January 10th 2010    Tim Candler

     Never been able to fully grasp Winter Squash.   Butternut and Hubbard appear in my mind as belonging to interesting shape and color.  And watching them grow stately, satisfies being.  But give me a thin-skinned root vegetable to mash with butter and pepper.

    More likely this preference is an inheritance from time.   I ate my Green Beans, learned to appreciate Cabbage, grappled long enough with Swedish Turnip, and did all those things because children grow up peculiar if raised on chocolate alone.

     But Winter Squash has the character of a keeping vegetable.   It first  needs to 'cure' at what the professionals call 'room temperature', then if retired to a 'cool, dry place' it will last for months.   And I often have wondered where to find such a cool, dry place. 

    I have seen diagrammatic representations of root cellars.  They are apparently clean, crisp and wonderfully apportioned dwellings, with airflow.  And I have seen wasp and snake infested holes in the ground which smell badly of decay and damp and rodent.

     And the squash in these photographs has been hiding out in the kitchen for a couple of months. 

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