The winter squash start now

  Delicata squash

I never ate a lot of winter squash growing up. I don't know why but we just didn't. But when The Turnip Truck opened in my neighborhood several years ago, it became so easy to eat with the seasons, and that brought me around to the wonderful possibilities with winter squash.

Obviously it's not winter, but they start coming in about this time of the late summer. And they'll continue to be available through the winter. If you garden, you know that some varieties of winter squash will continue to come in for months, and even after harvest they have a great shelf life.

I think I love butternut and delicata the best.

  Out of the oven

Many folks are familiar with butternut squash, but delicata is a bit rarer. If you have this great squash available in your store, you must try it out.

I see so many recipes for winter squash that involve sugar, or some sweetening agent. I grew up in the South and I long ago had my fill of sappy, overdone sweet potatoes -- and that's what all those recipes remind me of. I have cooked squash with brown sugar, honey or molasses on occasion, but on a regular basis, I'm much more likely to go savory. I just think it's a better complement to the vegetable.

Delicata squash is wonderful because you don't have to do much to it to have a marvelous, flavorful side dish. And it's beautiful to boot!

  Squash 

Here's how I fix it: Slice squash in half lengthwise. Roast in oven @ 350 degrees, cut side down, on a sheet coated with cooking spray. It takes around 20-40 minutes I guess -- you want it to be tender when you pierce the skin.

Scrape the seeds out. Then I just add a little butter, parmesan cheese and salt. It's marvelous.

It's true; everyone loves them

The NYT today notifies us that pigs in a blanket are back! Apparently they've been decreed no-longer-gauche, perhaps solely because people love them so much they can't bear not to serve them at their fancy parties.

Well, I've never been above serving pigs in a blanket. Or Rotel dip. Or that cheese-spread-with-strawberry-preserves-in-the-middle. I try to spice things up with new dishes, but people like to eat the comfort foods. Why must we deny that, or make folks feel guilty?

Bring on the Jello and Kraft Singles!

These are great granola bars

Here's an item I find it hard to be without now: Kashi granola bars. These things are actually good. [I find most commercially made granola bars to be either candy [Kudos. Man, delicious, but come on.] or cardboard [Quaker Valley]. Even chewy cardboard is not good.] But the Kashi bars not only taste good, they are in fact, pretty decent for you, too.

Do NOT make these muffins

  Sour cream muffins

You'll be sorry. They are so good you can't stop eating them. And trust me, eating more than 2 in a sitting is a good way to get sick.

Just look:
Sour cream muffins
2 sticks butter
8 oz. sour cream [I've used light s.c. for so long, now I can't imagine what full-fat would taste like in this recipe.]
2 c. self-rising flour

Soften butter and mix with sour cream till thoroughly blended. Stir in flour until just mixed. Drop spoonfuls into a muffin tray. No need to grease the pan. Bake til golden brown [less than 15 minutes] @ 400 degrees.

These are really great with a hearty soup or, like we had tonight, a casserole. I also saw a similar recipe once in a cookbook and they used mini muffin pans. I think that's a great idea. Then you could eat 2 or 3 at once! I must put mini muffin pans on my wish list now.

It's a plate of rooty goodness

  The yellow ones are beets, too. I don't think
they're as sweet as the red. 

Until about 3 months ago, you wouldn't have caught me dead near a beet. I sidled past them in the grocery store, hoping they wouldn't jump into my cart by accident. All it takes is one poorly cooked beet and you, too, would be beetaphobic. Maybe you already are.

If so, you've got to try again. I did and it was worth it. I got some beets in my farm share earlier this summer, and loathe to just throw them out -- I haven't even gotten a compost  pile started at this house, so how could I feel good about throwing out a perfectly good vegetable? -- I decided that there must be a way to cook them so they wouldn't be disgusting.

I found these directions in a cookbook: Wash the beets carefully. Wrap each beet individually in aluminum foil and put them all on a tray. Roast at 400 degrees until tender.

I know the literalists out there want to know how long it takes to roast them. Truthfully, I have no idea. It's more than 20 minutes, less than an hour. Anyway, just check them after a while. You'll be able to tell when they're done: a sharp knife will pierce the beet without resistance.

Unwrap them and let them cool a bit, then take your sharp knife and trim off the top, and peel the beet. The skin will all but fall off.

