All winter squash can be used as summer squash. Most are not as tasty as those developed for immature use. Nevr tried Delicata, know folks who use acorns, and butternuts are actually delicious as summer squash.

Delicata is a winter squash that can be used for any purpose that any other winter squash is used. Their advantage is that they are small enough to be baked like the acorn squash. Like all winter squash, they are best when fully ripe. (full grown seeds and hard skin) I wait until the vines start to go down before harvested any type of winter squash and the cure them for a couple of weeks before eating; If in a hurry tho, just makes sure that the rind is hard and the stem hard and drying. The flesh should be yellow.

Concur: Of course if the plant is dieing, you may have serious causes. They will die before the fruit matures when infested with SVB or have serious diseases.At any rate, the fruit has done all it can when the vine quits.Unless you are on the west coast which does not SVB, I would check your plant. Usually a bush plant will set several fruits bring then to maturity and then try for a second set when conditions are favorable.

I had the same thing happen from a Burpee Heirloom pack, and someone who grew fields of Delicata told me that there are always a few plants that put out these round ones. Because of the overall similarity to Delicata in these cases (size, color, stripes) I would not be surprised if there is something other than hybrid seed going on... possibly a gene (fruit elongation) that gets turned off easily. But if the size, color, and stripes genes are dominant and the elongate shape is recessive my hypothesis could very well be wrong. My oddball was different in some other ways too. It was disease resistant and HUGE.