Get Squashed!

Is there such thing as “harvest time” anymore? You can buy apples in June, tomatoes in January, and there are bananas year-round at our local Farmer’s Markets. Nature’s bounty is but an email away to Simon Delivers. The harvest used to be a glorious time of celebration after the hard work of bringing in the stores for a long winter ahead. True, it has been a long time since many of us actually toiled in the earth for our munchies, but harvest time still means something.

The harvest is really the beginning of the Eating Season. Is it by chance that this season coincides with Fat People Weather? Being a devoted eater, I know that if I lived in Seattle, with fabulous Fat People Weather year-round, I would weigh 742 lbs. All spring and summer we run about with our bared skin, eating fruits and keeping fit. Come fall, the air cools, the colors pop, and we pull on our bulky sweaters and allow ourselves to indulge in caramel apples, fresh pie, stuffed turkey. For the few, football season means a solid running game, but for the many it means roasting a pig, and drinking a few hearty, malted beverages. Throw open the windows and break out the stew pots, it’s brisk enough to bake again.

And so we indulge, maybe not fully aware that some deeply buried genetic code is telling us it’s necessary to pad our bodies for the survival through the winter months. When that first snappy cold morning arrives, although we may now reach for the polar fleece, it still compels us to reach for the bite-sized Snickers bar in the first fill of the Halloween bowl. That’s when you know it’s begun, the Eating Season. And there is no other food that can herald the beginning of the season better than the squash, sitting there orange and grinning, as you furtively stuff wrappers in your pockets.

Squash really is the poster food of harvest time. There could be a fall festival squash pageant and all the contestants would be different in their quirky splendor. It kicks off with the iconic pumpkins of Halloween, followed by the decorous gourds and dense pies of Thanksgiving. Squash easily rolls into the many holidays of December in the form of acorn and butternut-squash side dishes and casseroles on the pot-luck buffet tables of yore. What better fruit—and it is a fruit—than one that was not only present, but became a symbol of the first official celebration of food in this country, the original Thanksgiving?

Native to Central America and Mexico, seeds from related plants have been found dating back more than 7,000 years, to around 5500 BC. Squash was being cultivated in North America by the time the Pilgrims landed, and had become a great staple of the Native American diet. Pumpkins were sliced into long strips, then either roasted over open fires or dried and woven into mats. We don’t know exactly which squash was brought to the first Thanksgiving, but we do know the colonists were smitten. They shortened the name from the Algonquin askootasquash, which means “eaten raw,” and directly began boiling, steaming, and baking it. According to tradition, the original pumpkin pie came about when the colonists sliced the top off a pumpkin, removed the seeds, and filled the belly with milk, honey, and spices, then buried it in hot ashes to bake. Of course, as this New World fruit gained popularity, its seeds were brought back to the Old World, and soon squash was snaking its way into the culinary traditions of the Spanish, French, and Italians. The Brits oddly like to refer to squash as “vegetable marrow” (and refer to that ball-and-paddle game as “squash”).

You may be surprised to learn that there are two categories of squash. Summer squash is characterized by the delicate-skinned gems that are best eaten straight from the vine. Their many shapes and colors can cheer up your garden and include yellow squash, zucchini, crookneck, and pattypan. Their skins and seeds are edible, and their flesh has a high water content making them easy to eat without a lot of cooking. Winter squash, on the other hand, should be eaten when they are good and ready, after they have basted in the seasons, and felt the first touch of winter air. They are characterized by their tough skin and seeds. The deep yellow and orange flesh of the winter squash is firmer and requires more cooking.

The winter bunch arrive in all shapes and sizes, their colors rivaling the fiery trees overhead. The hourglass-shaped butternut, with its fine-grained flesh, has a soft but tremendous flavor when roasted. Dark green with orange markings, the acorn squash is one of the most popular. The spaghetti squash, sometimes referred to as the “golden football,” never ceases to amaze as you scrape out the long yellow strands from the solid flesh. And of course, the pumpkin, which has become the grinning cheerleader for the squash family and an international icon for the first holiday in Eating Season.

Kicking off the season with a good batch of toasted pumpkin seeds or a deftly turned loaf of pumpkin bread may jump those eating instincts into overdrive. So much so that you can’t seem to wait until the third Thursday in November for more. If you feel so inclined to explore the flesh of the squash harvest yourself, you’ll find the book Zucchini, Pumpkins, and Squash by Kathleen Desmond Stang to be a fitting guide. There are great recipes and tips about how to become a squash guru.

If you’d rather celebrate the season at the table of others, make your way to the restaurant Auriga in Minneapolis. Chefs Van Eeckhout and Goodwin have long known the secrets of harvest food—they’ll seduce you with root vegetables and vine fruit and reinvent your idea of gorging during Eating Season. They have a pumpkin ravioli with duck confit, arugula, and a brown-butter sauce that will satisfy your seasonal cravings, and quite possibly root you there for the next three months.