I have been invited, as I have mentioned, to Thanksgiving dinner at the neighbors for whom I dog sat when I first arrived here. I don't want to show up empty handed so as I looked around, I spotted that bug blue monster sitting on the table. HA! I'll kill that fat sucker and make a squash casserole!! Perfect!
The first thing I discovered was that Hubbard's have an incredibly thick skin that defies even a large kitchen knife, much tougher than any pumpkin I've ever dealt with. After trying to poke the knife through the full thickness of the skin, many bad words, and a real danger of the knife slipping and hacking off a finger!! ...I looked around for a hatchet, or a hammer or something BIG ...LOL!!
Then an idea came to me...courtesy of glass cutting projects my mom and I did when I was a kid. I scored a line around it's equator, held it about 4 feet above the kitchen floor and...bombs away! CRACK! It split perfectly into two halves! YES!!! The beast was slain!!
Next I scooped out the seeds and membranes. Cut up the halves into smaller pieces (its much easier once the hull is breached) then put them all on two cookie sheets to bake (about an hour at 450 degrees) until the bright orange meat was soft. Once cooled, I scraped out the meat to mash up in preparation for making a squash casserole. I tasted the meat by itself...its AWESOME! Sweet and yummy with nothing at all on it! Everything I'd read about Hubbards is true...its much sweeter than any of the other winter squash varieties I've ever eaten...including pumpkin.
Anyway...nope, I've never made a squash casserole, but in the spirit of something I always used to tell someone who ever told me "I can't cook"...I would reply, "Can you read? If you can read, you can cook." So off to the internet I went, because like a dummy, I didn't bring any of my cookbooks with me...after all I never used them, and they were covered with 20 years of dust on the shelf! I copied three recipes, plus one emailed by dear friend Carole Paige down in Warrenton, GA. All the recipes were very similar...true to form, I didn't follow any one of them - I'm a "color outside" the lines kinda girl!...but you all already knew that...;) I made a small test casserole tonight before I have to make one to take tomorrow (since I don't know what I'm doing!)...didn't have pecans to put on top (THAT would have been yummy) but it was really good! That really sucks because I don't remember what all "this and that" I did....maybe coloring inside the lines isn't such a bad thing?
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes!
Last thing to do tonight was to pull out all the viable seeds (probably about 60 all together!) from the pulp to dry and store for planting next year. Oh yeah...I don't care where I am next year, I'm growing some of these puppies!!! Even if I have to grow them in the house and let them run all over the living room...LOL!!
Have a blessed Thanksgiving everyone!
The first thing I discovered was that Hubbard's have an incredibly thick skin that defies even a large kitchen knife, much tougher than any pumpkin I've ever dealt with. After trying to poke the knife through the full thickness of the skin, many bad words, and a real danger of the knife slipping and hacking off a finger!! ...I looked around for a hatchet, or a hammer or something BIG ...LOL!!
Next I scooped out the seeds and membranes. Cut up the halves into smaller pieces (its much easier once the hull is breached) then put them all on two cookie sheets to bake (about an hour at 450 degrees) until the bright orange meat was soft. Once cooled, I scraped out the meat to mash up in preparation for making a squash casserole. I tasted the meat by itself...its AWESOME! Sweet and yummy with nothing at all on it! Everything I'd read about Hubbards is true...its much sweeter than any of the other winter squash varieties I've ever eaten...including pumpkin.
Anyway...nope, I've never made a squash casserole, but in the spirit of something I always used to tell someone who ever told me "I can't cook"...I would reply, "Can you read? If you can read, you can cook." So off to the internet I went, because like a dummy, I didn't bring any of my cookbooks with me...after all I never used them, and they were covered with 20 years of dust on the shelf! I copied three recipes, plus one emailed by dear friend Carole Paige down in Warrenton, GA. All the recipes were very similar...true to form, I didn't follow any one of them - I'm a "color outside" the lines kinda girl!...but you all already knew that...;) I made a small test casserole tonight before I have to make one to take tomorrow (since I don't know what I'm doing!)...didn't have pecans to put on top (THAT would have been yummy) but it was really good! That really sucks because I don't remember what all "this and that" I did....maybe coloring inside the lines isn't such a bad thing?
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes!
Last thing to do tonight was to pull out all the viable seeds (probably about 60 all together!) from the pulp to dry and store for planting next year. Oh yeah...I don't care where I am next year, I'm growing some of these puppies!!! Even if I have to grow them in the house and let them run all over the living room...LOL!!
Have a blessed Thanksgiving everyone!
Update: I have to say, everything I read about the Hubbard squash is true! It is sweater than any winter squash I've ever eaten, including butternut and pumpkin! The casserole was great!
ReplyDeleteas was Thanksgiving dinner here with new friends.
Hope you all had wonderful times with family and friends.
Miss you all!