longtime companions: good-keeper squash

IF YOU WANT COMPANY FOR A DAY OR WEEK, grow a zucchini. If you want company for a year or longer, grow a “good keeper” like these two winter squash who have lived in the house with me since September 2007. Really. Welcome to Food Fest 8, a weekly share-your-recipes event with the Dinner Tonight blog.

I am wild for winter squash, including ‘Jumbo Pink Banana’ (guess which one that is?) and ‘Triamble,’ a blue-skinned three-parted creature of similar endurance to the former. The banana, which can get to 40 pounds or more in a warmer climate, resides in my living room, the gray-blue beauty on my desk. For a year already. Cut flowers, or even a potted orchid? No match. These beauties really last.

That’s because they are all in the species of Cucurbita (say: kew-CUR-bit-a) called maxima, the best “keepers” in the squash clan and also some of the finest-grained and thickest-fleshed and to my tongue, tastiest. ‘Blue Hubbard’ is in this species, too, and if you want pies or soup or “pumpkin” bread this winter, it’s a Hubbard type that you should trot out to the farmstand and buy right now. No hurry to cook it up (though you can, sliced lengthwise in half, then baked skin side down on a rimmed baking sheet till soft, and scooped out into freezer containers once it cools for use later).

I may cook up and mash one or two of this year’s harvest to freeze for soup or pie filling or flan or bread later, just to save time when I develop a craving for some “pumpkin” recipe, but really why do it now? Such beauties who are willing to sit around and dress the place up are always welcome at my house, so invite them to just linger awhile and keep me company I do.

Food Fest is supposed to be about the recipes, but I’m feeling a little whipped from

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