A TASTE OF GIVING
It’s March and the hunt is on — no, not for Easter eggs, but for recipes and ploys to use up vegie gluts. I’ve been away from home for more than a week and I am dreading my return. Not because I won’t get a warm welcome but because my husband has been picking zucchinis and putting them in the fridge. It sounds like there’s more than a tonne of them; I hope he is exaggerating and they are zucchini, not marrow, size.
He’s not up on the wiles of vegetable dispersal — slipping a bag of zucchinis into a friend’s car as you cheerily wave goodbye or taking a very large bake (stuffed with zucchini) to the book club and insisting you can’t take it home.
I’ve been in Sydney, zucchini-less, staying with my children. I was telling them how I wished I’d had time to bring up zucchinis from home. That of course was code for “I could have off-loaded some”.
However, my son immediately wanted zucchini fritters so we went on a fruitless (pun intended) trip to a major nearby supermarket. Not a zucchini in sight. Apparently it’s not just loo paper that’s being stockpiled.
The give and take etiquette
Giving away excess produce comes with its own etiquette. How you respond to a gift of fresh produce depends on several factors.
Quite simply, some produce has more value. The etiquette also depends on whether the produce is eaten fresh (no payback needed) or a bulk amount for preserving.
Zucchinis, beans and green tomatoes in summer and early autumn don’t require payback. Kale never requires payback. In these cases you are doing the giver a favour.
Neither should you feel obliged if you pick your own from a backyard tree where it’s going to waste. More valuable fruit such as peaches or apricots should probably see something come back in return. If you are unsure, passing back a small (but not too small) jar of pickles, relish or jam doesn’t go astray.
Cottage gardener Lynnette Wood from Ulverstone raised the subject on Facebook recently and received great feedback. She was pulling up the last of her tomatoes and called out to the neighbours to see if any were wanted. One neighbour did pop in for a few more to add to a relish that was in the making.
Another poster commented that she’d bought apricots from a neighbour after giving them 15kg of tomatoes for free and felt a bit miffed. However, the balance over the fence was restored when the same neighbour presented them with a crayfish.
I have a good deal going with one of my neighbours. She regularly brings over lettuce that’s bolted to seed, spinach and unwanted milk thistles for my chooks, and in return she scores the odd dozen eggs when the chooks are in full production.
Also in abundance now, but not to everyone’s taste, are medlars. These very odd and old-fashioned fruit were popular centuries before the modern apple reached everyone’s garden. Today they are a curiosity, but this year they are in abundance in old gardens where they still flourish.
The apple conquered the medlar all those years ago because it’s harvested and eaten crisp and crunchy and most varieties store well. Medlars have to be almost rotten — the term bletted is used to describe the ripening process — before they are eaten. When bletted they are sweet, if soft.
To harvest medlars, wait until they come off the tree easily or fall to the ground. Let them soften. Then make a fruit paste as you would quinces (payback required). If you don’t want the medlars on your tree, put out the word, there’ll be someone who does.