the bland flavor of an out-of-season zucchini to its bright taste when really fresh. I feast on zucchini and--and even their blossoms--in the summer, and in cold seasons I enjoy winter squash when it's at its peak.

Zucchini blossoms are soft and limp as silk lingerie and are tasty when sautéed, stuffed or baked. Or, slice and liberally strew them in a salad or as a garnish for their spectacular golden color. While all Cucurbita, or gourd family, flowers are edible, it's the large squash blossoms with a respected culinary history in both Native American and European cuisine.

Does harvesting squash blossoms mean an end to the fruit? Nope, we can have our blossoms and our zucchinis, too. Squash flowers are either male or female. When gathering their blossoms, pick only some male flowers, leaving a few on each plant for a bee or bug to climb into, get all down and pollen dirty, and then spread the male stuff to a neighboring female. Leave on the plant as many female blossoms as you wish to mature.

How to tell the boys from the girls? It's easy. The male blossoms are narrow-stemmed, while the female blossoms attach to the stem with a large bulge that is, in fact, the nascent squash.

From late spring through early summer you may find squash blossoms in farmers' or ethnic markets. Select fresh blossoms with closed buds. Their cost per-pound is high, but don't let that put you off as a dozen blossoms weigh only an ounce or two. If the blossoms are more than hours old, pinch out the central stamen because it becomes slimy.

The accompanying recipe is Zucchini Blossoms Stuffed with Sun Dried Tomatoes.

May you be well nourished,

Rebecca Wood