Against Courgettes

I have to say I utterly despise courgettes (or zucchini, if you prefer). Hard to think of a blander, more watery, useless vegetable.

I mean, has anyone ever, in the entire history of civilization, ever had chance to utter or hear the following words:

“Well, yes, it would have been a marvellous meal – if only there had been some courgettes!“.

I feel the same way about courgettes that Dr Johnson – and a good many of his contemporaries, no doubt – did about cucumbers:

At Grissipol we found a good farm house, belonging to the Laird of Col, and possessed by Mr M�Sweyn. On the beach here there is a singular variety of curious stones. I picked up one very like a small cucumber. By the by, Dr Johnson told me, that Gay�s line in the Beggar�s Opera, �As men should serve a cucumber,� &c. has no waggish meaning, with reference to men flinging away cucumbers as too COOLING, which some have thought; for it has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Tuesday, 5th October)

I’m moved to write this for even now my wife is boiling courgettes to feed to our youngest, as she sleeps blissfully unaware of the tasteless pap that’s heading her way.