Buddha's Hand Squash (Chayote)

I recently saw an interesting vegetable at the supermarket. It is called a Buddha's hand squash (佛手瓜), and the name comes from its claw-like shape. The skin is green and it looks like the skin of a citrus fruit. I was ready to buy one just to find out what it was, but there was a notecard that explained its uses, and strangely, eating it was not one of the recommended uses. It can be used to make juice, to stew meat or vegetables, as an offering to Buddha, and there were also medicinal uses. I found this picture which shows the weird clawlike shape.

Searching on the internet, I found that this vegetable is originally from Mexico and Central America, and is called the chayote. The seed does not have a dormant period; it begins sprouting before the vegetable is ripe. The sprouts continue growing out through the vegetable skin. In order to plant this vegetable, you cannot plant only the seed, you have to plant the whole vegetable. This method of growing them is an extremely literal illustration of the Chinese proverby "Zhong gua, de gua" (種瓜得瓜), which means, you plant melons/squash, you get melons/squash (or, you reap what you sow). After being planted, they do not need to be watered or fertilized. According to various web pages, they can be eaten raw, fried, pickled, stuffed, mashed, etc.