Chapter 4: A Carnival of Squash

AND then Little Salt Bear and Red Pepper Bear emerged from the potted fern forest to find three kinds of winter squash lying on the dining room table. They had been laughing and singing songs about rabbits and field mice but now they stood hushed, their eyes big and round in surprise. For these were the very vegetables they had been looking for since leaving the cupboard in the middle of the night.

"Are these the--?" Little Salt Bear breathed, unable to continue, for fear and excitement mingled strangely in his hollow tummy.

"Yes, I think so." answered Red Pepper Bear quietly.

"They're so big," said Little Salt Bear with a quake in his little salt voice. "Maybe we should go back. What if mama wakes up and sees that we're not hibernating? We're gonna be in so much trouble."

"Shut up, stupid," said Red Pepper Bear. She sneezed violently. "You're such a 'fraidy cat. Be a bear. I've always wanted to meet a winter squash, but mama always makes us go to sleep before they get a chance to get harvested. Summer squashes are so pale and mushy. These ones look much less sentimental; they've got such thick skins."

"I don't know, Peppy," Little Salt Bear whimpered, backing away.

"C'mon, let's see what they're like," Red Pepper Bear insisted. "Besides, how are we supposed to be called omnivores if we don't eat everything?"


The pair of bears scooted forward in unison on their ceramic feet. The trio of squash were making merry amongst themselves, telling jokes like the one about what you get when you cross an earthworm with an aphid and guffawing over embarrassing moments from their immature days of vines and blossoms.

Red Pepper Bear, who was the bolder of the two as you by now have guessed, slid over to the one that looked the most familiar, almost like a summer squash, for its rind was bright like the sun and seemed somewhat softer than the others.

"Excuse me, are you a winter squash?" she piped up at the oblong vegetable.


"I'm a de-li-ca-ta winter squash!" it sang to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot," and continued:

"Here are my stripes and here is my stem.
If you want to know how sweet I am,
Split me open and scoop me out!"

The little bears blinked in wonder. They didn't know what to ask next, but it was okay because the delicata was the talkative type:

"You see, people like to separate us squash into 'summer' and 'winter' varieties, but the only difference is that we 'winter' ones are allowed to grow for longer until our skins harden and we aren't so nice to eat unless we've been roasted. We also tend to keep longer, which makes us more valued during the winter season. Me 'n' acorn squash are in the same family as the summer squashes, Cucurbita pepo, but I have the softest rind of all the winter varieties. Some people even eat it! I'm so dainty, they call me 'delicata,' though some call me 'sweet potato squash' on account of my almost sweet potato taste. I'm so delicate and tasty, it makes me feel more special than all these coarser squashes, kind of like Smurfette in the middle of all those common little male smurfs."

"Oh, is that so?" interrupted the butternut. "To my eyes (if I had eyes), you look just like an everyday delicata squash, nothing special. I, on the other hand," the curvaceous gourd continued, turning toward the bear siblings, "am not only the most popular and sweetest winter squash, by many accounts--just think of all the times you've seen butternut squash soup, butternut squash puree, butternut squash gratin, etcetera, on the menu--but--BUT! Also. I am even more special because I am a kind of marbled butternut, an heirloom variation on the common beige butternut, grown at Balakian Farm." The squash leaned back and gave a little spin to show off its unusual striation. "Ta dum!" The two bears giggled at each other and clapped in delight.

Now it was time for the third winter squash to introduce itself. It had been watching the other two with a blank expression on its speckled face.

"And you?" asked Little Salt Bear in a voice that was just above a whisper. He was still a little afraid of the big squashes, but his curiosity made him go on. "What is your special quality?"

"Well," began the mysterious squash in an equally hushed voice. "People always ask what I am, but my farmers at Eatwell say I 'just grew.' You see, I wasn't really planned. My mama's an acorn squash and my pa's kind of, well, he's one of those 'festival' guys. I never really got to know him much."

"The others say behind my back that I'm not 'true to type,'" it continued, "that I'm a mutt squash because my parents didn't come from the same variety. You see, squash are what's called open-pollinated, so that their genes swap between plants on the wind, or with the birds and the bees, instead of being self-pollinated. Farmers don't always think highly of cross-pollination between varieties, especially when growing heirlooms, because they want their produce to have predictable qualities, so they keep the different squash segregated. But once my pa caught wind of my mama's blossom, she said, 'Send that pollen on over, darlin'!' and they didn't let no farmer come between them.

