Cooking

It's not for everyone.

Recently I found myself in a high-stress situation involving seven Jewish women and a large quantity of zucchini.

This happened in a synagogue, specifically Temple Judea — or, as it is written in Hebrew, “aeduJ elpmeT”. Michelle and I are members there, although I am not Jewish.

Religionwise, Michelle and I have a deal. My end of it is, I accompany her to services for the Jewish High Holy Days. This is not a small commitment. I was raised in the Episcopalian tradition, and if I were to compare Episcopalianism and Judaism, I would say that the major difference — I’m not talking about theology here, just pacing — is speed of worship. Your Episcopalians worship at a significantly brisker tempo. You can attend a 10 a.m. Episcopalian service and easily make an 11:15 a.m. tee time. Whereas a Jewish service, at least during the High Holy Days, is more comparable, in terms of total time commitment, to highway construction. A LOT of things have to happen before it can be officially declared finished, including 1,347 prayers, a Torah parade and several blowings of the horn of a ram.

So I spend many hours sitting next to Michelle in synagogue services, but you will never hear me complaining, because I am sound asleep a deal is a deal. And Michelle has held up her end of our religion bargain, which is: she lets me have a Christmas tree. In fact she enjoys having a Christmas tree.

Q. Wait, if she enjoys it, doesn’t that mean your deal is kind of unfair to you?

A. Yes! No, and I will explain why:

We live in Miami. Miami is not like other parts of the country, where Christmas trees, as I understand it, literally grow out of the ground. In Miami, Christmas trees have to be trucked in from far away, and they are often sold out before Christmas. One year we waited until December 23 to look for a tree, and the only source we could find — I swear I am not making this up — was a guy selling trees out of a pickup truck in the parking lot of a strip club called Bare Necessity. This man was not selling prime specimens. The tree we ended up with had maybe six needles. It was more like a Christmas stick.

So over the years I have developed a mental-health disorder that psychiatrists call FONGACT (pronounced “fongact”) which stands for “Fear Of Not Getting A Christmas Tree.” We usually buy our tree from a seasonal outfit that operates out of a church parking lot near our house. In the next week or so it will open for business, and when it does, I will become increasingly unhinged. Every time a car drives past our house with a Christmas tree tied to the roof, I’ll point it out to Michelle and tell her we need to go get our tree right now, and she’ll say let’s wait until after Thanksgiving, and I’ll say but they might run out before Thanksgiving, and she’ll say they never run out before Thanksgiving, and I’ll say BUT THIS YEAR THEY MIGHT. The truth is, I would buy our Christmas tree on July Fourth if I could. Usually Michelle is able to restrain me, but my FONGACT is getting worse. It’s only a matter of time before I run out into the street with a machete, force a passing car to stop, and hack the tree off their roof. That’s how much Christmas means to me.

My point is, to make our relationship work, Michelle and I have had to adapt to each other’s religious background, which is how I ended up in the stressful situation with the zucchini, which as you may recall, although I doubt it, is my topic today.

What happened was, Michelle volunteered us to work in the Temple Judea soup kitchen, which prepares meals for needy Miami families. Thus on a recent morning I found myself wearing an apron along with seven women in the synagogue kitchen. (I don’t mean all eight of us were crammed into one apron. Everyone had an individual apron.)

I was, frankly, nervous about preparing meals for people I don’t know. I do sometimes cook at home, but essentially I make only one dish, which is called “Meat Heated Up.” The recipe is:

1. Get some kind of meat.

2. Heat it up.

3. Serve it on plates.

4. Take it back and heat it up some more because Michelle says it’s not fully cooked.

In other words, I’m comfortable preparing food, but only for people who can defend themselves from it. I’m reluctant to endanger innocent civilians. So I was nervous about working in the Temple Judea soup kitchen, especially because the woman in charge, whose name is Sharon and who is a highly regarded professional caterer, assigned me the task of making a dessert called “Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread.”

This was alarming on several levels. First of all, it involved zucchini, which was originally developed by the Roman army for use as a truncheon.

Source: Matthew Brady

Although it was an effective anti-barbarian combat weapon, zucchini was never intended for human consumption. Granted, some people claim it’s edible, but these people almost always, under cross-examination, turn out to be vegans, who, for ethical reasons — and don’t get me wrong, I respect them for this — do not eat food.

Anyway, there I was, in my apron, confronted with enough zucchini to arm a Roman platoon, and Sharon the Caterer was expecting me to turn it into a dessert.

Step One was to shred the zucchini with a “box grater,” which is what I’m doing here:

This process turns the zucchini into thousands of smaller, less threatening pieces, which in Step Two you quietly, when Sharon the Caterer is not looking, throw into the garbage.

Ha ha! That’s a joke, of course. Sharon the Caterer is NEVER not looking. Step Two is the really hard part of Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread: adding ingredients. This is where the division of labor in the Temple Judea food bank was definitely unfair. The women working across the counter from me were making the main meal, which was meatloaf and mashed potatoes. So they were essentially dealing with two ingredients, namely meat and potatoes.

It was a very different story on the dessert side of the counter. It turns out that Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread requires a LOT of ingredients, to compensate for the fact that, as the name suggests, it contains zucchini. The other ingredients basically function as antidotes to the zucchini. This meant that I, working under the extremely watchful gaze of Sharon the Caterer, had to contend with this:

Not only were there many different ingredients and units of measurement, but also everything involved fractions, and if you think Sharon the Caterer is going to agree that you can tell when you’ve added one and one-quarter teaspoons of ground cinnamon by eyeballing it as you pour it directly from the container, or that, what the hell, baking powder and baking soda are pretty much the same thing, then you, with all due respect, know nothing about Sharon the Caterer. She is a real stickler for exactitude. I would be 100 percent in favor of putting her in charge of the federal budget. The national debt would be paid off within hours.

Anyway, it was a nerve-wracking experience, but we (Michelle was also on dessert duty) ended up filling six baking pans with Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread batter. How did it look? I will not mince words: It looked like Temple Judea had been invaded by a herd of cattle suffering from a severe intestinal disorder.

But guess what: After she baked the loaves, Sharon the Caterer dropped off a sample of the finished product at our house, and... it was pretty good! It tasted like brownies. You couldn’t detect the zucchini at all. Maybe the zucchini evaporates during the baking process. Or maybe Sharon the Caterer discarded the glop we made and brought us some store-bought pity brownies.

In any event, I’m relieved that my stint in the food bank is over, although Michelle is planning to volunteer us again. Maybe I should demand a second Christmas tree.

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