#squash lore

[scribefindegil]

PSA: don’t eat your Halloween pumpkins!

I’ve seen multiple posts encouraging this, and while your standard big orange jack-o-lantern pumpkin is edible in the technical sense and certainly won’t make you sick, they are Not Tasty. If you roast one you’ll get stringy, watery, insipid glop. Don’t do this to yourself.

If you’re worried about pumpkin waste, you can:

Compost your pumpkins (bear in mind that unless you take very exacting care of your compost pile and monitor its temperature, seeds can survive and sprout the next year! I have experienced so many Mystery Squash from insufficiently heated compost)

Roast the seeds for a tasty snack and compost the shell (especially if you’re carving the pumpkin, but consider this even if you aren’t!)

If you or a friend has chickens, give them the pumpkin as a treat

If you DO want something that does double duty as decoration and delicious food, there are a lot of squash that fit the bill!! You just need to look beyond the standard big orange pumpkin. There are too many wonderful squash varieties to list here, but a lot of cucurbita maxima and cucurbita moschata varieties are both beautiful and have excellent table quality. Try “cheese pumpkins,” Cinderella pumpkins, various Hubbards, Buttercups, Kabocha, and more! They come in a dazzling array of shapes and colors.

If you want to eat your decorative squash, don’t leave it outside if there’s any danger of frost. However, they will keep at room temperature for months and the flavor will only improve after a month or two of storage.

Alternatively, consider heirloom gourds! These aren’t edible, but if you’re careful (maintaining consistent cool temperatures and either hanging them or rotating them every couple of weeks) you can dry gourds until they are stiff and hollow and then use them for long-term decoration or a basis for craft projects!

[scribefindegil]

how do you know when squash is at optimal eating quality? that is so interesting and i’d never heard of it!!

It depends on the squash!!! Some varieties (like acorn squash and delicatas) are ready for eating right off the vine, but in many cases they'll be better if you let them cure for 1-2 months! This is because some of the starch in the squash will turn to sugar as it cures, so a butternut squash that's been aged for three months will taste much sweeter than the same squash eaten right off the vine!

This is one reason that a lot of grocery store squash is pretty insipid and requires lots of butter and sugar to be added if you want it to be sweet; there's no incentive for farmers and stores to let their squash age to peak table quality because the market rewards whoever can get their goods out there the quickest! If you're getting squash from the grocery store, you'll have better luck with acorn and delicatas.

Here's a handy table from Johnny's Selected Seeds with the peak eating times of some different types of squash!! It also tells you how long you can store them; squash that are ready to eat right after picking are only good for a couple of months, whereas butternut squash will still be delicious after six months if stored properly!

[dovesanctuarydonotkill]

I just got done with therapy and I told a horrible joke about Bad Chris that I finally had an excuse to tell I’m crying

[harpsicalbiobug]

Yesterday the zucchini I sliced began sublimating under my fingers. I had to ask if this was a hallucination or some shitty superpower. Killian could see it too. Anyway, I guess zucchini occasionally mists or off gases or something when cut.