Frittering Away the Day

Ok, I made good on the zucchini. And I decided not to pull a Jessica Seinfeld and do chocolate zucchini cookies. We pulled an Alice Waters and made zucchini fritters.

I had to alter the recipe because I didn't have 1 Tbsp. potato starch. I threw in 3 grated yukon gold potatoes on the theory that there's gotta be a tablespoon of potato starch in 3 potatoes. And I substituted green onions for the chives.

Clementine called for adding carrots. Why not? We threw in 3 of those as well. Grating with a food processor has high kid appeal.

I fried them up. They were tasty. Subtle, with just a bit of garlic, lemon zest and salt and pepper for seasoning. If I did it again I'd do more onion and let it carmelize.

Clem and Ev ate one or two each--I am not sure. Their friends varied in their opinions. Two had a tiny taste and one ate four.

Greta wasn't sure at first.

But ended up eating two.


The kitchen was abuzz all day. There were concoctions of shaved ice and loaves of whole wheat bread. And I wonder why I thought this would be really hard. My kids love to cook.

And they love to eat stuff they find in the woods, even only vaguely edible stuff. It shouldn't be that much of a stretch to get them to eat food. They are huge sour grass fans. It was a little funny to read that ethnographers have recorded children's love of sour grass.

The kids collected bay nuts. Whereas many of us like a bay leaf or two in soup, the nuts are one of those not-quite-foods local native Americans had to put up with like Hawaiians put up with taro root.

The kids leached them to remove the tannic acid. And then roasted them over an open fire. They were still horribly bitter.

The tannic water went, along with oleander leaves and buckeyes, into a concoction which might actually be dangerous or even fatal to drink. California native americans used poisonous buckeye nuts to stupefy fish in streams for easy catching. And oleander, well, yikes.

It boggles my mind that Clementine will chow down on manzanita and madrone berries, but won't eat the crisp and honey sweet golden delicious apples off our neighbor's tree. Which reminds me that it we still have a long way to go.