CSA

winter squash bars

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The freezer.

The major challenge I face with regard to processing and storing all the produce we receive with our farm share is the limited space in the freezer. We agreed to get a chest freezer this summer, but haven’t wanted to go ahead with that purchase until we get the basement repairs taken care of. Which leaves us with the fridge freezer, which is about half full of fruit from the summer (tart cherries, blueberries, and rhubarb) and 1/4 full of other prepared food (pesto, hummus, baba ghanouj, chicken stock, and tomato sauce). Which leaves about 1/4 of the freezer for regular things (butter, bread, coffee beans, salmon, and turkey burgers) and any additional prepared food I might try to fit in. You begin to see my problem, and this is after removing the bottle of gin with an inch at the bottom that my partner pointed out was occupying prime real estate in the door (‘Gin? What gin? I don’t have a bottle of gin in the freezer, what kind of alcoholic do you think I am, sheesh. Oh, that bottle of gin…’). I really should just drink that and be done with it.

One of the other containers taking up space in the freezer was a quart of cooked squash from last winter, most likely butternut. At any rate, 4 cups of squash. In order to make room in the freezer for the cooked pumpkin from this year that is destined to be pie in a few weeks, I thawed out the already-frozen squash and used it to make Winter Squash Bars:

Winter Squash Bars, from Simply in Season
(yields 24-32 bars)

Beat together in a mixing bowl:
2 cups winter squash (cooked, pureed)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup oil
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Combine separately and then mix into the wet ingredients:
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Pour into lightly greased 11 x 17” jelly roll pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350F for 25-30 minutes.

As with just about every recipe I’ve made from Simply In Season, the bars were really good. In addition to using up squash, they use up eggs, 4 per batch (so if you also have more eggs than you know what to do with from, for example, your CSA, this recipe will help get rid of them). More like gingerbread than cookie bars, they were a hit with everyone: me, my partner, my friend from high school, her mother, my partner’s gaming guys. Four cups made two batches, about 5 dozen bars in all. While they still tasted good after being stored in tupperware overnight, the tops went from a nice bright orange to a bit brown; don’t be put off by that if it happens to you.

The next squash plan is soup, if I can (1) get some apples at the farmers’ market and (2) make some room in the freezer.

winter squash bars

butternut squash galette

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Squash!

This summer we received a lot of squash from our farm share, and I do mean that nearly literally. Four butternut squashes and about that much again of an enormous squash called courge longue de Nice, which I had neither heard of nor seen before joining our CSA. In addition to this bounty, I picked up a couple of small pie pumpkins when they appeared at the market last week, as I’ll be bringing pies to our friends’ Thanksgiving dinner this year. When we received the first hunk of courge longue — a squash so big that only a piece of it nearly filled our weekly box — I cubed it, tossed the pieces with olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper and then roasted it into submission until it was soft and sweet. I confess that I tried this approach last year and didn’t peel it or cook it long enough and it was bitter; as a result I let one of last year’s lovely huge specimens go to waste, a loss I am trying to avoid this year.

At any rate, we ate an entire dinner of squash (pretty much) and it didn’t seem to make any kind of dent in the stores. Which is good in the return on investment framework and not as good for the hope of ever eating anything other than squash again. With this in mind, I set out to discover what else I could make from our squash. For last night’s dinner (and today’s lunch) I chose the Winter Squash Galette recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I knew from my experience in the spring that I was capable of making a galette, and I happened to have everything in the recipe already in the house, which is less common than I would like when I’m trying to use Deborah Madison’s recipes. In only a few easy (but somewhat time-consuming) steps, we had dinner.

Step one: halve and deseed the squash, brush it in olive oil, stick a head’s worth of cloves of garlic (separated but not peeled) into one of the cavities, and bake facedown on a cookie sheet at 375F for about 40-50 minutes (my large squash took 50, the recipe says 40, the main thing is that the squash be tender when it comes out):

The squash cooling before being mashed up.

Step two: sauté one chopped onion in a skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil and 2 tsp dried sage (or 2 tbsp chopped fresh) for about 12 minutes until onions are soft and have changed color:

Delicious smelling onions.

Step three: mash up the squash, squeeze the soft garlic cloves out of their husks and mix it in, mix in the onions, and mix in 1/2 cup of grated parmesan or pecorino cheese (I used pecorino, because that’s what I happened to have bought on a whim on my most recent trip to the store):

Cheese! In a bowl from the White Dog Café!

