As the last weeks of August rolled around, my sister-in-law's vegetable garden used to be overrun with zucchinis (that was before she gave up growing vegetables). For mysterious reasons, Wendy's garden sprouted more zucchinis than a family of four could possibly consume, particularly since one of her sons didn't eat anything green. It didn't help that some of these specimens were the size of my forearm. In my grandmother's day, bumper crops like these would be blanched and stored in Mason jars for the winter. But by the dawn of this century, home preserving was history. This left Wendy wondering,...