Send Zucchini Recipes - STAT

These days I can most often be found in the kitchen, with oversized zucchini in one hand and a box grater in the other. Bowls of the green pulp piling up around me, soon to be bagged and put up in the deep freezer. A YouTube video of a young girl sharing her oh-so-aesthetically-pleasing cottage renovations plays on a tiny phone screen propped against the butter dish. If I focus just on my hands and the screen, I can imagine myself in a cottage core dream.

I am decidedly not a canner. I am decidedly a worry-er. Canning gives me an untamable irrational anxiety that I’m going to make a grievous error that results in illness. So it’s me, a seemingly never ending supply of zucchini, and the deep freezer against the world.

It’s my first year back on my feet, literally, after losing my mobility for over a year. Instead of biting off more than I can chew by learning to can (as opposed to biting off more than I can chew by planting too many zucchini plants, whoops), I opted to commit to fully utilizing the preservation tools and skills I already have. To focus more on getting back into the rhythm of regular harvest and “putting up” rather than exponentially growing my preserving skills. To foster a practice, a habit. To incorporate preserving food back into my daily life. In short, to keep it simple.

So much of the world we live in emphasizes constant growth. Whether it’s your social media audience, your quarterly earnings, or your gains at the gym. No wonder us homesteading girlies feel so drawn to these slow aesthetic vlogs: the ones where a woman finds some vintage plates at an antique shop and romanticizes a whole afternoon dedicated to hanging them just right in her dreamy traditional kitchen. These videos slow us down. They treasure the now. They quiet the noise that abounds in the modern world which tells us to always grow, do better, achieve more, go, go, go.

Perhaps we all need to take a moment to recognize that so often what we already have is enough. Or even still, who we are is enough. Where we are at in our journey is beautiful. And instead of rushing to grow, its perfectly acceptable (even better, perhaps) to take a moment and cherish the beauty of the now.

As I process the late July zucchini, out the cabin’s huge picture windows I can see the onions ready to harvest. On my evening walk the night before I discovered the first round of black berries are ready to be picked. There are currently 12 cucumbers in the fridge waiting to be preserved in some form that I haven’t settled on yet. My heart delights at the discovery that is soon to unfold. The discovery of finding my favorite way to put up each of these and all the crops to come this year — without the canner.

Plus, who’s to say that a freezer full of zucchini, tomatoes, berries, breads, pies, etc. isn’t just as beautiful as a shelf full of home canned goods?

When my freezer is full, but regularly accessed and the food consumed — then perhaps it will be time to invest in a canner, an official ball recipe book, and some quality time with a soul older than mine who has a lifetime of canning experience.

But my freezer isn’t full yet. And I’m enjoying the moment and the season too much to rush my growth as a food preserver.

So cheers to my fellow freezer queens, quick pickle goddesses, and drying rack mavens. Romanticize where you are in your food preservation journey presently. And please, for the love of all things, send zucchini recipes — STAT.