You can serve beets hot, cold or room temp. When you're serving hot, try them with a little butter, salt and pepper. They're also good cold or room temp with a viniagrette dressing, or oil and vinegar. And here's the best thing I've done with them so far. When my family was in recently, I found a recipe for making goat cheese medallions. You know, the crumb-encrusted, fried circles of cheese that were so all-the-rage at hip restaurants maybe 5-7 years ago? Well, they are awesome with beets.

Give them a try. We even got my dad to try one -- and he is a life-long beet-hater.

I'm addicted again

I don't know what it is about Diet Coke. But I'm addicted. I am sure I would not have night sweats or start shaking if I quit drinking it now, but it's gotten to the point that it's much better to have one than to not have one. You know what I mean?

Now, for years I didn't drink Diet Coke at all. Because I used to drink way too much. In college, I would have 5 or 6 cans a day. I didn't drink coffee, and the caffeine was awesome. Well let me just be the first to tell you: that makes your stomach hurt. Badly. So I quit completely for a while.

Then I started drinking it again after I graduated, and everything was fine. I could have one or two, or none, and I was a normal person about it. Then, I developed epilepsy [when I got a seizure, I got dizzy....luckily no convulsions or passing out] and Nutrasweet seemed to be a trigger for me. So, I haven't had Diet Coke in about eight years. At all.

Well then they came and made it with Splenda. And man, was I excited about that. But I've discovered I'm just like before....I really want one. All the time. I've even discovered [through desperation of course] that Nutrasweet doesn't bother me a bit anymore. Frankly, none of that is good.

I gotta run -- I'm going to get my Diet Coke out of the fridge now.

What's in my fridge

For a long time, I've been thinking about creating a post on what I keep in the pantry. I have always loved lists, and this seems especially appropriate here. I love cookbooks with reference sections, because they'll include a list of items along the lines of, "Stocking Your Pantry."

As anyone who's ever lost power, set up a new house from scratch, or had some other kitchen-formative event knows, building a pantry ain't cheap. In 1998 after the tornado, we lost fridge, freezer and chest freezer contents -- we pegged it conservatively at several hundred dollars' worth of food. [I'll have to post some other time on the wonderful meals we all shared that week with friends in the 'hood, as everyone with a grill or a gas stove desperately cooked what they could in a short amount of time. We were exhausted from the incredible work and stress created by the tornado, but man, we ate like kings!]

At any rate, I think it's just personally useful to have a list of those always-on-hand items. My entire adult life, I've kept this list in my head. You know, the things you immediately replace when you use the next-to-last-one. But I think it would be even nicer to have a written list. So I'm going to start with the fridge.

Dairy
1 gallon whole organic milk
1/2 gallon 1 percent organic milk
Large container lowfat vanilla organic yogurt
2 lbs. salted butter (I buy unsalted for specific recipes)
2 8-oz. pkgs Neufchatel cheese
At least 8 oz. cheddar cheese
Light sour cream
Block of fresh parmesan
Crumbled feta
1 dozen organic eggs

Fruit & Vegetables*
Celery
Red grapes
Jar of mandarin oranges
Salad greens (I always have these, and they usually go bad before I eat them. Who knows how high my "salad stupid tax" is per year. Please don't begin to estimate it. It's probably more than I pay NES.)
Baby carrots
Individual servings of applesauce
Capers
Several forms of garlic
Jar of jalapeno peppers

Meat
Sliced or shaved roasted turkey for sandwiches (I buy other meat as needed for recipes....we eat vegetarian about 60% of the time.)

Condiments
4-5 jars salad dressing (Homemade is better but I rarely have time.)
Dijon mustard
Plain yellow mustard
Brown mustard
At least one jar of specialty mustard
Hellman's light mayo
Heinz ketchup
Salsa
Lemon juice
Pimento-stuffed olives
Black Greek olives
Barbecue sauce
Cilantro paste (I just bought that this summer after my cilantro plant went to an early grave. It's not bad.)
Strawberry jam
Grape jelly
Sesame oil
Red wine vinegar
Better Than Bouillon** vegetable, beef and chicken bases
Horseradish
Claussen dill pickles
Bubbies dill pickles
Sauerkraut
Ground ginger
Tahini
Store-bought pesto (I keep this year-round. I love homemade pesto even better when I am able to make it.)
Pine nuts
Organic chocolate syrup
Maraschino cherries

* This list looks so short! Trust me, I eat lots of fruits and veggies. But I buy them according to what's fresh that week at the market, so I don't have a lot on hand at any one time.

** This stuff is magic and if you don't have some, get to Publix asap! (Maybe they sell it somewhere else around here, but I haven't found it. I used to have to buy mine in Florida when I visited my parents.)

I'm just throwing this out there

What I really, really want -- one day -- is to have a garden so awesome that I get to be on Volunteer Gardener. I mean, have you seen these people's yards?? It's the most inspirational show, but sometimes I don't like to watch it. It makes it so painfully obvious how far off from that I am. I'd say at least 12-13 more years before I can even get started. Maybe longer....then I'll be all busy with middle school sports, right? Goodness. One day.

Don't let this happen to you

  10 days ago, just a few enormo-pods

I took photos of my okra plants 10 days ago, intending to blog about how sad it is that I have neglected them so. If you've grown or eaten okra before, you know that it is at its best when the pods are about 2-4 inches long. Well, I love to garden, but my initial exuberance is always overwhelmed by life later in the season. I am quite gifted in getting a garden started...I can make almost anything grow. But I'm terribly lazy when it comes to harvesting.

I realize this may not make sense to say, anyone. Isn't the point of a garden to grow all those great vegetables in order to eat them? I guess so. But honestly, unless it's tomatoes (mine are still green thanks to some circumstances not worth getting into, but should ripen shortly), it's hard for me to work up the energy to get out there and pick it.

  They're huge! 

So all that was 10 days ago. And I just now got around to harvesting the okra today! So you can see that I have gone from 2-3 large pods, to massive numbers. I finally got them all cut today, and thankfully, my okra plants are still producing like crazy and I should be able to enjoy quite a bit of okra in the next week. I just have to remember to go pick it.

  Really, really huge

The problem remains: What should I do with the mammoth okra? I really hated to waste it. So I decided maybe I could turn it into Christmas ornaments. Have you ever seen those, where they dry okra pods and paint them to look like Santa? Or some other Christmas character?

I figured I could find directions pretty fast on the computer. Not. I found several sets of instructions for drying okra  -- I guess to eat it -- that included chopping it up. All these directions included the use of a food dehydrater, which I don't have. I found instructions for painting "dried okra pods," which was also not helpful. A. I think I can figure the painting part out, and B. still no mention of how to dry the pods!

Cross your fingers

So I'm currently improvising. I've got a tray of mungo pods in the oven on low heat. I let it go for a while then turned it off while we went to church, and heated it up for another hour when we got home. I hate to just leave the heat on for hours, not knowing what I'm really shooting for here.

If you have ever done this before, or have better Googling luck than I do, let me know. Otherwise this could take a week, from the looks of it.

What is cooking?

I was IMing with a friend of mine today, and we started talking about what "cooking" means. In the tradition of the great "what your definition of 'is' is" debate.

This came about after reviewing an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (go here and select Aug. 17, 1995 on the calendar to see the one we were discussing), in which the dad laments the breakneck pace of modern life....and in the background, Calvin curses a microwave dinner that takes 6 minutes to cook.

My point is this: A. I agree! That's ludicrous. Microwaving shouldn't take more than 3 minutes, max! B. I only microwave when I'm not "cooking."

This is where my friend and I diverged. According to said friend, putting together a salad is "cooking." I would say, it depends. What did you do -- unzip the bag of lettuce, dump some cherry tomatoes and boxed croutons on top? Or, did you saute some chicken, carefully select the right vegetables to complement, maybe an appropriate cheese or nuts to add some flavor, and a dressing that ties it all together?

I'm not trying to disparage my friend -- or anyone else -- who describes the former as "cooking." But for me, cooking is not just the act of creating a nutritious meal....It has to nourish my soul in the preparation as well. There's a performance aspect to cooking, even if I'm the only member of the audience. Even better is when friends and family can join in an afternoon or evening of cooking. I think that that really best feeds the emotional aspects of the endeavor for me.

Granted, I don't have that kind of experience very often -- as noted by Calvin's dad in the cartoon we saw this morning, I'm just too busy, even to enjoy an evening of cooking all by myself, more than once or twice a week. But I spend a lot of time in the interim thinking about what to cook, planning menus and shopping trips....See, all that is part of the hobby. Yesterday afternoon, I picked up my latest delivery of my CSA share from Delvin Farms, and I've been contemplating ever since how to best enjoy all that wonderful produce this weekend. All of the mental activity is just as important to the process.

Well I know about half of you are ready for me to get down of this high horse. So, I'm just saying, that's what it takes for me to cook.