Tales from Easement Acres
Liz tried a second crop of carrots. Better this time, though the harvest was still small. I don’t think they’re the most energy-efficient vegetable to grow, but neither are tomatoes I suppose. Plus, they’re needed for those delicious mirepoix..es.
–Simon
Contrary to what my gardening habits might imply, I don’t really like squash. At best it’s a filler that absorbs more palatable flavors, and at worst it’s a slimy earthy sludge. For example, squash cooked with apples tastes good–like apples. Squash cooked with butter tastes like butter. Squash cooked as-is tastes like…sludge.
Case in point: Mediterranean Sausage Bake. This abomination, a recipe of my mother’s, involved baking zucchini with eggplant and onions, with some cheese and sausage for flavor. It was disgusting, but a favorite of dad’s, so each Father’s Day we lived the nightmare.
So anyway, back to present, I have a lot of squash. Ronde de Nice, specifically. And dad was visiting. It presented an opportunity to unload some of it. The plan was to cook him the sausage bake while we ordered a pizza. And yet…
…look at that!
Okay, so I used a lot more cheese, but still. It warranted a taste. And it was…reasonably acceptable.
Maybe I used better sausage. Maybe the Ronde de Nice was better than standard zucchini. Maybe I sweated the onions better. Whatever the case, it was edible, and a way to use up some garden produce.
And it made the old man happy.
–Simon
More cucurbitas. Though not the ones I intended.
When I planted the squash patch, I selected seed for each mound. Then I thew compost on each mound. Then I discovered somewhat later that the compost contained cucurbita seeds. These were supposed to be my pie pumpkins:
They are not.
But at least we’re getting a lot of fall decorations–arguably a better purpose for cucurbitas anyway.
–Simon
That doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Of course, I’d rather eat a pawpaw than a squash, too. Squash are really only good as butter sponges or for decoration.
But they’re fun to grow, and despite their questionable culinary value, a source of home-grown nutrition a la Victory Garden!
Yet despite my plans, many of the seeds I selected didn’t germinate, and those that did weren’t what I expected. Maybe some things got mixed up in the seed vault. I also scattered compost, which apparently contained a number of squash seeds from the year prior, which I let grow to fill in the garden space. Consequently, I have some interesting varieties.
–Simon
