AS A child, I used to dread those days in late summer when cooked marrow was served.
It's true it was stuffed with mince and flavoured with onions and herbs, but we also had to clean up all the awful, tasteless watery stuff that was wrapped around it.
I can't help but think of those days every time I go into our vegetable patch and find myself tripping over enormous, half-hidden, forgotten zucchinis.
After all, it was the Italians who taught us that they tasted best when eaten about the size of a large, fat cigar.
Just the same, I can't stand waste so I've been putting these massive, horticultural zeppelins to reasonable use. They are a great way of adding water when making soup.
It's no trouble to peel them, strip out any hard seeds and chuck great lumps of them among the onions.
They don't add much flavour but do produce a thickening effect. They also keep surprisingly well, although the skins get a bit hard.
I mention all this because it is harvesting and clearing up time for zucchinis and close relatives, including pumpkins and cucumbers.
These are frost-tender plants, but when the fruit is also bitten, it immediately starts to rot from that point and fails to store.
So cut pumpkins free with plenty of stem before frost gets them. It helps if they are left uncovered out in the sun every day for three weeks to harden off skins. Cover each night of course.
Strangely enough, I never tasted pumpkin until I came to Australia in 1950.
I remember sitting at a table with a group of other Poms, all soldiers recruited in Britain, when we noticed what looked like great lumps of carrot sitting on our plates.
It was, of course, steamed pumpkin, but it was a profound culture shock for all of us when we took our first mouthful, expecting the taste of carrots.
I still prefer roasted pumpkin. However, it is interesting that stored pumpkins - they include winter squash such as butternut - taste better, sweeter and richer the longer they are stored.
Last year, I harvested some sweet grey about this time and we have just finished the last, and they were truly delicious (roasted and in soups mainly).
Some varieties keep better than others. Queensland blue and Crown Prince will also keep up to a year if stored correctly.
Preparation for storage is easy. After sun-hardening the skins, wipe with a thin layer of olive oil, especially around the stem area.
If stems are accidentally snapped off, dribble candle wax over to completely seal the wound.
Then store the pumpkins on wooden slats or planks - not concrete. Place on one side so stems stick out sideways.
This is a little awkward because the shape of most pumpkins tempts us to leave them in flat positions, hollows upwards.
Unfortunately, these hollows collect moisture causing rot to set in from wet stem bases. Sideways storage stops this happening, although it still pays to check them every few weeks.
As for the debris left behind in the garden, the good news is that the masses of soft, trailing vine material rots away with astonishing speed.
I simply drag it to the nearest fruit trees and arrange it in rough, bulky circles beneath drip-lines.
It disappears into the soil in weeks, suppresses grass and weeds with amazing efficiency and earthworms love the stuff.
I told you I can't stand waste.
