stripetti squash

Boxing Day, December 2 (and anticipating December 9)

planorcanLeave a comment

Dear John,

We skipped produce pickups while we were out of town. We ate radishes and peppers and carrots dipped in ranch fun dip on the road. We took squash and sweet potatoes and parsley and peppers to family and friends. But sick weeks followed by travel weeks meant we ended up with some very sad foods in the fridge. Some got tossed in the compost (applesauce that molded weirdly quickly), some got sauced (lettuce into a cream dip), some is destined for soup (chard once the Royal Coronas finish cooking).

The chill is finally in the air. I want to curl around casserole dishes and soup bowls. I also want to be able to eat soon after coming in the door and not after the oven has preheated and the casserole has baked for an hour. So, um, things to consider.

CSA Box

  • Braeburn Apples
  • Goldrush Apples
  • Gala Apples
  • Baby Hakurei Turnips
  • Lacinato Kale
  • Purple Carrots
  • Red Veined Arugula
  • Stripetti Squash
  • *Arkansas Black Apples
  • *Cranberries
  • *Fuji Apples
  • *Broccoli
  • *Carnival Squash
  • *French Breakfast Radishes
  • *Green Chard
  • *Purple Gold Potatoes

*Items are predicted for next week since I was not actually able to sit down and do this properly until Sunday.

Community Produce

  • Onions
  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
  • Apples
  • Oranges
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini
  • Green Pepper

Things in the fridge and on the counter

  • Asian pears
  • Apples
  • Reddening cherry tomatoes
  • Celery
  • Greens: Lettuce
  • Chard
  • Beets with greens
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Leeks
  • Sunchokes

Picked at the Garden

  • Closed for the season? At least I haven’t stopped by
  • Though we should try to do a final clean up of our plot
  • Maybe there’s some more parsley? Or collards?

Open Preserves

  • Fridge still organized!
  • Fridge still not inventoried!
  • Fig jam
  • Preserved eggplant
  • Pickled banana peppers
  • Pickled fennel
  • Pickled peach
  • Curdito
  • Fermenting green cherry tomatoes

Pantry Beans

  • Yellow Split Pea
  • Split Red Lentil
  • Black Caviar Lentil
  • Garbanzo Bean
  • Buckeye Bean
  • Good Mother Stallard
  • Pinto Bean
  • Christmas Lima
  • California Corona
  • And maybe one more on the shelf?

Cozy meals

  • We walked in the door at 5:15. We considered ordering delivery, but that requires it’s own decision tree. I made the chickpeas and pasta while you unloaded the rental car. Solid meal from the pantry, yes please. Since then we’ve made dragon noodles with carrots and the remaining leaves of cauliflower or broccoli. Crispy potatoes with the aforementioned lettuce cream sauce.
  • We have three pumpkins and another three squash currently serving as decor. They are overdue for being eaten. Chop one, roast, and serve with the tahini yogurt sauce a la Ottolenghi and Tamimi. Pumpkin Parmesan from the Good Food Cook Book? A curry with tofu? I’m trying to think what else I want to eat that will be better with whole pumpkin/squash chopped than puree and kinda thinking puree for the freezer/muffins/soups/pies/pasta sauce sounds reasonable. But then make puree in either oven or instant pot or crock pot. (I should use the better squash for puree for the cheesecake that looks so tempting.)
  • At Thanksgiving, you saw a kid’s magazine with a spread of cucumbers topped with cream cheese and pretzels or pickles or berries. We should put the cucumber to use.
  • I was trying to remember what baked rice dish surprised me last year with how well it worked. Remembered correctly that I’d texted it to a friend–not as a link but photo from a cookbook and found the Golden Carrot Bake in Simply in Season. Wouldn’t you know it, we have plenty of carrots right now. Also saw the kimchi rice bake, which is probably better for a rushed weeknight.
  • Zucchini feels harder to deal with when there’s snow in the air. Zucchini and pepper and some beans for a chili? A zucchini dal? Or with the royal coronas in a pizza beans set-up? I think the pizza beans if we have time, but the dal if I want to come home to an already made meal. The trick of cooking the rice and the dal at the same time seems worth trying at least once!
  • Speaking of the instant pot, we are at the time of year where I switch to oatmeal breakfast. Definitely going to be tossing a handful of cranberries into the pot with the oats and water. As a reminder, 1 cup of oats + 2.5 cups water + 15-20 minutes at pressure.

Love,

Sarah

PS If the swap box has cabbage, take it so we can make cran-kin-kraut!

Boxing Day, September 26

planorcanLeave a comment

Dear John,

Between catching Covid and stomach bugs and broader health stuff….it has not been a month for cooking. Naps, yes. Kitchen, ugh, no.

We’ve made some meals that used our produce–tomatoes in blackened shrimp pasta, salads with tomatoes and carrots and peppers, pears and brie. Peppers are in need of dehydrating, because they have not been cooked quickly enough.

