Do you remember what it was like to skin your knee when you were a kid?

Maybe you’d cry; maybe you wouldn’t. But eventually you’d hobble back to the house and sit somewhere in the bathroom while your mom or your sister cleaned it off, dabbed on some antibacterial ointment, and added a bandage.

If you were lucky, maybe your bandage would even have Garfield or the Smurfs on it. (As the youngest of four, I was never so lucky. I thought only rich people bought Band-Aids. We had gauze and tape.)

At any rate, that was about the extent of the damage, I bet. I don’t remember feeling sore for days afterward because of the fall. I don’t recall visiting my PCP or a physical therapist for any post-fall rehabilitation.

I just got up, dusted off, and moved on.

Ah, those were the days.

You see, my family and I recently visited the Shenandoah Valley in southwest Virginia. We had a blast: we went to a drive-in movie, saw the Natural Bridge, hiked to an amazing waterfall, fed animals in a drive-through safari and toured the Frontier Culture Museum.

The Frontier Culture Museum is a sort of immigrant’s colonial Williamsburg. (That’s not how they describe it on the website, of course.)

There are houses and other buildings that represent the origins of the primary groups that moved into the Shenandoah Valley when white settlers arrived in the United States: Irish and English and German, yes, but also West African and Native American.
It was fascinating. It was also very, very hot and required quite a bit of walking.

At one point, one of my feet went up when I expected it to go down. It wasn’t a significant difference – maybe three or four inches.
But for just a moment, my leg went weak. We were close to the end of our tour and had gotten separated from Zack and Zayley.
Thankfully, my leg cooperated as we kept walking to the exit. I thought that was all there was to it.

But the next day, we stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch on the way back to Mississippi. As I slid into the booth, my hip completely gave way.

I yelped out in pain. A homeless man in the next booth asked me if I was OK.

(If you’ve never had a person in clear physical need ask you if you are OK, please trust me when I tell you that it is a deeply humbling experience.)

Since then, my hip has either twinged a bit or spasmed completely every time I walk, at times rendering me incapacitated while I wait for the pain to pass.

No Smurf bandage is fixing this.

Thankfully, my family has been more than wonderful in picking up the slack as I’ve sat around babying my hip.

For my part, I’m trying to do my normal things in ways that require less standing.

That’s why I was glad to run across this recipe for zucchini fritters – well, that and the fact that we had a pile of fresh zucchini from the garden waiting for us when we arrived home.

My family loves zucchini fritters. My normal recipe calls for pan-frying them, though, and I wasn’t up for that much standing. This version uses the oven instead, and frankly I was grateful for that when my hip went out as I tried to portion these out.

But Julia was able to finish up the trays for me, and the result was delicious. If you have zucchini or summer squash on hand, give them a try!

BAKED ZUCCHINI FRITTERS

(Recipe adapted from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini, packed
1 egg
1/2 cup shredded cheese (I used colby but will definitely use Parmesan next time)
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch pepper

Directions
■ Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray a large baking sheet with oil, place down parchment paper, and spray the parchment paper with oil. (Alternatively, line the pan with nonstick extra-wide aluminum foil.)
■ Place the shredded zucchini in a colander and squeeze out as much water from the shreds as possible. We did this by grabbing handfuls and squeezing them over the colander. (Be sure you are squeezing over the holes in the colander, not back into the remaining zucchini.) Then we placed the squeezed zucchini into a clean tea towel, wrapped it up, and pressed out as much water as possible.
■ Place the Squeezed Zucchini (a fine name for a band, if I do say so) and all other ingredients (egg, cheese, breadcrumbs, and seasoning) into a large bowl and mix well. Drop the mixture by tablespoons onto the lined pan(s) and flatten a bit. You can place them very close together, as they won’t spread. Bake for about 20 minutes. Serve hot or cold. Cooked fritters freeze well.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.