There comes a time in every woman’s life when they finally succumb and just admit, “Yes, I’ve become my Mother.” Today was that day for me as I baked zucchini muffins for the very first time.

Don’t misunderstand. I have baked muffins, just never zucchini. With options like; morning glory, raspberry yogurt and the fan favourite banana chocolate chip, why would anyone bake a muffin that tastes best before you learn it’s zucchini and not in fact banana?

My Mother became obsessed with zucchini sometime in the mid 1980’s. My brothers reference “the summer of zucchini” often and I even delivered my grade seven speech in front of the school entitled, “My Mother’s Cooking—Special Guest Star The Zucchini.” I can’t remember if that’s the year I also spoke at the local, Kiwanis festival or if it’s the year that bitch Becky G beat me.

She introduced the zucchini innocently enough and for the most part, I think we were all on board, fairly accustomed to eating a lot of fresh fruits and veggies but then things got weird. She shredded it, baked it, substituted it for noodles, made my birthday cake a zucchini cake (all kids love that right?) and it became that miserable thing we found on our plates regardless of how it was sugar coated. Which, I might add, it was NEVER sugar coated.

We found it hidden in sauces, blended up and thrown into salads and sometimes even spread under our morning peanut buttered toast, next to the white vitamin C tablet.

Then, the other day, my neighbour delivered a zucchini the size of the Grand Caravan’s front tire and boasted about it coming from her Father’s garden. What was I going to do with this thing?

My Mom started emailing me from her self-titled book, “One million fantastic ways to cook zucchini” and the muffin recipe won out.

It called for three cups of zucchini so I’m guessing that should have made about 700 muffins?

We’ll have a taste test as soon as I can get my Mom and Fergie Oliver over here with a timer and a huge bottle of ketchup.

Just Like Mom.