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National Acorn Squash Day 2024
NOW, THAT‘S WHAT I‘M TALKING ABOUT!
🍂 There’s nothing more 🍂Autumnal🍂 than the seasonal haul of hard squash that start turning up at grocery stores this time of year. Today is National Acorn Squash Day and I’m looking forward to having some.
🍂 Hard Squash Season 🍂
While you can find zucchini in markets in most places year-round, allowing you to make everything from breakfast dishes like zucchini and onion frittatas to snacks like zucchini-stuffed crab cakes, the onset of fall marks the beginning of hard squash season. ~Marcus Samuelsson
Yes!!!
Few things herald the onset of 🍂Autumn🍂 like finding the annual bounty of hard squash at the grocery stores and farm stands.
The splendid colors, shapes and textures set the imagination on fire. Acorn squash with their shiny, deep green skins. The matte, pale peach surface of an oblong butternut squash or a neck gourd stands in sharp contrast to the patchwork madness of a knobby Turkish Turban. Pumpkins in all their sizes and hues sit merrily among the sweet canary yellow spaghetti squash. It’s as lush and colorful as the changing leaves outside.
I love this time of year. Each day is cooler and more crisp than the last. People in flannel and jeans, sweaters and corduroys or whatever is warm and cozy.
That’s the thing I love. Being warm and cozy because you’re dressed for the cooler weather rather than because you’re oppressed by heat, humidity and bugs. Blech!
Being that it’s the end of 🌞 Social Summer 🔥 but not the end of actual summer 🌞 Actual Summer 🔥, it will be a few weeks before we switch over the seasonal clothes and I can revert to mock turtlenecks, henleys, cozy sweatshirts and raglans and my comfy Buffalo Plaid house pants.
I feel less ridiculous wearing my medically necessary hosiery with long pants than with shorts. Frankly, it’s been too darned hot to wear any kind of socks for weeks now and I’m looking forward to not having to feel every random texture underfoot again. Socks are freaking marvelous…
Yum! 🍠 Seriously, 🧈 Yum!
ACORN SQAUSH 101 | how to cook acorn squash
One of the most marvelous things about acorn squash is that it makes its own jolly little bowl.
Cut it in half from top to bottom. Scrape out the seeds and placenta fibers. Spice and butter the halves. Bake them, cut side down.
Once these are baked, you can fill the gap in the middle with a mixture of ground meat, rice and vegetables. Delicious.
I really look forward to this time of year for so many reasons, including the convenience of cutting a few acorn squash in half and baking them into edible bowls. The flesh of these squash is so flavorful by itself, but a dash of nutmeg or cinnamon and some butter brings that flavor to a whole new level.
Just another reason to love 🍂Autumn🍂.
🍂 Use Your 🧠 🍂
You don’t have to use aggression to squash somebody. You have to use your brain. ~Tony Ferguson
Some of the most dreaded villains are the scheming genius types. Villains like Lex Luthor, Norman Osborn, Ras al Ghul, Wilson Fisk and Ozymandias have that long game perspective in their various schemes.
In Austin Grossman’s hilarious take on the superhero genre, Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel, his villainous POV character, Doctor Impossible suffers from Malign Hypercognition Disorder (aka being an Evil Genius). True to the genre, he escapes an inescapable prison and enacts a scheme of revenge that ultimately lands him right back in custody.
The thing about super-smart villains is that they often suffer from self-sabotaging hubris. They often have a blind spot to the fairly plain gaps in their insidous plans.
I’ve got several characters across each of my chosen genres who fit the role of clever schemer.
The thematic purpose of this tragic hubris is to point out that nobody is perfect.
Even the 4D Chess variety of schemer like Lex Luthor will ultimately have some chink in their intellectual armor.
The nice thing about smart villains is that they will learn and adapt, assuming they survive. Lex Luthor typically survives because Superman is a paragon of virtue. Give a zero-fucks-given type of antihero like Deadpool or the Punisher a shot at Lex and he’d be lying in a pool of blood.
The problem with writing an evil genius is that while I can draw from history for acts of evil, the genius part is harder to replicate. That is to say, it’s easier to replicate that if you’re a planner. The sorts of people who write their outlines like a Byzantine mosaic can plan for all the eventualities.
Flying by the seat of your pants, as I do, makes that nigh-impossible. Theoretically, that’s what the second draft is for. Spackling the plot holes and polishing the prose are the roles of second and subsequent editing passes.
Doing what I do, how I do it makes that very difficult.
As previously mentioned, I write what I see. I load a What If… into my mind and (with varying degrees of success) slide into Flow State. In this place, I’m watching my story as a sort of fly on the wall.
Ultimately, I enter the story at some point and ride from then what to then what until I reach the end.
Yes, that sounds all floofy and metaphysical, but that’s how I create stories.
I pick a situation and continue pursuing the action until the situation has somehow resolved.
Sometimes I can use Flow State to get through a particularly complex piece of work, but I don’t always have the ability to get there during work hours due to the many, many, many distractions.
I’ve been feeling fairly evil, without the benefit of any genius lately. I’m absolutely stressed to death and so behind on my work. I could deal with more Flow and less ebb.
Fortunately, the onset of 🍂Autumn🍂 puts me in a cozy state of mind that is more conducive to Flow.
The comfy clothes I mentioned earlier are more relaxed and flowing than 🌞 Summer 🔥 clothes.
Shorts and t-shirts or tanks are, by their very nature, cropped. They’re cut short.
They’re truncated, yet they are still too damned much clothing for the circumstances.
Screw that. Sweat, bugs and perpetual discomfort can go kick rocks. I’m more than ready to move on.
So, what did that tangent have to do with evil geniuses?
Nothing, of course.
What I’m talking about is writing about evil geniuses or any other sort of character.
I’m a witness, a spectator, a passenger on an extra-dimensional rollercoaster.
For most people, this is a dream or a nightmare. For me and other writers, it is a guided tour of story.
Ah, 🍂Autumn🍂. More story and less sweating…
That’s all for today I hope you get to enjoy some hearty, delicious acorn squash with nutmeg and butter before the season moves on.