We fought over them for years, my grandfather and I. Zucchini. He wanted them big and I wanted them little. And when I say big, I mean really big — at least as big as a forearm. I understood why. To Papa, it was free money. Just by waiting a day or two, those little zucchini grew tenfold — and brought 10 times the price. I tried telling him we could charge more for the smaller ones, but he wasn’t buying it. He couldn’t believe that folks would pay more per pound for them. It got so that I’d sneak out to the rows of zucchini plants when he’d gone to town or was taking a nap, pick a basket of smaller specimens, then shove it under the counter in the garage where we sold our produce, putting a few out on display when he wasn’t around.

The truth is, although my grandfather grew lots of luscious vegetables, he wasn’t much interested in eating them. And when he did, he wanted them prepared the same ways he’d eaten them since childhood. Green beans — no matter how young and tender — had to be long-cooked with onion and bacon. Corn was boiled: the grill was OK for steaks, but no place for corn — or any other vegetable, for that matter. Zucchini? My grandmother sautéed a little onion and garlic, then threw in the sliced zucchini and cooked them until they were completely tender, almost falling apart, then sprinkled them with parmesan cheese. It was tasty, but watery. Even that was pretty exotic for Papa. He rarely ate any at all, and if he did, it was just a very small serving to appease my grandmother.

When I began cooking on my own in college and reading cookbooks I discovered how much better younger zucchini were. Those mammoth monsters might have been OK for the zucchini bread and chopped up into casseroles such as “zu-beefy” that were all the rage back in the 70s. But they also had tougher skins, and insides with large seeds and interiors that were largely tasteless. Sautéing sliced or cubed smaller slender zucchini lightly over high heat so that some of their water content evaporated, I discovered their true, delicate, flavor for first time. I was hooked, but Papa had no use for that fancy stuff.

Zucchini was a big part of my summers in the years when my grandfather, my fiancéthen-husband, Peter, and I worked together on the farm. I was the one largely responsible for picking them — by choice. I volunteered for zucchini duty primarily to avoid picking beans.

Picking enough beans for supper is one thing. But facing a stack of bushel baskets at the end of rows of bean bushes that seemed to stretch into the horizon always made me want to turn and run. Do you have any idea how many green beans it takes to fill a bushel basket? Picking zucchini — even small ones — was infinitely preferable. One summer I calculated I picked almost two tons of them by myself.

We hired bean pickers that year. Back then, my idea of smaller zucchini was ones that were about six to eight inches long. Even more important was that they be slender — the guarantee that the seeds were unformed or barely formed. The miniature summer squashes available today — pattypans the size of quarters, finger-long zucchini, often with blossoms still attached — were unheard of. I laugh to think what Papa would have said about them. It would not have been pretty.

Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].