peevish mama

On Saturday we needed an easy adventure. The kids were feeling kind of bunk after their mini fevers, as was their mama on the day after the day after Snoop Dogg (yep, not as young as I used to be, and yet I continue to pretend). It was a gorgeous day and we simply couldn’t let ourselves sit around the house and oh, I don’t know, actually get anything accomplished, so we did what we always do when we need a little sumpin, sumpin and we went to the Minneapolis Farmers Market. It’s down to the skeleton crew now, but Chef Shack was there, so we had a tasty lunch of burgers, bison chili and mini-donuts while sitting on some gloriously sunny concrete steps. The kids got animal balloons which ended up causing more tears than joy as they popped and unravelled and disappointed in that special way that all balloons inevitably do. If only Devil Baby would let herself be convinced that it is precisely their ephemeral nature that makes balloons so compelling, but alas, she was having none of it and I rued the day she spotted that guy dressed like a clown dressed like a chef.

As we were leaving with not much more than some apples and some cool cabbage-looking flowers, I stopped at a guy selling different kinds of squash. Bespectacled, unassuming and dressed in clothes the color of the earth, he gently suggested I try a sampling for six dollars. Sure, I said. They were gorgeous and I’ve been diggin’ on squash lately. There is nothing easier and more delicious than roasting it with a little olive oil, real maple syrup and sea salt. He proceeded to fill a big supermarket paper bag with acorn, butternut, buttercup and carnival squash. The cornucopia pictured above isn’t even all of it –  I’ve already roasted an acorn, two carnivals and there’s a huge butternut in the oven right now.

This orgy of squash brings up a few issues: First of all, how are these people supposed to survive? All that work, all that risk, all that waiting, and he’s practically giving it away. Farmers markets are ridiculously cheap anyway, and when you get the end of the day or end of the season desperation sales, well, it just feels unfair. I don’t know what we can do except try try try to buy what we can directly from the source. We are able to do this with so little of our food supply, and for so little of the year, that it seems a pity not to make a bit of an effort in the summer and fall months to throw some of our dollars in the direction of our local farmers. I have a horror of sounding preachy. I too succumb to the cheap and out-of-season Costco berry extravaganza to keep my kids filled with fruit. I’m no saintly self-sustained off-the-grid locavore. But, I am full of guilt about just about everything. So in an effort to assuage said guilt, I told him I’d also buy a cabbage, which is now taking up the entire bottom shelf of my fridge. It’s huge. Like a rugby ball. Bigger. Like a watermelon. One dollar.

And if a twingey sad heart and a guilty conscience weren’t enough, I am also suffering from a peculiar pain in my right ring finger, aggravated from wrangling said squash. It’s hard to cut those motherfucking gourds! They are some seriously tough bitches, y’all. I think I need a cleaver, but as much as I love knives, I’d be too scared to wield a cleaver. I have no doubt I would have a horrible vision of chopping off my finger and then I would go ahead and do it. I seriously think I’m developing carpal tunnel. After wrestling with the bodacious butternut tonight, I tried to let go of the knife and my hand stayed in the shape of a claw. This can’t be good. I’m not sure how long I can go on like this. If Squash Claw isn’t a defined medical condition, then it needs to be and the New England Journal of Medicine needs to contact me asap. 

In the meantime, anyone want some squash?