The Things We Do for Squash

No other vegetable plays so hard to get.  Even optimistic I, on occasion, am daunted by their thick-skinned impenetrability.  But as everyone knows it's better to have attempted to cook squash than never to have cooked it at all. 

To that end, with visions of happy-ever-after roasted squash dishes dancing in my head, I boldly brought in my CSA squash a while back, during that particularly cold spell we had where the north wind was bitingly fierce.  Darkness was falling.  I couldn't get the knife to fully split the squash, so gathered squash and knife and headed out my (north facing) dining room door to the back patio, where there was concrete.  The wind immediately blasted into the house, so I pulled the door quickly shut.

Not until I had slammed the knife-impaled squash onto the concrete, thus splitting it, did I find that I had failed to fully unlock the door.  I was now locked outside, in the near dark, with a split squash, a knife, no coat, and an unmercifully arctic north wind bearing down upon me.

I recalled with great vividness the discussion Mr. Eating the Scenery and I had recently about our non-operative garage door keypad.  It was still inoperable.  The keybox by the back door (also north facing) was my only hope.  I don't think I've ever been as close to frostbite as I was fiddling with that frigid metal keybox, feeling for the number sequence and punching numbers in the dark, for around 20 minutes, failing to get it unlocked and growing fumblier minute by frosty minute.

Still, I have wonderful neighbors, and had they been home, I'm sure they would have welcomed me in, big chef's knife, squash and all, for tea and cookies while I waited for Mr. Eating the Scenery to arrive home. As it was, at last I succeeded in opening the keybox and the door.  I needed no trip to the emergency room but was fascinated by the pain involved in slowly thawing my fingertips under tepid water.

Squash hurts.