New Squash Season

While I picked plenty of zucchini in the garden yesterday, some other squash varieties were clamoring for attention.
Bright orange ones!

The butternut squash are not quite ready yet, but the pumpkin vines have been crumbling off of the pumpkins for a few days, so it seemed to be time to harvest the pumpkins.

My dad took a couple to Indiana for the grandkids, and I brought 7 home to turn into puree.
I chopped and shredded the zucchini while four of my pumpkins were roasting in the oven.

After I roasted them, I turned them into puree, and saved the seeds for a crispy snack.

I learned last fall that the easiest way to cook a pumpkin is to put the whole thing in a 350 degree oven (in a pan) with a few slits in the top to let the steam out. It doesn't work if you need chunks of pumpkin, but if you need puree for soup, bread, cookies, pie, etc., you can't beat this method.
I fit four pumpkins in the oven at once and cooked them for a little over an hour.
It's amazing how much easier a pumpkin is to carve after it is cooked!
The flesh comes right off of the skin with a small spoon and gentle pressure.
I used a hand blender to turn the stringy chunks into puree:
and then I got to work on the seeds.


I seasoned them with garlic powder, onion powder, seasoned salt, and pepper, then roasted the seeds at 350 until they popped. I was chopping apples and not paying attention to time, but my recipe, from Elspeth's blog, said that they would pop - and they did.In the meantime, I had picked up a bushel of apples at the farmers' market, and was working on a batch of apple butter. Since I was already looking for containers and measuring out large amounts of sugar and fall seasonings, I decided to make some pumpkin butter with my pumpkin puree.
Four cups of puree, plus four cups (!) of brown sugar, 5/8 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp each of nutmeg, allspice, and ground cloves, and a couple of squirts of RealLemon juice. (The recipe called for the juice of two lemons, but I used the lemon juice I have on hand for canning.) I wanted to use some of my beautiful maple syrup, or at least some honey as sweetener, instead of all of the sugar, but I've never even eaten pumpkin butter before, and decided not to mess with the recipe until I knew what I was getting myself into. (I made half a batch, which made about 6 cups after simmering on low for an hour - while I made pesto.)

I'm not sure whether I like pumpkin butter or not. We don't have any bread in the house to eat with the pumpkin butter . . . because I'm having a little difficulty with the bread machine I'm borrowing from my parents. (I can't get it apart to wash it. I tried soaking it overnight. Twice.)
But it was a productive day, and I still have three whole pumpkins and about 4 cups of puree in the fridge. And since Jenna posted this recipe, I have an idea of what to do with it!

End of the Zucchini?

With the recent cold spell that seems to have spread across the country as far as all of the blogs I read, I wonder how much longer my garden will be producing. Frankly, at this point, I'm excited about the cool weather, and I'm not too worried about reduced productivity out in the yard. Next year I have a few ideas about what to do differently. One thing I don't plan to change is the number of zucchini plants I grow. Okay, there was a time in July that I was trying to give shiny green baseball-bat-sized zucchinis away to friends and family, but overall they've been good to me this summer. It turns out that zucchini is not only a great ingredient for simmering pots of vegetables and soups, but it's also become my go-to fast food meal.

I spent some time in the garden yesterday, and brought home several extra-large zucchinis, as well as a few small tender ones. (My sister in Indianapolis requested a few zucchini from the garden too, so my dad headed south with a couple of nice ones today.)
The little ones became dinner - maybe the last sauteed fresh zucchini of the season.
The large ones became shredded and sliced frozen zucchini, ready to be turned into cookies, bread, muffins, or soup when the ground is coated with frost and the trees are bare.
I had over 17 lbs of zucchini in my fridge before I got started this morning.
I froze 8 two-cup bags of sliced zucchini and one 3-cup bag of shredded zucchini. I had originally intended to shred more, but my good grater was in the dishwasher and I didn't want to wait for it, because I had other plans for the day . . .

Mail

I get a lot of junk mail. I am a member of no fewer than three professional organizations, and in addition to all of their mailings, I am pretty sure they are selling my name to other groups. I got a package from the Mead corporation today. (Think school supplies.) I don't know where they got my name.