"Sometimes us hybrids come out all right, you know, like more resilient. We just can't pass down our line in the same predictable way that the purebreds can unless we've been cultivated for a long time. So I'm not really sure what I am. Maybe some kind of carnival squash. Or a love squash? But to answer your question, lil' bear, I guess you could say my special quality is biodiversity."

"Mm. Biodiversity," Little Salt Bear echoed. "Sounds lovely." Peppy nodded her agreement dreamily. Their shiny little hearts stood out warmly on their shiny little bear chests. They decided that they liked this carnival love squash best of all.

Red Pepper Bear was the first to break out of their vegetable reverie. "We'd better get back to the cupboard before Mama wakes up. Besides, I'm feeling sleeeeeepy," she yawned, then rubbed her little pepper eye hole.

Little Salt Bear agreed, as usual, and they waved their goodbyes to the squash trio and thanked them all for being so delightfully informative.

"But wait!" chirped the delicata squash. "Aren't you going to eat us first? After being cut from the vine, we're just suspended in this undead state--still vibrating with the residues of our former life force but not yet reintegrated into the great chain of being."

"Yes, please do indulge in the cozy delights of our orange-hued flesh before you go!" called the butternut.

"And put us to rest, dear little bears," added the carnival love squash.

The brother and sister bear looked at the squash trio solemnly, then at each other, and, as their little stomachs rumbled with hunger, knew it was a good idea.

They took a sharp knife and sliced open the three squashes.


The insides were certainly a sight to behold, especially the creamsicle flesh of the butternut squash. The bear pair busied themselves with scooping out the seeds and dropping them into the green compost bin (for they were going into hibernation and wouldn't have time to roast the seeds much less save and replant them). But it suddenly seemed so quiet and lonely without those jolly three chatting away. Little Salt Bear and Red Pepper Bear felt heavy, and their eye holes welled up. Little salt tears and little pepper tears rained down on the scooped out squash bodies.

Then, the bears put them skin side down onto a baking sheet, filled their cavities with fragrant garlic cloves and crushed sage leaves, poured a shallow layer of water onto the sheet so the skins wouldn't burn, and put them into the oven to roast at 400°F. After 45 minutes, they pulled the crisp, smoldering squash halves from the oven, scooped them into a saucepan that had been heating a generous slice of butter and mashed the squash together with 3/4 cup of milk and more butter. Each one cried a few more salt and pepper tears into the mixture, but the smell of it was so delicious, they forgot their sorrow and began to lick up the puree until they felt as though their bellies would pop and an orange-yellow flood would burst out of their eye holes.


"All gone!" said Red Pepper Bear when they had licked the pot clean. Little Salt Bear answered with a contented hiccup. Then they linked arms and climbed back up to the cupboard, opened the door slowly so it wouldn't squeak, and tucked themselves up next to Mama's warm furry belly, nestled between the soy sauce and the agave nectar. And they had the most wonderful squash dreams all winter long. Zzzzzzzz.

Bea My Eggplant

After all the excitement of being a newsy (for approximately 20 glorious minutes before my stack of S.F. Panorama's disappeared into eager hands; all 1,500 of the $5 street copies sold out in a heartbeat on Tuesday) and of admiring a whole page of the most lovely weird vegetables, I needed to find something else to keep up the high. Enter Bea, the scrumptious offspring of my friends Kathy and Drew. Here, she merges an overwhelming number of my favorite things: anthropomorphic vegetables, velour, crafts (mama made the costume! Oops! Correction: mommie didn't make the eggplant, but she did craft the other two below), the color purple, the color green, funny jester hats, epaulettes, pantaloons, cuteness with an attitude à la Yoshitomo Nara's fierce kiddies.

Lil' Bea can claim both Japanese and Korean before the hyphen to American, and so for the past three years, her parents have amused themselves and their child's fawning public by dressing her up for Halloween as variations on a theme in Bea that traverses the borders of language and food. Most recently, above, we have NasuBea, or nasubi, which is Japanese for eggplant.

Last year, she sizzled as E-Bea Furai, or ebi furai (Japanese fried shrimp):



And she was just a wee giggling bay-Bea when she made mouths water as Gal-Bea, better known as galbee (or galbi or kalbi), a marinated Korean short rib.


I know I'm supposed to be a vegetable person, but I must admit that Bea's getup makes me nostalgic for walking out of Brothers BBQ (officially Brothers Restaurant, and Brothers II) on Geary Boulevard with my hair smelling like smoke and my belly stretched tight. Still, I hope that her mother will consider sticking with the vegetable theme next year, perhaps spicing it up with Wasa-Bea?

Paper delay!

