His family has farmed the same tiny plot of land in the Guatemalan highlands for generations, but Jacobo Mendez is the first to reap riches from a most unlikely source: "baby" zucchini. Far to the north, novelty-loving Americans are willing to pay seven times the price of the full-grown product for its freshly flowered miniature equivalent. Mendez doesn't care why -- he's just glad they do. "I have my own house now, and we all eat better," says Mendez, 34, a Cakchiquel Indian descended from the Mayans, who ruled the region a thousand years ago.
Long familiar to French chefs, baby...