Showing posts with label squash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label squash. Show all posts

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Squashes in the Farmers' Market

Market squashes (do the Brits
call them "marrow"?) conjure a carnival
of painted shapes self-sculpted
by the genius of seeds. Like books,
the squashes have pulp inside,
enclosed by hard or soft covers.

Some species hold a hollow
zone where sound can play.
Dried gourds become instruments,
and a thumped pumpkin will mumble
autumn syllables. A crook-necked
squash can become the baton
that conducts Zucchini's unfinished
symphony. Still, Fall does mean

the party's over. We select our squash,
haul it home to grill or bake--or cut up
raw. Next Summer's vines are already
blue-printed in seeds as the soil rolls
over, exhausted, in need of dreams.


hans ostrom 2023

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Summer Squash


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'Tis the season, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, for squash. I grew up calling yellow or crook-necked squash "summer squash," and I prefer it to zucchini, the hide of which is a tad bitter, and the meat of which can be watery. I used to like to pick yellow squash because in the garden, it often had some fuzz on it. One reason to plant a garden, I submit, is that it produces imperfection, such as the fuzz, which is rubbed off by the time squash makes it to a super-market super-slickly. For instance, the cucumbers I just harvested look pretty gnarly. They're fat and fine inside, but the hide looks like it's been in a scuffle, and one of the cucumbers has an odd twist to it. You just can't find that kind of imperfection in a produce-department, no matter how hard you look.

In case anyone asks, and I'm sure someone will do so, "squash" as a verb can mean not just to press down or in upon but also to join in a crowd of people--to squash about in the city, as it were--this according to the OED online. "Squash" as a noun may refer not just to zucchini, etc., but also to the unripe pod of a pea, and in this iteration, the word was often used insultingly. One would call someone a "squash," a mere unripe pod. "Hey, pal, as far as I'm concerned, you're an unripe pod." And here's news: "squash" as a noun used to refer as well to a muskrat--or "musksquash." Wow.

My desultory research did not go so far as to tell me how the racket-game, squash, got its name. Squash seems like the upper-class version of racquet-ball, but I could be incorrect in that impression.

When something feels as if it has been squashed, we sometimes say it appears squishy, don't we? What was squashed was squished, or squishified. ;-) I seem to remember that "squish" was also deployed as a verb, back in grammar (or lower) school: "Squish that spider, Irving, will you? Thanks."

I wish you a good summer of unsquished squash, eaten raw, steamed, or roasted, and may the squash you harvest be perfectly imperfect.