This is a great native vegetable bred and developed by the Cherokee Indians of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas in the early 1800s.It has been gaining in popularity among chefs and the public in recent years, although the mountain folk have maintained it as a mainstay in their home gardens for generations. What you’ll find most commonly today are the smaller banana shaped candy roasters that are features in seed catalogs. The ones we grow come from a more ancient version of this variety. It’s closer to what the Cherokee would have been familiar with: a large cylindrical hard squash. Of course there is a lot of variability in sizes and colors as with many heirloom crops, but the ones we grow tend to weigh between 10lbs and 20lbs - some even over 30lbs!!
We got our original seeds through friends of an old mountain couple that gave them one.It sat on our shelf for 18 months before we finally decided to cook it.The flesh was dense and silky sweet even after that much time! We saved the seeds and have been steadily increasing the crop ever since.
