“I think this is a melon,” she said.
It might well have been. It looked like a tiny honeydew—about softball-sized, with sturdy, pale yellowish-green, and a good thump—but it had no fruity fragrance at all. Still the CSA listing said there was to be melon, and everything else was identifiable, so this must have been it. At any rate, its size wasn’t a problem, since she doesn’t like honeydew melon.
I took her to the train, came back to the house, and decided melon would be good for my breakfast.
Slicing it in half, I found flesh that was more yellow than green, and many more seeds (and larger ones) than any melon I know. I sliced off a bit and tried it. Nope. Not a melon. Definitely squash of some sort. I put the mystery squash aside and had a donut.
As lunchtime approached, I took the nothing-ventured-nothing-gained approach and set the toaster oven to 400F. I scooped out the seeds from the squash, lightly oiled and salted each half, and roasted it, cut side down on a little baking sheet. I checked every 10 minutes, and after about half an hour it was tender. I took it out of the oven and let it cool a little while I got to a stopping-point in a music-arranging project, then turned the halves over to take a look.
The squash, now slightly caramelized, revealed itself to be a little stringy. It was a petite spaghetti squash! Now lunch made perfect sense. I scraped it out with a fork, tossed it with a little butter, salt and pepper, and a spoonful of some excellent eggplant caponata I’d made for dinner the night before. It was a perfect single-serving lunch.
Mystery solved.
Dinner at the Country House 