
A few years ago, a student wrote an essay titled "Eating Your Pet." It was about raising cattle for meat, getting particularly close to one cow but not having much trouble eating that cow's meat. The entire class reacted to the title of her essay. I still remember the shrug of her shoulders and the no-nonsense, "What? That's what she's for."
My pet, I've recently learned, is eaten as terrapine soup--turtle soup. She doesn't seem to know this, or I'm sure she'd be less grouchy (winter is not her season). In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer weaves stories about his pet dog, George, throughout his argument for the economic and environmental reasons for eating dogs instead of pigs or cows.
Anyhoo, that's not my point. Well, it sort of is because it's about eating pets, or how a plant can become a pet. It's about a Hubbard squash I grew last summer. I wrote about its freight-train growing speed here, but as enamored as I was by its growing process and beauty, I had yet to taste a Hubbard. I harvested it in October, and it has sat on the shelf in our dining room ever since.

During the last four months, its pale green color and organic shape drew everyone's attention, like sculpture. Most everyone instinctively reached out and touched it, petted it. That's probably why my turtle's in a bad mood. She lives right next to the squash. Not only did the squash get to be outside, it drew everyone's attention away from the turtle.
Repeat visitors developed a relationship with the Hubbard like my man and I did. Admittedly, I was so enamored with its heft and shape that I frequently kissed it, like you might kiss a loved one on the top of the head, admiration and pride.
None of this stopped us from speculating how to cut up the thing. We openly discussed knife options right in front of it, settled on the hatchet stored in the back of our car's trunk (for reasons only my prepared-for-anything man can explain), and even used the Hubbard's stem-end to prop cookbooks open to squash recipes.
The time came, this last weekend, to kill our pet. I carried the Hubbard like a child to the kitchen sink for a bath. Splashing it with water, rinsing it from the head (stem-end) down, then lifting it to drip a little, I realized it probably weighs the same as a child--I'm guessing ten pounds.
The thing is, I knew it was time. It had been admired for four full months, revered for its beauty and sensual shape, petted for its connection to summer, sun, and soil. If we didn't do it, nature would, so, I pulled out our knife, newly returned sharpened from CutCo, and aimed to slice it in half.

Well, it took two of us a good five minutes to saw the first of three parts. Then, those parts had to be hacked into fourths, those peeled and cut in thirds again, and those parts chopped. As the top and bottom halves roasted in our oven, taking more than an hour to soften, I packed raw squash cubes to freeze and filled a casserole dish with more pieces to roast once the ends were done. We filled our freezer with plastic tubs and bags full of squash, raw and roasted, made two batches of Pumpkin-turned-Hubbard Raisin Bread, ate squash soup for four lunches, and scooped roasted squash into our burritos for dinner last night and lunch today.
As much as I admired the look of the Hubbard on our shelf, its generosity impresses me even more. This one squash, not even as large as they grow (I planted it a bit late), is feeding two people and a few guests for countless meals. There is at least enough frozen squash for a dozen more recipes. And, I'm not the slightest bit sick of it. My skin is turning a bit orange from all the vitamin A. I like to think I look tan not jaundiced.
Speaking of generosity, enough thick, white seeds sloughed out of the inside of our Hubbard to populate all of Portland's backyard gardens. Our hacking fed our bellies and confirmed the continuation of our lovely pet's lineage.
My pet, I've recently learned, is eaten as terrapine soup--turtle soup. She doesn't seem to know this, or I'm sure she'd be less grouchy (winter is not her season). In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer weaves stories about his pet dog, George, throughout his argument for the economic and environmental reasons for eating dogs instead of pigs or cows.
Anyhoo, that's not my point. Well, it sort of is because it's about eating pets, or how a plant can become a pet. It's about a Hubbard squash I grew last summer. I wrote about its freight-train growing speed here, but as enamored as I was by its growing process and beauty, I had yet to taste a Hubbard. I harvested it in October, and it has sat on the shelf in our dining room ever since.

During the last four months, its pale green color and organic shape drew everyone's attention, like sculpture. Most everyone instinctively reached out and touched it, petted it. That's probably why my turtle's in a bad mood. She lives right next to the squash. Not only did the squash get to be outside, it drew everyone's attention away from the turtle.
Repeat visitors developed a relationship with the Hubbard like my man and I did. Admittedly, I was so enamored with its heft and shape that I frequently kissed it, like you might kiss a loved one on the top of the head, admiration and pride.
None of this stopped us from speculating how to cut up the thing. We openly discussed knife options right in front of it, settled on the hatchet stored in the back of our car's trunk (for reasons only my prepared-for-anything man can explain), and even used the Hubbard's stem-end to prop cookbooks open to squash recipes.
The time came, this last weekend, to kill our pet. I carried the Hubbard like a child to the kitchen sink for a bath. Splashing it with water, rinsing it from the head (stem-end) down, then lifting it to drip a little, I realized it probably weighs the same as a child--I'm guessing ten pounds.
The thing is, I knew it was time. It had been admired for four full months, revered for its beauty and sensual shape, petted for its connection to summer, sun, and soil. If we didn't do it, nature would, so, I pulled out our knife, newly returned sharpened from CutCo, and aimed to slice it in half.

Well, it took two of us a good five minutes to saw the first of three parts. Then, those parts had to be hacked into fourths, those peeled and cut in thirds again, and those parts chopped. As the top and bottom halves roasted in our oven, taking more than an hour to soften, I packed raw squash cubes to freeze and filled a casserole dish with more pieces to roast once the ends were done. We filled our freezer with plastic tubs and bags full of squash, raw and roasted, made two batches of Pumpkin-turned-Hubbard Raisin Bread, ate squash soup for four lunches, and scooped roasted squash into our burritos for dinner last night and lunch today.
As much as I admired the look of the Hubbard on our shelf, its generosity impresses me even more. This one squash, not even as large as they grow (I planted it a bit late), is feeding two people and a few guests for countless meals. There is at least enough frozen squash for a dozen more recipes. And, I'm not the slightest bit sick of it. My skin is turning a bit orange from all the vitamin A. I like to think I look tan not jaundiced.
Speaking of generosity, enough thick, white seeds sloughed out of the inside of our Hubbard to populate all of Portland's backyard gardens. Our hacking fed our bellies and confirmed the continuation of our lovely pet's lineage.
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For example, the last two years we saw 

