Let’s get this out of the way right up front shall we? I am not a huge fan of squash. The squash I am referring to is not the racket sport played in a tiny room with a little hard ball that flies around whilst the players whack each other with their bats or whatever they’re called.
No, I am speaking about the vegetable of the genus cucurbita. Wikipedia describes this plant as “…herbaceous vines that grow several meters in length and have tendrils”. For the most part we prefer squash with tendrils removed, because, guck. I will also put aside any discussion of the aptly named yet laughable “gourd”. Think of the quotes around the word “gourd” as little word fences built to protect neighboring words from its suspect influences.
Pop loved to garden and somehow acquired small plots of land in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia as we moved from place to place. As kids we would be regularly asked to help out, and at the time this work ranked at the bottom of things we would volunteer to do. Yet over the years these memories – planting, raising and eating the food we grew ourselves – created a lifelong love of vegetables.
Pop really liked squash and grew several varieties including acorn, winter and zucchini and I never much cared for those. But the one I did like was summer squash, sometimes called yellow, crooked-neck squash. I think I enjoyed the simple way is was prepared and its generally low guckiness coefficient. Come to think of it, simple with minimal guck might apply to many parts of life.
whoisfenton 