Martha Stewart Living (October 2015)

Even though we didn't write about it this year, we had a decent season in our little backyard garden.
Early in the year, we had a really nice crop of lettuces and other leafy greens. We had tons of cherry tomatoes -- almost every day throughout July and August, we tromped out to the garden and grabbed a handful of those sweet little tomatoes and threw them into whatever we were cooking for dinner that night. And we had lots of nice fresh herbs -- almost more basil than we knew what to do with.
But there was one thing this year that was a bit of a surprise: squash.
Okay, it wasn't really a "surprise" per se. We put a lot of effort into growing and fertilizing the squash. But the surprising part? The squash came out pure white.

We posted this on Instagram at the end of August, but we're still just as flummoxed.
We thought we'd planted good ol' yellow summer squash, but, well, we must not have.
The other big surprise about the squash was just how much we got. After a couple of fruitless (vegetableless?) years trying to grow squash, we wound up with four or five big gourds like the one in that photo. We sautéed one or two, which worked great. (In taste and texture, this mystery squash ended up somewhere between a summer squash an a winter squash -- firmer and crisper than a yellow summer squash, but not as firm and creamy-tasting as a butternut.)
Anyway.
When we saw a special feature all on squash recipes in the new issue of Martha Stewart Living, it seemed like a great way to use the rest of our bumper crop.