Hello brave vegetable lovers! If anyone is running around the frozen streets of San Francisco looking for the McSweeney's newspaper, the SF Panorama, it's been delayed a few hours (you can't rush wildly ambitious 3-lb. "newspapers"). So my shift on the corner at 24th St. and Sanchez is looking more like early afternoon. In the meantime, amuse yourself with this primly festive piece on decorative gourds from McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Extra Extra: McSweeney's Vegetables

READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Next Tuesday, December 8, will be a very special day for San Francisco and for newspapers, and for San Francisco newspapers, as it marks the triumphant debut of the San Francisco Panorama. This one-time newspaper is an homage to the possibilities of print journalism (hurrah!) orchestrated by writer Dave Eggers's publishing force McSweeney's and appears as the fall issue of the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which usually takes shape as a more strictly literary journal.

This paper's going to blow your mind, with pieces from writers such as William Vollman, Robert Hass, Miranda July, Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, and comics from Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and Alison Bechdel (she's one dyke to watch out for!). It's going to weigh three pounds (like a healthy blue hubbard squash) and have a gigantic book section and magazine, but will also run more traditional news, including an expose of the Bay Bridge rebuild by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Bob Porterfield. The SF Chronicle and NY Times have both been covering it in anticipation, and the Chronicle plans to reprint some of the pieces. To get a taste of the beautiful design and thrilling content of the Panorama, check out this preview.

WHY I'M POSTING THIS HERE
I also invite you to grab a copy (more on how below) and open it to the spectacular food section, masterminded by Chris Ying of McSweeney's and meatpaper. The section will have eye-popping, brain-twisting, and mouth-watering (or appetite mauling depending on your preferences) pieces on weird and scary meats (pork belly butchering, cooking your road kill), a ramen how-to by Momofuku's David Chang, but also a taste of Weird Vegetables in print--an article I contributed that highlights unusual fall produce then digs a little more deeply into the roots of farmers' markets and alternative, organic markets in San Francisco. It will be lushly complemented by some unusual vegetable art sprung from the hand of my fellow vegetable enthusiast, graphic artist Aron Bothman (you should see the terraced garden he planted in his Noe Valley backyard--appearing soon on WV!).

GET YOUR PAPER!
You can pre-order a single issue for delivery for $16 either through the Chronicle here or directly from the McSweeney's store.

BUT WAIT! If you're super cheap like me and also prefer to put your feet to the pavement and actually walk somewhere to purchase something, and you live in the Bay Area... then you can buy your copy on Tuesday for just $5 (which really is a steal considering all the full color pages) either on a street corner or at a bookstore. McSweeney's has set up an elaborate google map listing and allegedly will provide twitter updates (where on twitter? don't ask me, facebook is the most I can manage) that will inform you of where you can buy your Panorama from either a volunteer newsy or bookstore.

AND! AND! sorry to keep shouting at you in all caps, but I'm really too excited about this bit--Aron and I are joining forces to occupy our very own corner of Noe Valley to hawk newspapers dressed in our most valiant newsy rain gear (there's a storm a-brewin', say my bum knee and the meteorologists). Find us on the early morning side of the day until around noon at 24th St. and Sanchez (the corner with the liquor store on one side and that fancy chocolate shop and Astrid's Rabat Shoes For Men across the street). My beloved Phoenix Books (where I used to work and get the best books and have lots of satisfying conversations) will also be selling the paper just down the street at 3957 24th St.

Thanks for Nothing

This is late late notice, as I'm licking the remains of pumpkin pie off my plate, my brain addled from ginger curry shrimp, sweet potatoes, yams, green beans, rice, and polenta with salsa (we had Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday so we could have it with some family friends, so today is just standard mom's vacation-time cookin'), but... I wanted to tell you all about an awesome pickling experience you could have tomorrow early evening with master microbial herder Eric Smilie. Eric will be leading a workshop in which he will teach you the alchemical craft of transforming your everyday cabbage into the magically tangy, luminescent topping known as sauerkraut. More information on the materials you will need to bring is on his blog Awesome Pickle, from which I nicked these photos. You can also just ask for a taste and a cup of tea or bring something to barter with him for a whole jar of his superior kraut.


Above is a photo from a workshop he led recently at the earthy forest-sprite neo-folk wonderland known as Gravel & Gold (I was actually walking home as he was setting up for it and popped in to say hi). More photos to make you sad you weren't there but that will motivate you to be at the next one are at the G&G blog.

