have your jack o'lantern and eat it, too

so these are the pumpkins maggie and i carved for halloween this year. normally, halloween is a kind of symbol to me of how decadent we've let ourselves be in this culture - taking a perfectly good piece of food, cutting it up, and displaying it in front of your house, for all the world to see it rot. scary, indeed.


but there's no reason you need to just let 'em go to waste! we were able to cook every part of these pumpkins that we normally would (roasted the seeds, cooked every piece of the flesh), and join in on a fun carving tradition. with just these pumpkins (ok, and a little more donated from cutouts from other friends' creations), we made a pumpkin-quinoa risotto, have a quart of roasted pumpkin puree in the freezer, and made over 11 pints of tasty, tasty, pumpkin butter.

pumpkin butter recipe (adapted from allrecipes):

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups pumpkin puree
• 3/4 cup apple juice (we used local cider)
  
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• a healthy splash of maple syrup
  
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• a squeeze of lemon
  

DIRECTIONS

1. combine pumpkin, apple juice, spices, syrup, and sugar in a large saucepan; stir well. bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes or until thickened. stir frequently, or else lava-hot spurts of pumpkin will shoot out of the pot and all over you and your kitchen.
   
2. transfer to sterile containers and chill in the refrigerator until serving.

you are getting sleepy...

ingredients:
1 local chioggia beet, cut into discs
1 digital camera
a pinch of extra time

quince-anera

no, i'm not talking about latin american coming-of-age parties. i'm talkin' 'bout quince, the winter-hardy almost-an-apple, not-quite-a-pear that Pliny the Elder liked to eat raw.


maggie has been doing some work with a friend of ours who's a landscaper/gardener, and one of the benefits is that we get to eat things that the clients don't want. these have included sorrel, lamb's quarters, oregano, nasturtiums, and now, quince. she came home the other day with about 15 quinces (yes, that's quince quinces for the spanish speakers) that had fallen on the ground, and instantly we knew what to do: quince butter.

we got out our copy of putting food by, chopped up the quince, heated 'em for a while, then ran 'em through the old-timey food mill we borrowed from our friends down the street. boil a lot more, add a couple spices, and you've got thick, thick butter (ours is almost like a paste). and water vapor clinging to all of your walls.

specific recipe comin' soon...

next year in jerusalem (artichokes)

ahh, the sunchoke. long regarded by maggie and i as an excellent root vegetable, to be bought on rare occasions in small amounts when it was available at our local co-op (by "local" i mean a 45-minute drive away, the nearest co-op since Whole Foods bought out the one in Portland). but this year, i bought a pound of waldspinel (austrian-german for "gem of the woods") sunchokes at the fedco tree sale.

so far, they've proven to be the best and most rewarding thing to come out of our garden. i've only harvested a handful, for one meal, but it was so satifsfying to dig into the soil and pluck out these juicy red beauties.

cooking note: we harvested these really as early as you should - they were quite delicate and got too soft with very little cooking (we roasted 'em). really, we should let them overwinter underground, but we won't be here once the ground unfreezes, so we have to get 'em while we can. when they're young, seems best to 'eat 'em raw.

the revolution will not be fertilized

chemically, that is.

a few nights ago, maggie and i were lucky enough to go see michael pollan (author of the botany of desire, the omnivore's dilemma, in defense of food, and this amazing recent NYTimes article) speak at bates college, about 35 minutes away from us. he was speaking for free, and it was open to the public. good thing we got there over half an hour early - we were some of the last people to get a seat before the audience surged into every open nook and cranny in the old chapel. eventually, it was clear that a terrible fire hazard had been created and dozens of people were forced to leave. for his part, MP offered to give the same talk the next morning for anyone who couldn't stay.


the bigger point is this - it's awesome that we've come to a point in which that many people are trying to cram themselves into a building to listen to a guy speak about changing our food system, and encouraging more sustainable and healthy ways of eating. amen to that, mr. pollan.

neither of us has posted on here in quite a while, but this has inspired me to get back on the blog horse and get crackin'. there's lots to tell.

buckwheat blossom farm - part 1

a few days ago, our friends and farmers amy and jeff (from buckwheat blossom farm) told us they needed some help. not wanting to pass up the opportunity for a small amount of money, plus a worthwhile day spent doing good stuff outdoors (and - oh yeah helping our friends), we drove on up to wiscasset to put in our day's work.

we got there at 7:30 and it was cold and raining, so we were put to the task of washing, sorting, and packaging eggs. TONS of eggs. they come out of the hen perfectly clean, but then random bedding and other detritus get stuck onto the shells. the egg inside is perfectly fine, but when buying eggs at a store or far-mar, customers want a consistently clean-looking egg.


also, with over 250 laying hens of different species, there are all sorts of colors of eggs (different shades of brown, white, and...green). we separated them by color, so when packing dozens, we could more easily make a pleasing color mix.

here's maggie washing eggs. did i mention she's vegan?


all in all, we hand-washed, sorted, and boxed 120 DOZEN eggs, one by one. you do the math. and that was all before noon.

far-mar

the day after the great fedco sale, our local saturday farmer's market started up. hot dog! this time of year, we're running out of storage onions and squash, our freezer is getting pretty derned low, but it still feels really weird to go out and just buy some produce from who knows where (definitely not maine!). so luckily, even though it's mostly seedlings and canned goods at this point, there are a few brave farmers out there who can offer us some good arugula, lettuce, leeks, and overwintered carrots. yum!

also, we can pet a llama.