acorn squash

[songbird]

years ago we'd eat them and liked them, then the stores started carrying them with little flavor so we stopped buying them.

last year someone gave us a few acorn squash and we cleaned 'em out and cooked 'em up. not really all that good either, so i didn't think much of it and put the innards from the squish into the worm bins.

this spring planting i used the worm compost in the gardens as usual and we had some volunteer squash plants come up. most i will trim off so they don't disrupt the gardens, but a few here or there i let go as they can run into the pathways or along an edge. basically, it's free food of the sort we both like, so we are happy to have them.

this season a few of those were acorn squash and had fruits. hmmm... baked a few squash the other day (one acorn and a butternut). the inside looked like the acorn squash we used to get. actually yellow to orange colored instead of white and pasty. the flavor was excellent. whew! so it wasn't that they'd ruined the crop/seed line, but it was poor growing and harvesting too early. we cooked up another few squishes tonight and again were very happy with the acorn squash. didn't need to put a thing on them. i've saved those seeds to use again in the coming years.

i like it when a plan comes together, even when there really wasn't a plan at all...

songbird

[Snag]

skip to :

Acorns are one of our favorites . To bad they weren't more productive this year , we only got four . Next year though ... we like them split and the seeds scraped out , then packed with brown sugar and a big pat of butter and baked . Also pretty good baked with the cavity filled with canned cranberries < not the jelly stuff , the berries> .

[David Hare-Scott]

serendipity

D

[songbird]

Snag wrote: ...

i just split these and baked them (350F for 1hr) with a little water added to the pan.

i didn't add any thing else as they were already so sweet and tasty they didn't need a thing. i'm trying to avoid added sugars as much as i can these days (no specific health reason other than the fact that i feel a heck of a lot better).

ok, time to get to work... got a pile of apples to turn into apple sauce.

songbird

[songbird]

as my sister says, "We accept!" :)

i now have a nice pile of cleaned and dried seeds ready for next year.

songbird

[Steve Peek]

Try them with your favorite stuffing. Grandma's chestnut stuffing is just great!

[Farm1]

I had had no idea what you meant by an 'acorn squash' so did a google and found out that its a winter squash

so that (and the butternut) is what we Australians would just put under the name of pumpkins.

Pumpkin is a staple foodstuff here in Oz and a very popular vegetable.

Pumpkin is very, very rarely served here in any sweet form except for Pumpkin Scones (and they have become somewhat of a joke)

[songbird]

hmm, well i like scones, so i'm pretty sure i'd like them with pumpkin in them too... :)

in the USoA a common November/Thanksgiving/December/Christmas pie is pumpkin pie, which is a sweet custard with pumpkin and spices. i think that is where many of us get the idea that pumpkin and sweet go together. and probably the added fact that almost any food here in the states is now loaded with extra sugars/carbohydrates of one kind or another.

it is one of our favorite foods (pumpkin/squash).

as a very young kid (about 2yrs old) i was said to have climbed the cupboard drawers and sat on the counter and feasted on two pumpkin pies. alas, i have no memory of the event, but i do not doubt it as i'd probably still climb cupboards if i had to...

songbird

[Billy]

The pumpkin in this case is what the French call "citrouille". In the U.S. it is basically a cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove delivery system.

[Pavel314]

We're in Maryland, USA. My wife cooks pumpkins like squash, served as a veg etable at dinner. She also makes excellent pumpkin pies. We tried making cu stard in a pumpkin shell once; I liked it but she didn't think it was worth the effort, other than for the novelty of the presentation.

If we have a good pumpkin crop, we keep some to throw to the sheep as a tre at during the winter.

Paul

[David Hare-Scott]

Do they not grow Grammas in the south? I thought Gramma pie was a bush standard.

D

[Farm1]

Perhaps it once was. I haven't herd of anyone growing Gramma for years. I must see if I can find some seeds.

[Billy]

Oh my, you be talkin' Strine now, aren't you?

Numero-uno: I doubt that any Bubba worth his salt would know what a Gramma pie was. It's just plain pumpkin pie in these parts.

Numero-two-o: By bush (not Bush) standard I presume that you mean common to unsophisticated rural areas. Au contraire, mon ami, Gramma pie is consumed in vast quantities during year end festivals by cognoscenti, bumpkins, urbanites, suburbanites, and all the other "ites" alike.

