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As food names go, "gray squash"...

PostPosted: Wed Aug 01, 2012 10:17 am
by Jenise
...strikes me as a very poor descriptor for what is a tasty and beautiful light green vegetable.

It's actually a squash native to Mexico and called calabacitas there. I buy and cook them often (believe it or not, usually for breakfast, for which meal a bowl of hot vegetables is one of my joys), but I never see it in anyone else's home. No one else seems to know how good they are--often, when I'm picking up a bag of them, another shopper will ask me what I do with them.

Fifteenish years ago when they first started showing up in the markets I frequented in Southern California, they were sometimes called 'Magda' squash. Not sure if there's a similar variety that actually has that name, but I *am* sure it sounds a whole lot more appealing. At the very least, it's menu-able. Gray squash, not so much. Nobody likes gray food. (Except my mother-in-law.)

I saw them labelled another way last week in a little open air produce market in Lynden. There were three bins, one full of zucchini, one full of gray squash and a third full of yellow crook necks. The signs read "Green Zucchini", "Gray Zucchini" and "Yellow Zucchini". I laughed out loud. Especially since if I were a summer squash I'd be pretty offended by that. Zucchini is delicious straight out of the garden but it loses its flavor super fast under commercial growing/marketing conditions, where gray squash in fact excels.

If you too haven't tried gray squash yet, in flavor and texture gray squash is more similar to yellow crook neck and light green patty pan summer squashes than to zucchini, but it's available earlier and longer, at least here on the left coast, which is great for people like me for whom fresh vegetables aren't just a side dish.

Any other fans?

Re: As food names go, "gray squash"...

PostPosted: Wed Aug 01, 2012 2:10 pm
by Karen/NoCA
Jenise, they are also known as Summer Tatuma. I don't know how a vegetable can get so many names, especially an heirloom type. Anyway, I have been eating them for three summers and love them. They keep very well. I also love the round globe, and when cooking the two of them, I love to sauté in a little butter and evoo until nice and golden, then use finishing salt, coarse white pepper and fresh lemon juice over them I, too, make this for breakfast. So good!


http://www.google.com/search?q=globe+squash&hl=en&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4GZAZ_enUS251US251&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Wm8ZUMnUOrDmiwK6i4DIAw&sqi=2&ved=0CFQQsAQ&biw=954&bih=536