I have a very limited food awareness. More than two new ingredients in a recipe? Nah, I think I'll pass. Growing up, my mother fried squash (and the only thing I new as squash was yellow summer squash). As an adult, I've learned her method is called "pan-fried", which still makes me laugh. How else would you fry squash? I only knew one person who had a deep fryer and it was for fish and hush puppies only. Yes, as one of my teachers liked to remind us in high school, I lived in a pocket of ignorance. My mother-in-law introduced me to squash cooked with onions, which I like, and through pot lucks here I've had squash casserole.
So imagine my surprise last week when I went to allrecipes.com and typed in squash in hopes of finding a squash casserole recipe. Up comes a recipe for SQUASH COOKIES! And no, I did NOT print it out. I was so shocked, I mentioned it on Facebook, and everyone starts talking about zucchini and acorn squash and pumpkin recipes...and I was a bit amazed. Not only was that the most comments I've ever had on a Facebook post, but also because I've just never considered those foods in the same category. The vegetable family? Yes. But somehow pumpkins and squash are as related as butterbeans and green beans - very distant cousins.
I've made pumpkin bread and pies and cake, but somehow I can't see me doing that with squash. For one of our vacations in Winston-Salem we ate at some little exotic outdoor cuisine place and I tried butternut squash ravioli. Never again. It was disgusting. It's a nice thought, disguising vegetables in place of a meat, but some things were just meant to be eaten in a certain way, or not all. Give this ignorant girl from a coal mining community in north-western Alabama yellow summer squash or not at all. Some things you just don't mess with.
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