Ordinary Nothing

I’m quite partial to zucchinis (courgettes), the dark-green rinded ones. They have a nicer flavour than the regular light green squashes found around here, and their rind isn’t bitter and also usually much smoother and easy to clean. The only problem with them is that around here pretty much every vegetable store and supermarket has tons of the light green squashes, and very few of them has zucchinis on stock.

This week I saw on a store something very amusing. Zucchinis with a marketing twist. Instead of lying in a large pile like most other vegetables, they were packed in groups of three, and had an advertisement pamphlet in each pack declaring that they are an amazing and new brand of squashes that don’t require peeling. Plus some exclamation mark to emphasise how exciting it is. Technically it’s true that on many cases where squashes need peeling, zucchinis can go without, but you don’t have to always peel squashes as well. And zucchinis are far from being new on the market.

Worse, those wonders of zucchini packages only included three each because they held huge zucchinis. Some of the largest I ever saw. It looks impressive, and certainly gives the feeling that you’re getting your full money’s worth. Unless you happen to know something about them, in which case you know that the small ones are much better, with a far richer taste. But they looks small, so apparently someone decided won’t look good in this advertised campaign.

And the pamphlet also included some amazing recipes. Truly stuff that it is impossible to think about by yourself, and which supplies some amazing ideas on what can be done with them (Yes, I’m being sarcastic, thanks for noticing). Better than any fancy recipe book you could find. Like for example, one recipe consisted of telling you to put them in boiling water for ten minutes, take them out, and season to your taste. Helpful, isn’t it? Another recipe, for tomato sauce zucchini, told you to make a tomato sauce according to your taste, slice zucchinis into it, and let it boil for further five minutes. Yet another complex and detailed recipe suggested slicing them, frying the slices in a pan for a few minutes, and then add whatever sauce you like.

I was laughing so hard reading those “recipes”, it was really great fun. Clearly, anyone who has no clue at all about cooking won’t be able to season things to taste or combine with their other sauces. And anyone who has even a little tiny inkling of cooking, will certainly not need these absurdly basic recipe ideas. Very amusing.

Oh, it does serve a purpose of telling someone unfamiliar with them what are the approximate cooking time that they need. This is useful for people encountering a vegetable for the first time, and who don’t want to just experiment and see for themselves. But if that’s the information they wanted to pass, they should have put a tiny section on cooking instructions, and specified that. Not provide a bunch of short and totally meaningless “recipes”.

May 27th, 2005 at 21:05 EET | Categories: Food and Drink | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.