I recently read A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. I am a total sucker for memoirs and I took this one down while flying to and from Denver a few weeks back. It’s the story of a busy, thirtysomething New York City woman who spends a year traveling to her native country of Singapore to learn the traditional recipes and cooking secrets of her grandmothers and aunties.

It may not come as a surprise that the book had me fantasizing about a break from our Brooklyn life in which I would travel the world in search of food memories. It also had me craving the Singaporean dishes described in the book. But most of all it had me thinking about the the passing of traditional family recipes.

The summer of my first CSA share, when Brad and I were living in a little Williamsburg apartment that we were starting to feel was too small for all the zucchini we were getting, I called my mom and asked her for my Grandma’s zucchini recipe. I remember this being something that was always freshly made whenever we arrived at her house in Pennsylvania for a visit, and I would eat slice after slice, lightly toasted and buttered. My mom called my grandmother, who read her the recipe over the phone, and then my mom called back and relayed it to me.

This was one successful game of telephone and I’ve been making the zucchini bread ever since. Over the years I’ve tried variations – less sugar, different nuts, a bit of spice – but ultimately it always comes out the best when I make it just like my Grandma told me (via my mom) to. It’s the reason why I own 3 loaf pans, is pretty much foolproof and freezes wonderfully. I recommend the eat 1 now, freeze 2 for later rule so you can enjoy it when the zucchini is long gone.