From Main Street the library looks small, but once you go inside you realize there are rooms and rooms at several levels. For someone with no demonstrable sense of direction — someone like me — it seemed labyrinthine, like a building I might stumble around in, opening door after door, in a dream. Fortunately, with some helpful guidance I was able to find the room where AARP volunteers have been assisting people with their income tax this season.

I was a little early, and as I waited to be signed in I noticed a familiar title in the cookbook section.

“The Moosewood Cookbook.” While leafing through its pages I drew the attention of two cheerful volunteers — I’ll call them Sally and Jane — who also love the book. Sally spoke of a favorite carrot soup recipe. Jane explained the reason I was not finding the broccoli-cheddar-walnut casserole I was looking for: I was perusing a revised edition of the 1977 cookbook I had known. There are now many vegetarian cookbooks by author Mollie Katzen, Sally and Jane told me. (After some research, I count about 20.)

The “Moosewood Cookbook” has been inducted into the James Beard Foundation Cookbook Hall of Fame. As Katzen’s knowledge of nutrition grew over the years, she revised her recipes.

This makes me think of my old friend Lorie Gregory and her recipe for a zucchini pizza crust, basically a frittata. Didn’t I write a column about that, years ago? Yes. Back in August 2014. I called her Laura:

After complaining about overgrown zucchini squashes last week, I found one hidden under the foliage in my own garden. I had been telling everyone that zucchini should be picked and eaten when it is young and tender, not left on the vine getting fibrous and tough.

Oh no! I would have buried it in the compost pile before anyone saw it, thereby saving face, but my friend Laura happened by just then on her way home from the post office and caught me with the squash in my hands.

“Making zucchini bread?” she inquired, casually batting a few hundred midges, gnats, mosquitoes and no-see-ums away from her face as she spoke.

“A little hot for that, don’t you think?” I said. I have a personal theory that the best way to improve zucchini bread is to leave out the zucchini.

Laura informed me that zucchini bread is not the only use for over-sized, seedy squash. At August garden parties, she said, she used to serve a dish called zucchini crusted pizza adapted from the 1977 “Moosewood Cookbook” by Molly Katzen. This pizza was so good, Laura said, that it was always gone by the time she sat down at the table; she may never have actually tasted it herself. Still, from her wistful smile I could tell that she remembers it with fond nostalgia. Or perhaps the nostalgia is for those long-ago summer evenings, and the zucchini has little to do with it.

Just in case you encounter a zucchini behemoth — and this time of year it is more than likely you will — here is Laura’s recipe.

3½ cups grated zucchini

3 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup flour

½ cup grated mozzarella

½ cup grated parmesan

1 tablespoon fresh basil leaves

salt and pepper

Salt the grated zucchini and set it aside for about 15 minutes, then squeeze out the excess moisture. Combine the ingredients and pat the mixture into an oiled 10-inch pie pan. Bake the crust for 20 to 25 minutes at 350 degrees, then broil until golden. Add the sauce and toppings and bake as for a regular pizza.

That was the 1977 Moosewood recipe, as interpreted by Lorie Gregory. I borrowed the 1992 Moosewood edition from the Lake Placid Library when I left, and I found the recipe for zucchini crusted pizza, but it is somewhat different. Less zucchini, less egg, addition of olive oil.

The kind and knowledgeable AARP volunteer who helped me with my taxes (I’ll call him John) discovered — no surprise — that my calculations were incorrect. I returned home to locate some missing documents, with another appointment scheduled for two weeks from today. Luckily, Sally, Jane and John will be volunteering again at the Lake Placid Library that day. I’m looking forward to it.

Have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)