First off let me say that I really do love Zucchini Bread, just not as a food. For me it is more of a symbol, sort of an All-American baked good (apologies to Apple Pie) that symbolizes the homely frugal spirit that made has made America (and the questionable baking skills that highlight our British heritage). It's not the kind of baked good that one finds at a bakery, it's really more of a way for home gardeners to use up excess overgrown spongy zucchini. Of course I've never actually made a zucchini bread and as far as I know no one close to me has either. This leads me to believe that, like fruitcakes, all the worlds supply of zucchini bread was made as World War II emergency rations and has been passed around ever since. With all of this in mind my vision for Zucchini Bread Day is more of a celebration of non-culinary aspects of the much maligned loaf. It would start of course with the Large Zucchini Drop and Run (or LZDR) a sort of fun run that begins with the dropping of the largest possible zucchini on your neighbors porch and running away as quickly as possible. This a necessary part of ZB day, seeing as it is considered bad luck to make zucchini bread with your own zucchini (or, I hasten to add, to consume your own - and perhaps anyone else’s, for that matter). Also it is important to get the running out of the way early, before that first (ill-advised) slice of the finished product, the digestive half-life of which is a good forty eight hours* Now of course comes the all important baking of the Zucchini bread. I don't really have much to say on the subject, suffice it to say that like laws and sausages perhaps the making of Zucchini bread is best left unseen. Once you've got one (or more likely a good dozen or so) zucchini bread(s), you are free to participate in any number of traditional activities - the Zucchini bread toss, Zucchini Bread carving, Zucchini bread time capsules, zucchini bread home construction projects, etc. By the end of the day all of the breads have dried out sufficiently (those few that weren't already sufficiently dry from the get-go) for the traditional twilight Bread fire, a time at which the whole community comes together to enjoy each others company and give thanks that it will be another year before the next ZB Day......................... *as determined by the Zucchini Bread Research institute (ZBRI)
