Squash

This week America celebrates the holiday of Thanksgiving, or as it is known outside the United States, "Thursday."

Families separated for months or years will reunite, and shortly afterwards remember why they separated. Throughout the nation, those wretched souls condemned to the public school system will breathe a bit easier, eager in their anticipation of four days surcease from education. The students are pretty happy about the long weekend vacation, too.

Thanksgiving is, of course, a holiday invented by grocers and farmers to allow them to sell huge quantities of disgusting "traditional" foods that no one in his right mind would eat otherwise, such as squash. The average squash is a triumph of minimalism wherein Nature manages to convert mud into a plant without bothering to change its texture.

Attempts to improve the mud-like flavor of squash by the addition of delicate seasonings and spices have produced dishes that taste, at best, like delicately seasoned and spiced mud. A master chef, faced with the necessity of making a palatable squash dish, would throw in his funny hat and become a short-order cook at Denny's.

- Bill Stebbins 2001March