FOOD FIGHT

I Got Egged, for Sure

If you leave out an ingredient, your zucchini bread won’t rise to the occasion

Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to.

What happens when you’re entirely in the wrong — no ifs, ands or buts about it? Well, for life’s little peccadilloes, there’s always someone to mete out the proper punishment. And it won’t taste so good.

Another lifetime ago, a colleague and I were in charge of designing the Food Section of a metro daily.

The newspaper’s Food Editor selected the recipes and did the test cooking and baking, and wrote stories about the bounty she’d discovered. Someone else took enticing photos. My friend and I had to make sure the recipes, stories and photos were put together in an attractive package and then printed once a week.

I learned a valuable lesson one day about paying attention to details.

My friends in the news business knew this. Heck, even my Nana’s quilting circle was familiar with the drill. Turns out that I found out the hard way that cutting corners, when it comes to recipes at least, is pretty much a cardinal sin in the cooking community.

Every little old lady in Dallas County and beyond apparently gets up with the sun every Thursday to snag their copy of The Dallas Morning News. Why? Well, the Food Section, of course! Then they hunt recipes and coupons, and pick up provisions at the store to make those recipes that very same day.

Yeah, even in the digital age, quite a few folks still get their paper thrown daily in the driveway.

Any clue what happens when you make zucchini bread without eggs?

You end up with the equivalent of zucchini rocks, along with quite a bit of egg on your metaphorical face. And, back in the day, the two young knuckleheads who were responsible for that particular error (Leaving out the eggs in a zucchini bread recipe? What kind of cretin was I, anyway?) get to spend at least a month fielding about a gazillion irate calls from grandmas all over North Texas, who were expecting fragrant loaves of bread and got nothing but a couple of vegetable-filled bricks.

Needless to say, a whole lotta grannies — and maybe some younger pups who loved a delish summertime loaf of zucchini bread — were not pleased when they put their heavenly scented creations on the counter to cool.

Was it a badly calibrated oven? Was it baker’s error? No, it was two 20-somethings who didn’t take their jobs seriously enough.

Did the phones in our newsroom light up that morning? Do fire ants carry a ferocious sting when you sit on ’em?

Nanas and MeeMaws from our circulation area and beyond howled til the hens came home, as my Nana would say. And my partner and I had to get with it, quick-like, to repair any damage caused by our gaffe.

First things first. When a newspaper makes a mistake, the rule of thumb is to print a “correction”. This means a small story, with a big headline, notifying readers that what they read was not, well, exactly the truth. In the case of a misprinted zucchini bread recipe, that would mean printing a corrected recipe, too.

So we got together and conjured a correction that would soothe those out there who felt they’d been wronged and, perhaps, lend a little bit of levity to such a serious situation.

My friend, Gretchen, wrote the apology. I was in charge of the headline. That would be the bold line of type — some might refer to it as the article’s “title” — that would sit above our correction.

Was I making fun of our mistake? Guilty as charged.

The headline I wrote for the amended recipe in the next day’s paper? “Eggs on our faces instead of in zucchini bread”.

Get it? I don’t know — I liked it.

But we didn’t get off that easily. Gretchen and I spent the four weeks or so manning the newsroom phones, explaining to hundreds, if not thousands, of disgruntled grandmas everywhere that we — not they — made the mistake in the recipe, and that we — not they — were not going to be forgiven so easily for our tresspasses.

Trust me — Hell hath no fury like a Nana scorned.

Did we learn our lesson? Yup, and then some. From then on, you never saw two more conscientious baby scribes when the Food Section was going to press.

Double-checking — is it Pepperidge Farm breadcrumbs (more zesty) or plain old Panko bread crumbs (more for filling than taste) in that meatloaf? Oh, and there’s a vegetarian take on that traditional fare — use zucchini instead of ground beef.

Triple-checking — How many eggs in pound cake (one more than in the aforementioned zucchini bread)? Does the sauce go first when layering lasagna (yes, even if the main ingredient is zucchini)? What about zucchini boats — they don’t really float, do they (an emphatic NO!)?

You get the idea, I reckon. And no, we didn’t really try to float those zucchini boats.

Oh, yeah, I learned one more valuable life lesson. I don’t really like to speak on the phone for an extended period of time with folks I don’t rightly know. Especially if they’re irate, elderly, and have forgotten to put their hearing aids in.

I covered a lot as a journalist — politics, culture, travel, sports — but as a young Newsie, the Food Section was always the bane of my existence. But a great learning tool, too.

And you’d better believe that all these years later I still think about my trials and tribulations in the newspaper biz every time a neighbor shares the bounty of her vegetable garden, especially the overly large, elongated green vegetable — dare I say zucchini? — that proliferates about this time of year.

OK, it seems only right that after warming up your tastebuds with my silly tale of woe, I should include a recipe. Here’s one of my Nana’s. I call it — wait for it — Nana’s Zucchini Bread. And I didn’t forget the eggs this time — promise!

Nana’s Zucchini Bread

𝐈𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon 3 eggs 1 cup vegetable oil 2 1/4 cups white sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 2 cups grated zucchini 1 cup chopped walnuts

𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

• Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
• Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
• Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl.
• Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well.
• Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
• Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until fork inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes.
• Enjoy! And please, don’t forget the eggs.