May 18, 2021

Zucchini Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting

Name: Zucchini Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 60 min
Total time: 80 min
Ingredients: 2 cups Organic Zucchini, finely grated; 2 cups Flour; 1½ cup Cane Sugar; ¾ cup Salted Butter (Vegans: Use Earth Balance); 1 tbsp Vanilla Extract; ½ tbsp Ground Allspice; ½ tbsp Pumpkin Pie Spice; 2 tsp Baking Soda; ½ tsp Salt (optional); ⅓ cup Nuts (optional); 8 ounces Organic Cream Cheese; 2 tbsp Organic Agave Syrup

Contrary to what you may want to believe, I along with thousands of other Black people, am from Tucson. Zucchini Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting is reminiscent of an era, the 1970s, and growing up in a “fruit, nuts and flakes” town where people envisioned creating racially diverse communities to live, work, recreate and raise children. One of those visionaries is now infamous; and another is my longtime neighbor Bram Goldman.

Bram moved to Tucson in the 1960s where he helped to start Pima Community College at a time when community colleges had free tuition for all students. He later became a lawyer and ultimately a city magistrate. “Bram had a dream of creating a racially diverse community where White, Black, Asian and Latinx families all lived in close proximity, sharing and communing with one another” his oldest son Jonathon told me recently. Obviously one wonders what happened to the dreams of people like Bram in the wake of racial tension such as that we are experiencing in 2021.

My older brother Keith was in the same third grade class as Bram’s youngest daughter Tammy; it was she that invited Keith to a party where our parents met. Around 1972, Bram mentioned his vision of a multiracial community saying he had identified several acres of land for sale in the Tucson Mountains that would be suitable for four families. We all went to examine the acres of desert nestled into foothills, located off a dusty dirt road, where teenage girls would ride their horses through arroyos on lazy, hot afternoons. Unfortunately, Dad had just broke ground on a medical complex with another Black dentist Dr. Joel Turner and a Black physician Dr. Joseph Whaley, so my parents decided they could not invest in another major construction project. So, a Latinx family, Elena and Diego Navarrette, and three White families, including Bram and his wife Barbara purchased the 20 acres.

In 1975, Elena decided she did not want to live in the desert so she and Diego put their property on the market. Mom and Dad purchased the acreage and built our family compound in 1976. While not exactly his multiracial vision, my family enjoyed a close synergy and camaraderie with Bram, until his death in 2017, and the Goldman family that continues today. I believe the first piece of Zucchini Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting I ever ate was at the Goldman home but probably minus the cream cheese frosting. I would drink a hot, agave-less version of my Energizing Eggnog while enjoying this bread. Peace.