Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

A brownie-muffin for zucchini season

A fudgy zucchini muffin, cold salted butter and the family language of asking, “What can I make you?”

Published August 31, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

A version of this recipe first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why.

My grandmother has always been a rattler.

When I was a child, she gave me a book called “Gus Was a Friendly Ghost,” about a genial little ghost who makes grilled-cheese sandwiches and occasionally gives himself away by bumping around somewhere out of sight. Gus cannot help rattling. He is a ghost. It’s what they do.

This is, more or less, my grandmother’s domestic mode.

She has always been an early riser, padding around in sock feet before almost anyone else was awake, a habit that seemed perfectly reasonable on the slightly tacky black-and-white linoleum of her kitchen and substantially less reasonable on the polished wooden staircase leading down to it. By the time the rest of us began stirring, she had already been conducting a small invisible orchestra downstairs: cabinet doors opening and closing, coffee being made, forks clicking against bowls as she whipped eggs for my grandfather.

Years ago, you could sometimes hear the coiled cord of the kitchen landline being pulled to its absolute physiological limit as she attempted to reach the far side........

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