Let’s talk spaghetti squash

By Shelly Detwiler, berry farmer and dietician

I am baaaaack! Did you miss me? Unbelievably I was on a Japanese Reality TV show. Truth. So, I had logistical issues with the column, but I am back rearing to go. Let’s talk spaghetti squash. Coincidentally spaghetti squash has a Japanese connection. 

“How Spaghetti Squash Squiggled Its Way Onto American Tables” by Andrew Coletti with Gastro Obscura shares the story about how it took a “food culture shift for consumers in the west to embrace the ‘noodle plant.’” The story goes that the earliest known squash Yὐchi guᾱ otherwise named “shark-fin gourd” was being grown in the Manchuria region of China. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, and the stringy gourd attracted the attention of a Mr. Sakata, who had formed one of today’s largest Japanese seed companies. Sakata seed company has been the sole source of spaghetti squash seeds in the U.S. since the 1930s.… Continue reading