The Dining Hall's Seasonal Celebrity

Move over, popcorn chicken—the coolest HUDS entrée this fall might just be the squash.

This New England veggie has been popping up almost daily in d-halls with completely random names like Long Island Cheese Squash or Blue Hubbard with Sage and Cider, bringing a much-needed touch of restaurant snobbery to the food line.

But this influx of squash isn’t just adding class to HUDS menus; it’s part of Harvard’s push for sustainability. In an effort to further this new role, the school signed a deal with Ward’s Berry Farm of nearby Sharon, Mass. to buy 40,000 pounds of squash in eight different varieties.

“We are continuously looking for opportunities to buy food more locally, as well as to find a partnership with a farm,” says Crista Martin, Director for Marketing and Communications for HUDS. Students have been able to visit the premises through organized trips.

Martin adds that the squash is delivered through a process called back-hauling, in which trucks pick up the produce on the way back from other deliveries to increase efficiency.

“We didn’t want to add yet another truck to Harvard Square,” Martin says. “That’s not a very sustainable way of doing business.”

Some students have embraced Harvard’s squash obsession whole-heartedly: “It’s nice to have different options from locally-grown sources,” Kelly A. Evans ’10 says. Evans’ favorite HUDS variety is Delicata Squash.

“I just keep eating it... I practically eat my weight in it,” jokes Evans, who estimates she puts down 15 to 20 pieces of the veggie in one sitting.

But not everyone is so crazy about squash.

“I don’t even know what that is,” says a perplexed Roshane K. Campbell ’12, who quickly Google Image searched the vegetable on his laptop in Annenberg.

Freshmen have so much to learn.