In addition to not knowing why they sent me stuff, I can't quite figure out what it was they were trying to send - or rather, what their message was supposed to be.

Here's what I got in the mail:
I opened the envelope and this broken pen fell out onto my kitchen table.
Fill-Air might what to think about their slogan, "Our Products Protect Your Products."
The enclosed letter talks about "students falling to pieces" when they are asked to write research papers. Maybe the pen was supposed to be in pieces?
I'm not sure. But I think I'll skip registering for whatever they're selling. And I'll stay away from the Fill-Air the next time I ship something fragile.

CSA Beef Soup

This week in our CSA newsletter I read we would be receiving leeks, carrots, green or yellow beans, fennel, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. I wasn't sure what to do with the fennel, but fortunately our CSA newsletter suggested that fennel is sometimes used instead of celery in soups. Whoohoo! I finally had enough of the right CSA veggies to make a batch of soup. I just had to decide whether I wanted to make beef soup (with non-local, non-organic, grocery-store beef) or chicken soup (with Smart Chicken, which comes from the grocery store but isn't fed antibiotics). I really wanted to use as many of these veggies (and the zucchini hanging out in my fridge, and the corn I mentioned in this post) as possible. But I'm kind of a purist about my chicken soup - chicken, onions, carrots, celery, egg noodles. Maybe rice instead of the egg noodles if I'm feeling feisty. So I bought the beef. I also bought a few more local onions at the grocery store, to make sure I'd have enough. And I bought Dole celery from who-knows-where because I have a very difficult time finding celery locally, and, since I used all of my celery seed making pickles earlier this summer, I didn't have a very good substitute - and, in my humble opinion, it's not really stock without celery, even if our CSA farmer says fennel can be used as a substitute. (I had one bulb of fennel. I was planning to make an 8-quart pot full of soup. You do the math.)

Chopping carrots, celery, and onion are soothing, easy tasks I could practically do in my sleep. (Have you seen that commercial for some pre-chopped, pre-sauced frozen veggies that suggests that the last thing a person wants to do when he/she (really she) gets home from work is chop vegetables? It makes me laugh. I find chopping to be pretty therapeutic, but that's just me.)

When I got to the fennel, though, I was a little bit stuck. I found this website, which helped a little bit. Pictures would have been more helpful, but what can you do?

Next I had to figure out the leeks. I tried to make soup with leeks this spring, but had a "leek leak" on my way home from the Farmers' Market. So I've never had a leek in my kitchen before. I wasn't sure how much of the leek to use. All I knew was that leeks are very dirty inside and need to be washed very carefully. (I found the same was true with the fennel, by the way.) I googled "how to cook with leeks" and found this blog.
I rinsed them in the sink, then in a separate bowl of water.
This was the rinse water after I was done.
I sliced the leeks then separated the layers, soaking them in a third rinse (not pictured).
I'd use them again.

I used my Betty Crocker recipes for "beef and broth" and "vegetable beef soup." I don't know why I used the recipes - usually I just throw beef, spices, and vegetables into a pot. I considered soup recipes in two different books, but stuck with Betty Crocker. I tell ya, that lady doesn't get enough credit these days. While my other (fancy, gourmet) cookbooks told me to open a can of black-eyed peas, Ms. Crocker told me to cut corn off the cob and to shell the peas, noting parenthetically that I could use frozen vegetables if I needed to. I skipped the frozen peas because there were plenty of other vegetables in the soup, and I may have a hankering for peas in January.

I tripled the amount of liquid, doubled the seasonings, and kept the same amount of soup bones/beef called for in the broth recipe. I usually use more water than the recipe calls for, because I always intend to freeze soup when I make it (although the chicken soup has only made it to the freezer once) and I want to be sure I have enough broth. Also, I'm notoriously bad about measuring ingredients. I mentioned that in my very first post. I just chop what I have and throw it in the pot. Keep reading to see where that got me today . . .

