I do so love a recipe whose first word is "decapitate."
I received one of these puppies as a present from a friend, who was entranced by, and thought rightly that I would be entranced by, its pulchritude.
I must digress—the word pulchritude, meaning beauty, sounds in fact—as many before me have noted—like something very unpleasant. Lumpy, swollen, fleshy. But I believe that in this squash, the word is not only apt but absolutely designed for vegetables. I mean, look at this beautiful thing. (The image credited to gardennerd.com, as I had not photographed my own before I despoiled it.)
So. It was puchritudinous. And I did admire its pulchritude. (If the word sounds as though it describes a thing unpleasant, it is nonetheless delicious to say.) But I looked it up online and discovered that it is edible as well as decorative. And I have an ingrained horror of wasting food, an ingrained curiosity about things I've never eaten before, and a cleaver.
Now I have, in addition, a squash in the oven, there are remarkably no cuts on my person, and the first joint of my right index finger is looking pretty buff. Burns and cuts are all very well, but if you want to see if someone cooks a lot (or maybe if you want to see someone who chops a lot of turban squash) check out the knife callus on that finger.
Still waiting for results. However. In future, I will regard this vegetable as decorative, and will throw my next one out guilt-free when it's time to change to winter decor. A hatchet would have been a better tool than a cleaver, so remarkably tough was it. And along with the descriptions of its delicate (i.e., negligible?), buttery (refers to color?) taste, the word "chalky" showed up in one of the descriptions (Too late. I read that one after.)
Post Mortem. It was delicious.