Step four: let the filling cool, salt and pepper to taste, make one big galette or several personal galettes with the dough that you made already and rolled out and has been chillin in the fridge, and bake on a cookie sheet for 25 minutes at 375F (if you are making small ones, they can go on a sheet with an edge as they can be lifted out with a spatula; for a single large one I recommend no edge and sliding them off onto a wire rack pronto while they are still very hot and before the butter cools and makes the galette stick to the sheet). [Aside: I was unable to get a good photo of the finished product, so that will have to wait until the next time I make these.]

If you aren’t going to eat the whole recipe at once, Madison recommends that you store the extra dough and the filling separately and bake the galettes up fresh, and I concur. We made two more today for lunch, and I used the last piece of dough (somehow I was able to divide more evenly by five than six) to make a galette with some of last winter’s membrillo that we still have in the fridge. I haven’t had a jam tart in a very long time, and I have to say that this version was delicious. I highly recommend what I have been known to refer to as ‘sugar pie’ to everyone.

butternut squash galette

Even’ Star Organic Farm party

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Rhubarb Ginger Galette, round two.

We celebrated Memorial Day by attending a party at ‘our’ farm: Even’ Star Organic Farm, where we’re members of the CSA. We’d had a fun time at the autumn party and enjoyed the drive down, which included stopping on the way for pumpkins and honey at a farm stand in Dunkirk. This time we drove straight through, and arrived for a gorgeous afternoon.

Having taken the farm tour last autumn, we opted for eating the delicious food, drinking the tasty Weiss beer, and lounging around. My contribution to the desserts was a Rhubarb Ginger Galette with a half-whole-wheat crust; it was meant to be all whole wheat, but I mistook the bags of flour and dumped the remaining white flour into the bin by mistake. I was glad that I had planned to make and bring two galettes, as that meant I already had a backup plan in place when the first one wasn’t ready for prime time: I forgot to strain out the excess liquid from the fruit and inadvertently omitted the butter that would have thickened the filling, which combined with a small tear in the crust to create a gooey puddle around one half of the pan. This first round also helped make clear that the galette needed to cool on the sheet; once we’d let it cool that way overnight it slid off onto a board without a problem. Probably the French have some large flat galette-removing spatula-type implement, but I certainly don’t.

Having an afternoon party meant no bonfire, but it did mean that we could explore the woods a bit more. Once we’d eaten, we trooped off in search of new birds. As promised, we sighted several Indigo Buntings in the fallow fields near the house. Buntings, like bluebirds, are common in the right habitat in this region, but I’d yet to see one. I still haven’t gotten over the surprise of seeing such blue birds, so it was a thrill to see them popping up over the grasses. On the drive in we’d seen a true Black Vulture in a group that was devouring something on the grassy median of the road. It was unmistakable with its deep black plumage, gray face and white beak, and it was a thrill to get such a good look at it on the ground after years of peering into the skies hoping not to see the flash of red on the faces of what always turned out to be Turkey Vultures. In addition to those long sought after life birds, we lucked out and spotted a mature Bald Eagle circling over the treeline. It was only the second time I’ve seen an eagle in adult plumage, and the first for my partner, so that was a great treat. No trip to a farm is complete for me without sighting a few amphibians, and the best part of the day was seeing a juvenile salamander that the kids had collected from the stream. The frogs and tadpoles were lovely, of course, but the little guy with gills still on was particularly nice.

On the way back home we stopped to check on Solomon’s Island Winery, which is quite small and run by a couple basically out of their home. The property is smaller than my family’s blueberry farm, which means that it would be virtually impossible for them to grow their own grapes. The wines were largely low alcohol fruit-flavored varieties—coolers in a bottle seem to be a popular item in Maryland—with only a couple of serious labels. The Meritage was decent and tasted like a Bordeaux, as advertised. The Icewine was also a fine dessert wine; we bought a bottle, and it made me regret not tasting the Eisling when we were at Boordy Vineyards earlier in the weekend. Overall, though, I would recommend sticking with wines by actual vineyards, from regions where the terrain is more suitable to growing grapes.

Having fulfilled our farm-related duties for the season—sent in our check, attended the party—we now sit back and let the food come to us. Not too shabby!

Even’ Star Organic Farm party

nog: the original protein shake

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I love egg nog. I always have. I remember my grandfather making it fresh, blending an individual serving out of milk, eggs, and sugar. As a child I was, of course, prohibited from drinking my grandfather’s egg nog, out of fear of salmonella poisoning. Which was probably a smart thing. Being prohibited didn’t mean I never tasted it, though, and having tasted it, I never got into the commercial pre-made versions.