For the stock I chopped:
a handful of baby carrots that I grabbed as "extras" from our CSA yesterday
four ribs of celery
a few small onions from the CSA (one to two ounces each)
one local onion from the grocery store (about six ounces)
fennel (fronds and bulb)
leeks
and dried rosemary from our CSA.
Early stock pot
After simmering for 3+ hours

The recipe also includes bay leaves, peppercorns, whole cloves, salt, parsley (I was going to use the carrot tops but they looked like they'd seen better days) and thyme, but I can't find my thyme . . .
I ended up with 20 cups of broth. (This is an 8.5 quart pot.) (I started with between 20 and 24 cups of water.)

For the soup I chopped:
two bags of carrots from our CSA (maybe 3/4 of a pound total?)
two bags of mixed green and yellow beans from the CSA

the rest of the fennel fronds and bulb from the CSA
the rest of the leeks from the CSA
one slicing tomato and four roma tomatoes from the CSA
three ears of corn (Okay I didn't chop this. I cut it off the cob) from a farmer who knows our CSA farmer
One local onion from the store.
The rest of the bag of celery from a monoculture Dole farm in Arizona.
I skipped the peas and potatoes that the recipe called for. I had potatoes but they don't freeze well and also this is what my pot looked like after I added the above ingredients:
and this when it started to simmer . . .
which is also why I didn't add the zucchini in my fridge.

(I added about 16 cups of vegetables to the broth. I'm not sure how they all fit in that pot. The recipe I was using called for 7.5 cups of vegetables, and since I was at least trying to double the recipe, I think I ended up with a good meat-veggie-broth ratio. I just need a bigger pot. I actually took about 4 cups of soup out of this pot and cooked it separately for a while, till it had cooked down a bit.)

We ate soup for dinner:
And I froze the leftovers:
and life was good!

Recipe, without pictures

This past Sunday, I intended to make french toast for breakfast. I had plenty of homemade bread, and a dozen safe, healthy organic eggs in my fridge that have been completely unaffected by any recall. But when I looked at my bread, it had gotten moldy! It was less than a week old (usually I struggle to keep bread around for longer than that) but I think the humidity must have gotten to it. I read that it is best to keep bread at room temperature so it does not dry out, as it would in the fridge. But I opted to keep the bread I made later on Sunday in the fridge to avoid spoilage.

I had to switch gears for breakfast, then! I briefly considered making omelets, but while I was a master at making an omelet for myself in Kentucky (almost every Sunday morning, while reading the New York Times and listening to Sunday Baroque before buckling down and ruining a perfectly good thing with homework), I have not mastered cooking omelets for two people. Do you use two pans and cook them simultaneously? Do you cook a really big omelet and cut it in half? Do you use one pan and serve the omelets at different times? I don't know. I make scrambled eggs instead.

I had about three pounds of red non-storage potatoes hanging out on my kitchen counter from our CSA, and I decided to serve scrambled eggs with fried potatoes. I quartered and sliced three medium potatoes then microwaved them for 5 minutes while chopping my other ingredients. For the scrambled eggs, I diced a small onion, chopped up four bruised tomatoes, throwing out the bad parts, shredded about 1/4 cup of farmers cheese, and about 1/3 cup of muenster, and took some pesto out of the fridge.

When the potatoes had warmed up in the microwave, I put a little bit of vegetable oil in a pan and cooked the potatoes over medium heat until they were browned. I thought the pan might be a little dry, so I added a little bit of butter as they cooked. They turned out to be the best fried potatoes I have ever made. Microwaving the potato first makes all the difference. Without that step, I end up with potato hunks with one side burned to the bottom of the pan, the top side still raw.

While frying the potatoes, I actually cooked down the tomato and onion for a bit before adding the eggs. I don't like scrambled eggs that are watery from vegetable juices, so I typically cook my veggies for a while first to get some of the water out. (Garlic would have been a good addition here but I did not think to add it until after the eggs were cooked.)