The event tomorrow is part of the Buy Nothing Day festivities at the Non*Mart art show at Y2K Gallery in San Francisco's Richmond District. There will also be seed & book swapping, as if sauerkraut alone weren't enticing enough. It's from 4-6pm, 251 Balboa at 4th Ave. (combine it with a trip to the deeply satisfying Green Apple Books! Oops, but don't buy nuffin' or at least don't let on that you did). So instead of participating in the apocalyptic-sounding Black Friday, where crazed masses overcharge their credit cards for things on sale they don't really want and come home feeling empty inside and so, so alone, "unshop, unspend, and unwind" as the Buy Nothing motto goes, and feel grateful for all the amazing things that buying nothing gets you to actually do and make.

Vanessa Dualib's Playful Produce

It's that time of year when all the little potatoes come out to play, so get your craft box out and your googly eyes ready. This incredibly charming creature is called Potatosaurus Dulcis and will gladly munch up all that extra parsley you don't know what to do with. I discovered prints of him and his descendant (or ancestor?) Potatoctopus (below), along with other delightful produce pals at the Greenpoint Food Market while I was in Brooklyn last month. These cartoonish creatures sprang from the mind, fingers, and camera of Brazilian artist Vanessa Dualib, who has assembled a book of slightly psychotic yet endearing characters, like radish mice, baby carrot figures, fruit fish, and a mischievous fellow named Eggbert.


In addition to the book, Playing With Food and its main website, Vanessa also has a flickr photo gallery and tumblr blog, for those who have strong Internet interface preferences or just prefer their website names to confuse people by deleting vowels from commonly known words.

Here is Pepe the Pepper flanked by his less embarrassed and perplexed companions. He moved from his native Mexico to Avery Island, Louisiana to work for the Tabasco Co. and married a hot jalapeña, according to Vanessa.

Not only is Ms. Dualib a fellow weird food fetishist and Brazilian (I have a long-standing relationship with the country and its cultural production, though I swear to you by my Freud reader and Havaiana flip-flops that I do not belong in the dubious ranks of Brazil fetishists), but she also shares my soft spot for children's stories, which earns her a permanent place in my vegetable heart. Here, a carrot version of Le Petit Prince:



And... she made an eye-popping fruit 'n' veggie Where the Wild Things Are tableau that was featured on We Love You So, a web collage of art, music, and inspiration by people who worked on the Spike Jonze film version.


They also interviewed her on the site if you want to know more. Now, if only she would cross paths with Wes Anderson and make some Fantastic Mr. Fox-inspired dioramas. How excited I am to see that movie!

Buttercup Squash in Winter Beanie

The weather has grown colder, and even our vegetable friends need some extra warmth. That's why this buttercup squash grows its own fitted light-green "beanie," as original weird vegetable goddess Elizabeth Schneider calls it in her indispensable Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Common Sense Guide, originally published in 1986 with the super extended title that continues: From Arugula to Yuca: An Encyclopedic Cookbook of America's New Produce, With Over 400 Easy-to-Follow Recipes. She writes, "this turban-shaped squash with its distinctive pale 'beanie' has long been esteemed by many growers as the ideal winter squash..." Our intrepid guide never really says what makes this squash "ideal" (or her guide "common sense" for that matter). This shiny green fellow I picked up during a rare visit to the produce mecca that is Berkeley Bowl seemed pretty ideal, and I half expected to find a baby dread tendril peeking out from under its jaunty cap.

The buttercup is in the Cucurbita maxima family, which means it shares a resemblance to hubbard, turban, and kabocha squashes, the most dramatic group of the winter squashes, in my opinion, for their larger size and swirling color combinations.

Although I love the hearty orange comfort of roasted winter squash, spooned directly from the steaming rind, mixed into pasta, or puréed into a soup, I don't often buy the larger ones because they seem to take too much effort and planning. I hesitate to overload my shopping bag with these heavyweights because I'm usually biking or taking public transit home (I like to pretend I don't have a car), then I get nervous about how my knife will slip and take off a finger while I'm struggling to hack open this thing that suddenly looks disconcertingly like a human head, and after that I'll have to scoop out the seeds and guts and then, depending on what ultimate form I would like to serve the squash in, try again not to draw my own blood while awkwardly peeling the outer skin, then perhaps cut the orange meat into smaller pieces and then--whew!--heat the oven that I forgot to preheat and wait forever for the slices to soften, and then do yet more fixing up before serving.

But! Inspired by the optimistically unhinged grin of the Elmo pumpkin I carved with my sister, I've decided to quit all this exaggerated whining and tackle the world of winter squash with gusto! And a sharp knife.

