Top | theweeklyveggie.com — A Vegetable Ignoramus Expands Her Repertoire

Uchiki Kuri Squash. A Japanese Squash?

(post, Cristin Couzens)

primary-image, l

A long, long, time ago……squash was cultivated by the peoples living in Oaxaca, Mexico.  Like, really a long time ago.  Ten-thousand years to be not quite exact but in the ball park, according to an article in Science.  “Squash seeds, peduncles, and fruit rind fragments” were re-analyzed after being dug up in the sixties, placing the date of squash cultivation longer ago than maize and beans in the Americas.

Before reading Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I thought vegetables were vegetables (never-mind the vegetable that’s technically a fruit thing.)   I never considered there was a difference between a native vegetable and a non-native vegetable.  But really, many of the vegetables we commonly eat today wouldn’t be here unless their seeds had been carried with immigrants crossing oceans.  Maize (corn), beans and squash, are vegetables that were already here.

I was humming along pretty well with this new knowledge until I saw squash advertised as Japanese squash, from Sun Gold Farm.

Read more at The Weekly Veggie. Thanks for visiting!