Treasures in the Ferns

Our part of Michigan enjoyed a rather balmy autumn after a couple chilly nights in September. This nice weather allowed 20 Minute Jan and I to enjoy a rather leisurely harvest and a prolonged period of putting the garden to bed for the winter.
One day’s task was to do something that I rarely perform though I’m told it’s important, namely to prune down the asparagus foliage. It’s important, I believe, because it clears out any hiding places where the asparagus-eating critters can spend the winter. I usually don’t like to chop them all down because the fern like growths turn a rather striking bronze color after the first frost. Plus, they provide a tall vertical structure during the winter when so many garden features lie down for a nap. This year my work paid off.
We had a nice clump of “volunteer” acorn squash that grew in and among the asparagus. We harvested several nice squash during the year and were quite pleased with their productivity. When I started chopping down the asparagus though, I found another FIVE acorn squash! Even better, these squash had not been sampled by the local squirrels.
Yum! I can never get enough acorn squash. I was raised with they typical treatment of butter and brown sugar, which I still find quite tasty. This year we also tried a recipe that involved halving the squash and filling the cavities with a mixture of spicy sausage and cottage cheese. It was a hearty main dish.
We also had great luck in roasting the seeds. After cleaning and separating the seeds from the gooey connective tissues, we soaked them in salt water for about an hour. This technique proved to be the secret to getting just a little salty flavor on the seeds without an over powering salt crunch. I was going to throw a handful of the seeds into the next batch of bread I made but, as I should have predicted, the seeds disappeared nearly immediately.
The unconventional companions of acorn squash and asparagus worked so well this year that I’m tempted to repeat the planting intentionally next year.