Ms. Schneider prepared me for the worst kind of squash resistance to being halved: "If you want to cut up the buttercup, a heavy cleaver or giant knife usually does the job." Then she gives the contingency plan, which involves pounding--okay, gently hammering--on the blade where it joins the knife handle with a wooden mallet or rolling pin. Excited by the cartoonish potential of this scene, I eagerly got my rolling pin out, ready to beat that buttercup into comic submission (boing! oof! stars). But it parted surprisingly meekly before my not-yet-sharpened blade, and the large seeds were easy to scoop out.



I had decided to make a squash and sage risotto based on a recipe from my Chez Panisse Vegetables book, so I sliced the pieces up and peeled the rind off with a paring knife. I also added in some pieces of red kuri squash that Erin had left over from an elaborate dinner involving several kinds of home-brewed beer and food pairings that was orchestrated in part by this pickle master friend, whose chocolatey porter she cooked a squash mole to accompany.


The red kuri has a red-orange peel and is slightly harder and less sweet than the buttercup, say my taste buds. The buttercup was unexpectedly tender for being a C. maxima and reminded me of acorn squash.

The exact risotto that I made is probably unreproducible since I had the sudden inspiration to substitute the chicken broth with a cardamom-ginger-anise-spiced Vietnamese pho broth base and add shreds of ox tail meat that I slow cooked in the broth for four hours and then reheated as I ate pho for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the course of two days while I was recovering from what I'm self-diagnosing as swine flu in a minor key. It's also my mom's pho [pronounced "fuh" like "fun" without the "n"] recipe, so you really can't reproduce it unless I release the information to the Internet winds.

But here I shall give you a version of Alice Waters's risotto:

SAGE & BUTTERNUT SQUASH RISOTTO
(I used buttercup and red kuri; acorn would also be nice)

1 medium squash (1 lb)
24 sage leaves (really, you don't have to count them, just use the force)
Salt 'n' pepa
7-8 cups of chicken stock (or pho broth!)
1 medium onion
5 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup grated parmigiano reggiano cheese

I also included this one monster chanterelle mushroom that cost $5 at Bi-Rite and must have drawn a glistening tear from the eye of the forager who unearthed it:

Evil monkey peeler approved of the frivolous purchase.

Now, onto the instructions:

Carefully peel and clean the squash and dice it into small cubes (I'm still stuck in remedial-level peeling, as you can see from the tinges of green still stuck on my cubes.)


Put the diced squash in a heavy-bottomed pot and cook with a few whole leaves of sage, salt, and 1 cup of the stock. Cook until tender, but not too soft, about 5 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, chop 6 sage leaves fine and cut the onion into small dice [yes, Waters writes "small dice." I guess that's an official chef's term.] I also took this moment to slice up that glorious mushroom into small sliver [that's my own term].

Heat the rest of the chicken broth and hold at a low simmer. In another heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat 3 tablespoons of the butter, add the chopped sage (mmm, it's gonna start smelling gooood), and cook for about a minute; add the onion and cook over medium heat until it's see-through (I'm doing that undergraduate plagiarism trick where you switch out a few key words, like "see-through" for "translucent"). Add the rice and toss it around a bit with your wooden spoon until it's covered in butter, glistening and slightly translucent (or see-through). Now turn up the heat (aw yeah) and pour in the white whine (sookie sookie, now). When the rice absorbs the wine, add enough stock to cover the rice, stir it up, little darlin', and reduce the heat.


Keep the rice at a gentle simmer and continue to add more stock, a ladle or two at a time, letting each addition be absorbed by the rice. At this time, you should feel free to pour yourself a glass of the white wine while your guests hover in the kitchen and wait for the food to be ready because they got there on time and why are you behind. While the rice is cooking, sauté the remaining sage leaves in butter until crisp. (I did not do this because I was busy drinking wine and talking about movies with the people in the kitchen and forgot, but I'm sure it would have been awesome.)

After 15 minutes, the rice will be nearly cooked. Stir in the cooked squash, the rest of the butter (I left this out), and the cheese--I also added those chanterelle slivers and the shredded slow-cooked ox tail meat. Continue cooking for about 5 minutes or until all that extra stuff is warmed up and mixed in. Adjust the seasoning or add more broth as needed. Serve in warm bowls and microplane some more Parmesan cheese on top and add those crispy sage bits. So delicious and warm on a chilly night!

I fed five people with this recipe (along with crispy roasted brussels sprouts and a potato dish that Erin made), plus made at least three bento box meals of it in the days following.