Thursday, September 9, 2010

Garden Review: Scalloped Squash

Scalloped Squash
My parents always had a garden when I was growing up. I don't mention this often, because people always assume that if your parents did something, you just soak up their knowledge through osmosis. Nope, doesn't work that way. I wish it did! It would have saved me twenty years of trial and error. But I digress. I'm not going to talk about my gardening woes today. I'm going to talk about scalloped squash. I've seen them in catalogs for years and always assumed it was just another name for patty pan squash, which my parents always had in their garden when I was growing up. My mother would slice it, bread it, and fry it, and I loved it. I've been growing patty pan squash for as long as we've been on Antiquity Oaks, but last winter when looking through the seed catalogs, something inspired me to order some scalloped squash seeds, which I quickly discovered is quite different from patty pan squash.

Patty pan squash are flatter, and they have a much smaller seed cavity. I kept picking the scalloped squash smaller and smaller, but regardless of how young I picked them, they still had a large seed cavity. Larger seed cavity means less flesh for eating. We're still saying that we're going to use the scalloped squash for stuffing, but we haven't done it yet. Unless we discover some really awesome way to cook these little darlings, they won't be in our garden again, regardless of how cute they look. When we don't eat something, it means we don't pick it, which means it just gets over-ripe and eventually gets fed to the chickens. And that just makes me feel guilty. And who needs that?

5 comments:

LindaG said...

If only we could learn through osmosis. I am only just now realizing how much I wish I had learned from my grandmother.

My husband doesn't like squash of any variety that I'm aware of, so I am clueless. Hopefully one of your readers will be able to help you though. :)

MichelleH said...

Works out well for the chickens though... :)

The Little Red Hen said...

Chickens are great for eating up the vegatable scraps and squash we dont' get too...nothing goes to waste.

Vegetable Garden Cook said...

Thank you so much for the review... it is extremely helpful. Have you tried Yellow Crookneck?
http://amysoddities.blogspot.com/2010/09/yellow-crookneck-squash.html

Deborah Niemann said...

I have grown yellow crookneck in the past, but didn't this year. They're not very forgiving if they get too big, which is why I'm not a big fan. The skin gets really tough. At least with zucchini, you can always go the zucchini bread or zucchini cake route if you missed them and they wind up too big for fresh eating.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails