The Amazing Miracle Mystery Squash

After clearing away the brown wreckage of my month-long, mid-summer absence from my garden plot, I was left with one eggplant bush, two pepper plants, a few bedraggled bean plants that were being mercilessly attacked by Mexican bean beetles, a ton of insanely vigorous basil, a lot of empty space, and one tiny squash seedling that had somehow started to grow, despite the fact that I had not planted it. I decided to let it stay, and see what happened. That single vine has spread to cover half my plot, and threatens to entirely take over if the squash bugs and cucumber beetles don't kill it first. (They have quite a battle on their hands, because this vine obviously wants to live. )

I'm not sure what kind of squash it is. They are shaped like yellow crooknecks, but are smooth, and colored pale green, with faint white stripes. The flesh inside is a very pale, creamy orange. I cooked them with some onions for dinner tonight, and was delighted with how squashy they tasted. Sometimes when I cook summer squash, it just doesn't taste like anything. I think the key is to get young squash, with the dried up remnants of the squash blossom still intact on the end of the squash. Sometimes you can find them like this in the farmers' market, so if you do, go for it. That said, I do think these squash are unusually tasty, so if my vine does survive the Southern onslaught of insect pestilence, I'll try to let a few squash mature so that I can save the seeds and plant them on purpose next year.

Yellow crookneck squash stewed with onions is a traditional Southern dish. The traditional method cooks the onions and squash down to a tender mush. I believe mush has its place in the pantheon of vegetable cookery, but I wasn't in the mood for it, so I decided to give my squash and onions wok hai instead. (Check out the link – it gets quite esoteric. For my purposes, I'll just say the dish had the taste of the wok seasoning, and the vegetables didn't have the bejeesus cooked out of them. They were nice and firm. Sad to say, you really do need a wok to achieve wok hai, but if you don't have one, it's not the end of the world. Just do the best you can with whatever skillet you have, and it'll still taste good.)

 I then used the squash and onions in a dish I dubbed Three Sisters Tacos, which were corn tortillas filled with cooked dried lima beans (seasoned with onion and smoked paprika), corn, the aforementioned squash, chopped cucumbers, chives, chipotle pepper sour cream, and a dash of Tabasco sauce for good measure. (Oh, and in case you don't know, Three Sisters refers to the Native American agricultural triad of corn, beans, and squash.) The older daughter was skeptical about the squash, but ended up liking it and eating a full portion of everything, though not all on the taco. The younger daughter refused everything, and had leftover pizza. Ah well, she'll come around someday. And if not, one out of two ain't bad.

Wok Hai Miracle Mystery Squash and Onions
This is my general method. Put some canola oil in a wok and heat to very hot. Thinly slice half an onion, and add to hot wok, stirring frequently. Cook the onions for a few minutes, then add about three cups worth of squash chopped into one-inch pieces, and a generous amount of salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the squash reaches the desired level of doneness. I like it to be fairly firm. Add a few dashes of sherry vinegar, black pepper and more salt to taste if needed. Stir to combine, and serve. Go very light on the sherry vinegar; you don't want to taste vinegar, just brighten the flavors.

Envy

 The farmer's market comes twice a week to my lovely town – late Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. I almost never go to the Wednesday market. It's held in a bank parking lot. The combination of 100 degree heat index, tired kids, sweaty mom, and asphalt is not a good one. We fare better Saturday mornings, but sometimes it's just hard to get going on the weekend, and by the time we're out the door, the market is pretty much done except for a few over-ripe tomatoes and wilted basil no one else wanted.

The town we visited in Germany this past summer has a market every weekday from 9 am to 1 pm, complete with butcher, baker, and cheese wagon.  The cheese lady is friendly and very enthusiastic about cheese, and gives so many samples you almost don't need to buy any. (She also has the best sales pitch: "My English is bad, but my cheese is very better!") And the cheese is ridiculously inexpensive compared to what it would cost here in the States. So is the bread. As for the meat, I don't know, as I'm with the Hindu and don't cook it, but I'm guessing the same – cheap and good. The Himbeere (raspberries) were definitely good.