I whisked four eggs in a bowl, added a splash of milk, and some salt and pepper, then added the egg mixture to the tomatoes and onions. I let them cook for a while, then added the pesto. It smelled heavenly. When the eggs were almost done, I added the cheese and let it melt.

I am usually a big fan of sweet breakfast foods (hence the french toast - which I make with plenty of vanilla, cinnamon, and I used to add sugar but next time intend to use maple syrup in the batter instead) but as far as a savory breakfast goes, this was one of the best things I've ever thrown together at a moments' notice.

Raspberry Jam!

My grandma had 'a lady' who she used to buy black raspberries from, and she would make the most delicious black raspberry jelly. She never said who her 'lady' was, and no one thought to ask. Consequently, we don't have a source for black raspberries anymore. And my parents tore out their red raspberry bushes a few years ago. But earlier this summer, my mom made a batch of red raspberry freezer jam from farmers' market berries that was a big hit, especially with the in-laws. (My sister's husband loved it, I let my husband eat most of the half-pint my mom gave us, and when I had Adele up for a sleepover she ignored the homemade bread and just scraped off MeMaw's raspberry jam for breakfast.)

There was a possibility that I could get a few quarts of baking raspberries from my CSA for $4 a quart (as opposed to $3.50 a pint for first-rate berries) but my mom and I were not able to find a day to make jam together that fit with the raspberry distribution schedule at the CSA, so my mom picked up three pints at her nearby farmers' market yesterday morning (for $3 a pint) and drove up to my house to make jam. She also brought my share of the strawberry freezer jam we made earlier this year, the top layer of my wedding cake, and some basil we'd frozen, because I've been meaning to clear my stuff out of my parents' freezer ever since I got my own earlier this summer.

I didn't think to take pictures until we were fairly far into the process, but here are a couple:

The jam is chilling in my freezer now, waiting to be given away to in-laws, stirred into plain yogurt, drizzled over ice cream, licked off of toast, or eaten for lunch.
Maybe I can even get another niece sleepover out of the deal!

Worms

It has been a few days since I have written a blog, but rest assured I have not been slacking off in the kitchen.

On Sunday I picked up two dozen additional ears of corn from our CSA; I spent Monday morning shucking corn, blanching it, cooling it, cutting it, and bagging it. I netted seven one-pound bags of corn, and one half-pound bag. I am embarrassed to say I still have four ears of corn hanging out in my fridge from Sunday evening. I can't remember why I didn't cook it for dinner Monday night as planned; Tuesday and Wednesday nights I was not home for dinner, so the corn sat in the fridge. I grew up in a family that took corn - and the freshness thereof - very seriously. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't ever remember corn hanging out in my mom's kitchen for more than a day. My wayward corn is headed for the soup pot later today.

Corn isn't the only thing my family took seriously growing up, though. I mentioned Worms a few posts ago. I had a half a quart jar of tomato puree that did not go in the water bath last Thursday when I canned tomatoes, and wanted to use it up. So I used that jar, and a full quart, to make my first batch of Worms. I've been eating worms and hearing about worms my entire life. My mom's paternal grandmother is the first to have made the dish. When my grandpa was in kindergarten, it was customary for students to go home at noon to eat dinner. Upon his return to school one day after eating, my grandpa's teacher asked him what he'd eaten for lunch. "Worms," was his reply. The teacher said, "Lee Dunn, don't lie to me. What did you have for lunch?" My grandfather was probably a little bit baffled, and replied, honestly, "Worms." He was promptly sent home for the rest of the day. I wonder what my great-grandmother thought. (And whether she shared her recipe with the teacher.)

Worms must have originally been a leftover dish. Growing up, my mom used the odds and ends of whatever noodles she had on hand. While I had several full boxes of noodles in my kitchen on Sunday, I opted to use a blend. I strayed from the family recipe by using whole wheat noodles instead of enriched white noodles.

So, without further ado, I give you: WORMS.
Ingredients:

• Pasta (I used 1/4 box of thin spaghetti, and 1/3 box of elbow macaroni. Use what you have. Unless you have no pasta in your house at all, do not go to the store for this!)