[David Hare-Scott]

A gramma is a cucurbit with orange flesh that is particularly made into a sweet(ish) pie and AFAIK not usually eaten as a vegetable. Whether you would call it a winter squash or a pumpkin I have no idea.

The 'bush' is everything outside cities and major regional centres and includes areas where your neighbours are a few hundred metres away and the outback where they might be a hundred kilometres away. It is where people tend to have land to grow large plants like pumpkins and the tradition of doing so. I wasn't making any comment on level of sophistication, it's that city folk wouldn't eat gramma pie due to the lack of grammas and knowing how to make it.

D

[Farm1]

Nope. Just plain old English.

[Farm1]

:-)) Indeed. City people seem to have lost many skills when it comes to food and it's preparation.

I'm always stunned when I visit my sister in Sydney and look in her fridge and pantry. Both are almost bare and I always think of the old saying about 'society being 7 meals away from anarchy'. I could eat out of my fridge/freezer and pantry for at least a month but at my sisters I wonder what they will eat for dinner (she seldom does any cooking at all and they seem to eat out every night).

[songbird]

sounds like Farm1 would call it a pumpkin.

around here grammas are people... some are sweet as pie.

songbird

[Billy]

Odd, here, there is a distinct prohibition against turning grammas into pie. I don't seem to have appreciated the striking cultural differences between the U.S., and Oz before ;O)

By Old English did you mean like From The Canterbury Tales: The Miller's Prologue

Heere folwen the wordes bitwene the Hoost and the Millere Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold, In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold That he ne seyde it was a noble storie, And worthy for to drawen to memorie; And namely the gentils everichon. Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, "So moot I gon, This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male, Lat se now who shal telle another tale, For trewely the game is wel bigonne.

Whoops, my bad. That's Middle English.

Old English would be like Beowulf

Hwt! w? G?r-Dena in ?e?r-dagum, ??od-cyninga, ?rym ?efr?non, h? ?? ?elingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Sc?fing scea?ena ?r?atum, monegum m???um, meodosetla oft?ah, egsode eorlas. Sy??an ?rest wear? f?asceaft funden, h? ?s fr?fre ?eb?d, w?ox under wolcnum, weor?myndum ??h, o??t him ??hwylc ??ra ymbsittendra ofer hronr?de h?ran scolde, gomban gyldan. t ws gMd cyning!

Hmmmmm. Too much of a reach, I suppose. My fonts seem to have crashed. No matter. "Plain Old English" appears to be an oxymoron.

Think I'll continue eating sweet potato pie instead, in any event.

I'll save gramma for roasting, and served with frites.

[David Hare-Scott]

I was reading that in some western cities (eg New York) kitchens are being converted to other uses (spare bedrooms, walk-in wardrobes etc) because the occupants always eat out and that some new appartments are built without one. No I can't recall when or who said so.

If you look at the way cities decay into anarchy in a few days due to external events (eg weather extremes such as Katrina at New Orleans) we must be very concerned about the fragility of such a way of life. As soon as the power or fuel stop people will be hungry very soon. We are going to pass through a transition away from a fossil fuel economy some time in the next generation. I don't see myself as a doomsayer but I worry that the transition will not be smooth. Many people would not be aware that in this country we have had many thousands of city men tramping about the bush looking for work/food. Sydney is now much bigger and more dependent on remote supplies of food and energy than it was in the Great Depression.

D

[Farm1]

That could all be solved if you Americans learned how to spell and use language properly. Not knowing a donkey from a sphincter is unsttling enough but given that the collective 'you' can't make a distinction between your pumpkins and your female grandparents shouldbe of concern to every old american lady as Halloween approaches.

My grandma died decades ago but her death had nothing to do with being put into any pie in mistake for a gramma. ;-)

I don't seem to have appreciated the striking cultural differences

The answer, of course, all in the detail. I used 'old English' as opposed to 'Old English'.

You could try using 'plain old English' instead although to be gramamtically nearer my old English teacher's dictates, I should have inserted commas so it was 'plain, old English'.

Apparently sweet potato is low GI whereas pumpkin isn't. I like both as a vegetable.

Eeew! You will get done for murder when they catch you! How many grandmas have you already roasted? And, although I shouldn't ask, but do they taste like poultry which is what cannibals are reputed to have said?