Today’s Box

  • Bosc Pears
  • Smokehouse Apples
  • Leeks
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • Red Kale
  • Red Leaf Lettuce
  • Stripetti Squash

Things in the fridge

  • Watermelon
  • Plums
  • Asian pears
  • Lemongrass
  • Celery
  • Greens: Cabbage, chard, lettuce
  • Squash: Acorn, white acorn, Robins Koginut

In the Garden

  • Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, many peppers
  • Rainbow chard
  • Dried beans
  • Edamame
  • Beets
  • Parsley if we want
  • Rosemary
  • Oregano
  • Dahlias and cosmos and gomphrena for the table

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
  • Pickled kale stems
  • Pickled fennel stems
  • Radish kimchi
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Tomatillo salsa
  • Cran-kin kraut
  • Cranapple chutney
  • Watermelon rind dill pickles
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Garden glimpse

We pulled the tomatoes and tomatillos. We have clover seeds ready to go (you’re understandably wary of rye), but haven’t gotten the cover crop sown yet. Hopefully later this week we’ll be well enough to make it over to the garden and get them in the ground.

Meals that sound yummy

  • We have a backup of squash. Last week brought lemongrass and I found two squash–lemongrass soups. This roasted squash lasasgna has been sounding so good and I bet we could totally put half in the freezer (which is looking rather lower on pre-made meals at the moment). I think we treat the stripetti like spaghetti squash and make more baked squash bowls.
  • This week’s box isn’t coming with potatoes, but a potato leek soup sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll pick up potatoes at the grocery store.
  • Lettuce has been going in side salads. Honestly, that still sounds good. Yummy peppers and the last of the tomatoes to join.
  • One of the meals from the freezer that hit the right spot for me was the chard quiche. If there’s a day with energy to make a crust and a filling, then making a quiche either with chard from the garden or kale sounds delicious. And freezing slices if we manage to make two.

Love,

Sarah

Boxing Day, November 8

planorcanLeave a comment
Fractal greens!

Dear John,

Meals, so often, don’t actually turn out the way I expect them to. Inspiration and actualization shift during the week. Different things come in from the garden, or the farmers market. Or time constraints get realized. Or what we’re in the mood for shifts with the weather and moods.

Last Wednesday, I took my sister to the garden plot to show off the dahlias. (After all, she gave us the tubers.) I was getting the shears to harvest some basil when another gardener approached with a veritable handful of basil (no space in hands for any more!) and asked if we could use it. Sure, here’s my bag. Oh, yeah, I can take your scrawny green peppers. Yes please, I’ll use your tiny eggplant nubs. Why not take your green tomatoes too? I sent them home with dahlias and best wishes for their international move two days later.

So I made green tomato chutney with green bell peppers from not our plot and Kung Pao peppers from my sister’s plot. We all ate omelettes with fresh basil as the greens and chevre that tasted of decadence. The honeynut squash pizzas were made with pesto (the squash was mostly there for color, turns out basil is strong when you use a lot of it). And there’s basil frozen in olive oil for some summer brightness (fall color?) in the depths of winter.

It took until last night for us to make the radicchio beet cranberry salad. I know why we didn’t make it when we had company, but if we wouldn’t serve it to my sister I’m not sure who we’ll break out this experiment of a meal for. Eating it, I remembered my impression from the first time, that this was my fanciest salad. The thing that I have cooked most likely to end up on a restaurant menu. Because who’s serving radicchio and cranberries at home on a Tuesday night? And at a (pretentious) farm to table place, because that is where you get the beets and hazelnuts and chèvre on a salad. It’s so good. Maybe next time we’ll share with company. (Or maybe we’ll eat it all ourselves.)

Today’s Box

  • Bosc Pears
  • Jonagold Apples
  • Green Kale Hearts Swapped for Celery
  • Purple Broccoli
  • Romanesco Cauliflower
  • Stripetti Squash

Things I think are in the fridge or on the counter

  • Pears
  • Apples
  • Beets (but not their greens)
  • Cranberries
  • Carrot (but not their greens)
  • Radicchio
  • Lettuce
  • Green beefsteak tomatoes, but baby-sized
  • Roma tomatoes, mix of green and reddening
  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Dumpling Squash
  • Potatoes (purple and gold)

Straggling in from the Garden

  • Basil
  • Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos (gather seeds as we go!)
  • Rosemary
  • Oregano

Open Preserves

Just us meals for a justice week

  • More radicchio salad!
  • I wanted to swap the kale for the celery because 1) we’ve had a lot of kale already and 2) the apple, celery, date, and parm salad sounded so good in my mind. Adapt from Six Seasons.
  • While Six Seasons is out, flip over to cauliflower. Let’s try the cauliflower steaks with provolone and pickled peppers please.
  • Debating about the broccoli. I recently remembered Friday nights 15 years ago, cooking up Mollie Katzen’s peanut-butter molasses broccoli tofu stirfry (Enchanted Broccoli Forest), and am craving it. But we made that with frozen broccoli and this looks so good for the roasting. Maybe in a soup?
  • Seeing the eggplant has me craving eggplant with soba noodles. You can’t eat soba noodles. This should be my lunch on the day you go to the office.
  • The internet says stripetti is a cross between spaghetti squash and delicata squash. I vote we use it the same as we would spaghetti squash and bake them as bowls.

Love you,

Sarah