• Ham (use what you have or what you can buy. We often had worms growing up around Easter when there was leftover ham in the fridge. I considered buying sandwich slices, because I've never bought any other kind of ham, but ended up with a 3/4 lb hunk of smoked ham that was very yummy. My grocery store did not have any organic ham, so this poor pig was full of antibiotics, genetically modified corn, imitation smoke flavor, and nitrites. But never having had nitrite free (or antibiotic free) ham, it tasted like ham to me.)
• Tomatoes - I used six cups. See below for discussion on the "correct" amount. My mom uses the tomato sauce I made at her house last Monday. I used the tomato puree I made on Thursday. It doesn't really matter, although chunks of tomato are a good thing. Ideally, my mom and I would get together and use some of each of our sauces. But right now the chunky sauce is in her basement and the puree is in my kitchen cupboard, and it's an hour's drive from my kitchen to her basement.

• Colby cheese. I suppose you could use some other kind of cheese, but we've always used Colby. I had muenster and farmer's cheese in my fridge but made a point of buying local (but not organic) Colby since I had to buy the ham anyway. No sense in messing with a good thing.
• Salt and pepper to taste. Pepper is an essential ingredient in worms. Salt is less important, because the ham and cheese have plenty of salt in them. But you really do need the pepper.
• Butter. Apparently my great-grandmother put a whole stick of butter in the middle of the dish. My mom dots the top with butter. I didn't add any and my worms were not as crispy on the top, but, frankly, until I called my mom to get the "recipe," I had no idea that there was butter in the dish, and I decided to skip it because I did not want to open a new stick of butter. I was having a lazy moment, what can I say? (I didn't actually need the recipe for worms - just the baking temperature and time)
  
• Buttered toast. I have to be honest here. You could probably use whole wheat toast, and I wouldn't blame you a bit, but I think the dish needs white toast to have the right consistency.

• Cook your noodles. I don't believe in al dente noodles. I like my noodles soft.
• Preheat oven to 350.
• Slice the ham and cheese.

• Spray a casserole dish. (I chose to slather soft butter in my casserole dish instead.)
• Layer the noodles, tomato sauce, ham, and cheese (and butter if you desire) in the casserole dish.

(I don't know why it didn't occur to me to cut the ham into smaller pieces.)

• Top each layer with pepper, and salt if desired.

I fit three layers in my casserole dish. I'd give you its measurements, but the dish is still in my fridge with the rest of the worms (today's lunch). I skipped the ham on my top layer - it was noodles, sauce, pepper, and cheese. The cheese/pepper should be on top.

• Place pats of butter on top, if desired.
• Place casserole dish on top of a cookie sheet, or use aluminum foil in your oven to catch spills.
• Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.
• Remove cover and bake 30-45 more minutes, until cheese on top is melted, bubbly, and maybe turning brown and crispy. (I forgot to take a picture, sorry!)
  
• Let sit for a few minutes before eating.
• Serve on plates, with a piece of buttered toast. Use the toast to sop up the juice. If you like juicy worms.
  

My mom introduced this dish to my dad's family. In spite of its name, it was a great hit with my paternal grandfather. I remember the last time he came over for Worms before he passed away. Never one to shy away from saying what he was thinking, my grandpa declared, "I think worms used to be a lot juicier." He was disappointed (and my mom's feelings were probably little bit hurt!), but still ate a big helping. My mom has always struggled to make sure that her Worms are juicy enough for my dad's side of the family. (This is why we immediately thought of Worms when our first attempt at canning tomatoes last week ended up so watery. We cooked the rest of the tomatoes down more, and decided to label the first jar "For Worms.")

So when I asked my husband how he liked his Worms (I think his only previous experience with the dish was that meal with my grandpa) he commented that they were good, but a little too juicy for his taste.

Having never heard such a critique of worms before, my mom was flabbergasted, and had to put my dad on the phone so he could hear the story too. The morals of the story are:
in spite of having lived in Kentucky for three years, I certainly did not marry a relative; and
when your teacher asks you what you had for lunch, think carefully about how you phrase your response.