The tale of the butternut squash.

“What is that?” he asked.

I looked inside the final bag of groceries the heaven-sent delivery service had just brought to my door.

“Oh, that’s a butternut squash. We’re going to make some soup today!”

I pulled it out of the bag and set it on the counter, and then simultaneously my son and I burst out laughing. 

“Oh my goodness! Is this for real?” I asked.

“Uh Mom, that looks like a…”

“Yup. I know… that’s crazy right?” I immediately texted the above photograph to all of my siblings, because let’s be real, I had to. This was possibly the only vegetable on earth that looked quite like this, and somehow it had landed on MY kitchen counter.

“Should we sew it some pants?”

One son asked while we continued to stare at the very aptly named vegetable before us. I wish I could have said yes, but we were fresh out of denim AND a sewing machine.

“Draw a face on it!”

Another son yelled from the other room.

He clearly remembered the parsnips from a few years back. The ones that we turned into great great great grandparents (with the help of a Sharpie marker) after we found them forgotten and wrinkled in the back of the produce drawer.

Fresh out of other ideas, we concluded that the only thing left to do before the mighty soup making event was to pose with the butternut squash for family photos.

A ‘Step right up and get your own snapshot with the inappropriately clad vegetable’ event for the whole family. That’s probably never been a thing in the history of the world until our family just made it a thing. So truly, a once in a lifetime experience.

After all of the excitement though, I got to thinking… maybe the one that was delivered to our house was actually how all of the other butternut squashes are supposed to look. Like maybe the others, the ‘regular looking ones we’re all used to,’ are actually the flawed ones, and maybe here on our counter sat the one butternut squash left in its original and natural perfection.

Hmmm… it’s unlikely, I know. But it was fun to consider for a moment wasn’t it?

I may never look at vegetables the same way again.

With a little bit of wondrous disbelief I grabbed my biggest, sharpest kitchen knife, and an onion from the drawer. “Alright,” I said, “Let’s make some soup.”

I think the beauty of the whole thing was that on a very ordinary day a load of groceries was delivered. And then in a very ordinary way I began to unload them just like I always do, but in a very extraordinary way, hiding in the last bag of all, was a surprise.

A belly laugh to be had by all. 

A belly laugh memorable moment that is now permanently cemented in our family memory bank as, “The tale of the butternut squash.”