Until Silk Nog came along, that is. All the milk drinkers I know think Silk Nog is disgusting. I’ll concede that the addition of rum make it very chalky, so it’s not the best party drink. However, all the non-milk drinkers I know think it’s great. I guess if it’s been so long since you’ve had real nog, the sugar and fake-egg fake-creamy overtones are enough to get you by.

This year, though, I had a hankering for real nog. While I could buy some premade stuff and pop a bunch of Lactaid pills, I decided to go one better. I bought Lactaid milk and made my own from scratch. The eggs I use are purchased from a single farmer with a small flock. I know they’ve been tested for salmonella in the past, but of course you can never be totally sure. Which is to say, I would never consider making nog from any eggs I could buy in any store. I decided to take the risk with these eggs, and promised my partner that if I get salmonella, I’ll never make nog like this again.

Having embarked on this path, I have a few observations. Nog is good. Whole milk isn’t cream, but it’s plenty creamy (for me) without it. As I make it for my mid-morning snack, I don’t use alcohol. Nog is also, if you don’t have a cholesterol problem, nutritious. If eggs are nature’s perfect food, a drink made of eggs blended with a little more protein and fat with a spoonful of sugar and a dash of vanilla is the perfect presentation. Drinking raw eggs, even in such a time-honored and festive form as nog, is also funny. It calls to mind associations with extreme training regimens; I’ve been nicknamed ‘Rocky’ by my partner, and I’ve voiced the question of why people don’t just drink delicious nog instead of those nasty protein drink mixes. Salmonella, apparently (I had to be reminded).

Because I’m not actually a big dairy consumer, I haven’t been using the Lactaid milk on my cereal (I like the way rice milk tastes, actually). Which means that to go through a half-gallon of milk in a week means nog every day. Which is fine, I suppose, since I’m conceptualizing nog as a meal. In the future, though, I think I’ll hold out for the quart-sized container. It’s quite likely, though, that after drinking nog every day for a week straight there won’t be much nog in my future. We’ll see; it’s only day five.

nog: the original protein shake

last summer farm subscription box

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Rear: tomatillos, arugula, and watermelons. Front: tomatoes, eggplants, sweet potatoes, and ‘Peachy Mama’ peppers.

Today I picked up the last box of our summer farm subscription (one of the food sources described in an article co-written by our neighborhood drop-off coordinator). This week’s box was one of the most bountiful of the summer, and more representative of what our winter boxes were like. With the drought that hit Maryland earlier this summer, the summer subscription didn’t match our experience in the winter. Even with the intellectual knowledge that low returns were due to crop failure, and the consolation that everyone we knew with a CSA was experiencing the same thing, it was a bit disappointing. We were quite glad that we’d experienced the winter subscription first, as we likely wouldn’t continue after this year’s admittedly unusual experience. However, we did experience the winter subscription first, and having done so we’ll likely give next year’s summer subscription another try to see what a non-fluke-low-year is like.

For now — and by ‘now’ I mean the six weeks until our winter subscription picks up — we’ll rely on the farmers’ markets to supply us with our fresh food (once we eat all that stuff from our box, that is). Because we don’t have a car, we aren’t able to get to the market where our farmer brings his produce, but there are several other small and local farmers to support at the markets we can get to by foot or bike or train (or some combination thereof).

With the apples in season, I’ll be making sure not to miss my weekly trip, even if we do have eggplants, watermelons and sweet potatoes coming out our wazoos. I won’t be making as many pies this year, with our cholesterol-busting plan in full swing, but I can’t wait to get my annual fix of crispy tart Braeburns. I’ve sworn off grocery store apples this year, for reasons of cost and perpetually disappointing taste, so these will be the first we’ve had in a long time. With a little luck, I won’t have to go all the way in to the Dupont Circle market downtown to find apples that are minimally sprayed.

Maybe it’s a function of growing up in food farming regions, but I didn’t realize until recently that my approach to eating had become something of a ‘movement’ and that there was a cute phrase attached to the idea that it’s always best, economically as well as gastronomically, to buy your food directly from the person who grows it. Or, at an even more basic level, that food is grown not manufactured, and the quicker it gets to you, the fresher it is. Food coops, local organic stores, and farmers’ markets have been the mainstays of my food supply for over 10 years now, since my post-college days of belonging to the coop around the corner from my house in West Philly. It’s still a little odd to find myself part of a way of living that now has regular publications and gets national press.

But, you know, really: as long as I can eat what I like and walk to get it, I’m happy.

last summer farm subscription box