If only we could have that here in my town, I think to myself practically every day. It would be so easy for us to eat well, and we wouldn't even need a car. Here is a picture of the parking lot at the German town's high school:

People, we have our work cut out for us.

Motivated by the people of Germany, I rode my bike to the farmer's market last week, bought a watermelon, and carried it home in the front basket. The watermelon made it home in one piece and was delicious. So if you live in my town and saw a very sweaty, disheveled woman biking slowly with a watermelon in front of her, that was me. Unfortunately, I can't manage to look like these women, but one can always aspire.

Let Them Make Cake

The theory goes that Jane Austen wrote in the sitting room. The novels would collect on scraps of paper hastily stuffed in her desk drawer whenever domestic duty called her away. She never married or had children – I think it's safe to say that if she had, even those brief stolen moments in which she wrote wouldn't have existed, and the world would be without Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. I certainly can't imagine a man writing “Pride and Prejudice,” let's put it that way.

I recently re-read Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own” (and if you couldn't tell, I'm just in that sort of mood). These scraps of paper are important, damn it, even if they are only on a screen. Not that I'm comparing myself to Jane Austen, or Virginia Woolf (also childless), for that matter. I'm just saying, as a woman, I can relate. A friend commented to me recently how convenient it is that my hobby is also necessary for the family. I was thinking about this, and I totally agree – it is convenient. If people didn't need to eat, maybe I would be into stamp collecting or dog breeding or Harley Davidson motorcycles or something else completely unrelated. But people do need to eat, and there are always birthday cakes that need to be made. Make them I will. And then I'll write about it, because birthday cakes are important enough to be written about. Yes, they are.

I will say that I am particulary proud of this one. The five-year-old (who is now the six-year-old) requested strawberry shortcake for her birthday. Throw a bunch of strawberries on a cake with some whipped cream, and people will be impressed. This is the best looking cake I've ever made, and it tasted as good as it looked. (I nabbed the recipe from Adam the Amateur Gourmet, who found it via the good old Barefoot Contessa. Adam is right, don't skip out on the orange and lemon zest.)

Home Temple

[We're back, and slowly getting back into the rhythm of daily life. I am trying to get back into the rhythm of writing and cooking as well. The next few weeks promise to be hectic with birthdays and school starting, but bear with me, and I'll be back in full force soon.]

The wedding was a joyous, intense, two-and-a-half day affair in which we, along with hundreds of guests, were fed ridiculously, gluttonously well – breakfast, lunch, tiffin, dinner, with coffee in between, without once having to lift a finger or even bat an eyelash. The servers, laden with stainless steel buckets of food and ladles, moved systematically down the long rows of tables set with banana leaf plates, placing more than a half dozen different kinds of food (variations of rice, lentils, chutney, curry, sweets, chapatis, etc.) upon each leaf. And they came again to refill. And again. As I grew desperate to figure out the way to make them stop, I asked my husband how to say 'enough' and 'just a little bit' in Tamil. He told me, I tried to repeat it, but took his doubled over laughter as a bad sign.* So I was stuck and had to keep eating. Oh well. The great thing about Indian clothing is the tightness is adjustable.

The next day, we landed briefly in the small Tamil village of Thinnium, to wrap things up with a final ceremony at the family's ancestral temple. Although they left the village two generations ago, looking for opportunity in Chennai (and then America), it is still considered spiritual home, if nothing else. It was a peaceful place, and everyone was glad for it. The first thing we did was draw water from the well and wash our feet.

One thing I admire about Hindu rituals is the offering of food to God. Bananas, coconuts, sweets, the pouring of milk. What it says to me is food is precious, and to be revered as a gift. Do not take it for granted. Respect it. And it is all beautiful to look at as well.

When the ritual was complete, we made our rounds around the perimeter of the temple, enjoyed the breeze, and saw a monkey sitting on top of the wall, gazing at his reflection in a broken shard of mirror he had found. I am sure this also has some symbolic significance, but am not sure what it is. Then we were served lunch. That goes without saying.

*Even though he repeated it a dozen times, I for the life of me could not hear the difference between the word for 'a little bit' and the word for a certain part of the male anatomy that starts with 'p' in English.