My mom's favorite summer zucchini recipe

I couldn’t focus to read, so in need of a distraction while sitting at my mother’s bedside in the nursing home I pulled out my laptop and began working on calendar week 38 (CW38). That’s how we do menu planning at Marley Spoon, where I work—we live in CWs, and my world is often months in the future. While most people are enjoying peak season strawberries, or anticipating stone fruits, my attention is turning towards the last licks of summer produce and the beginning of fall harvest.

CW38 is mid-September.

While planning recipes, I glanced from time to time to watch my mother’s chest gently bounce up and down with each labored breath. It occurred to me that I was working in a future she likely won’t live to see, although it’s hard to know what she’s been aware of these last few months as her dementia grew worse and worse.