When Passions Collide

So, there is this big football game this afternoon.  And my new obsession with the Great British Baking Show.  And vegetable evangelism.

Which is probably how I come, on a lovely Sunday afternoon in which I have a very large pile of things to be graded, to be neither grading nor playing outside, but rather fretting over menu planning.

The United by Orange Soup* is simmering.   I'm off to buy blue corn chips.  And I am seriously considering a 4 layer masterpiece: 2 dark chocolate and 2 orange, with an orange marmalade filling between the chocolate layers and an orange white chocolate cream piped around the top, but then I might stick with the original plan of chocolate "self-saucing puddings" and Orange Crush Sorbet.

Oh nerves of baking desires. And it's still four hours until game time.

Go Broncos!**

*United by Orange Soup contains butternut squash, orange lentils, carrots, sweet potatoes, turmeric, paprika, puri-puri, a third of an orange habanero and a dash of kalamansi orange vinegar for the oranges that have been united.  It also has onion, ginger, cumin, coriander, celery, leek and the Mister's homemade chicken stock.  It will be pureed later, with some saffron and pumpkin if the color is lacking, and possibly some coconut milk to make it more curry like.  It's wholesome deliciousness will offset any brie, nachos, or jalepeno poppers that make have been promised to Dianthus.  It will not be enough to off-set anything with dark chocolate and orange.

**I am well aware that this post will be moot by the time that most of you are reading it,  I am sharing the timely spiciness of orange-colored-vegetable-soup in my house right now.  What can I say, go Broncos!

Vegetable Evangelism

I've become a vegetable evangelist.

If you are feeling snarky, you're probably wondering, "Oh, really, SpSq?  What was your first clue?  That not only do you feed everyone brussels sprouts, you blog about how much you love them?  That you go through 13 heads of cauliflower in a few weeks?  That you anonymously send people vegetable cookbooks?"

Well, actually, I didn't come up with this phrase on my own.  I didn't know I was a vegetable evangelist until someone told me I was.  We had friends in town, and as I was roasting brussels sprouts, turnips, sweet potatoes, and beets while discussing the apple fennel slaw I apparently made last time they were in town and mentioning best things to do with parsnips and rutabagas*, the phrase magically appeared.  And I love it.  "Vegetable Evangelist" makes me feel much cooler than "woman who inflicts root crops on unsuspecting guests."

I'm a vegetable evangelist and apparently I am becoming a poor writer.  Or rather I am becoming the writer I have always been: one who cannot quickly articulate the bits that are cleverly connected in her head. And because some of what I am wanting to write is time sensitive, I guess I will go ahead and list my points and (probably never) return to rewrite in a clever and witty fashion.

Intended Points of Post:

1. I am a vegetable evangelist and proud of it.
2. I want to discuss Thanksgiving side dishes. 
3. The Mister and the boys made little "hoop houses" (or very low "poly-tunnels") over our winter garden on Saturday and it made me ridiculously happy.
4. There was a "holiday" farmer's market in town on Saturday, at which we purchased fresh tomatoes (peppers, sweet potatoes, new potatoes, eggs, honey, pickles and turnips).  I harvested my basil before it froze (for the first time) on Saturday night, so we had pasta with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella last night, as is typical of late November in Oklahoma (or maybe not).
5.  I want to teach people how to cook (and to not be afraid of vegetables).  I want suggestions for how to do this.
6. I am excited to offer my readers an opportunity to help refugees by helping them grow food through a fund-raising project vetted by a friend I trust (I have lots and lots to say about this, but for now, a link to Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is),

 And, see, in my mind this all makes sense together-- love vegetables: here are some examples -- excited to be growing food: look at the picture of cute boys and hoop house -- thankful for friends and family and Thanksgiving (but no green bean casserole for me) -- let's help others grow vegetables -- thank you for being my friend -- now let's talk about food some more.

Please comment about side dishes and suggestions for spreading the good word o' veggies.

*Parsips: parsnips and carrots.  Rutabagas: rutabagas and apples, perhaps with some red cabbage.

Kings, Kites, and Cauliflowers

The monarch butterflies seem to be migrating through town today.  It feels early, but I don't know if it is.

The Mississippi Kites are, by and large, are gone.  They've mostly been gone for a week.  It's much harder to note their emigration than immigration, but around the first day of school (August 20), they were actively congregating, and when we visited the park on Thursday (for it was not over 100 degrees, as it had been every previous day this week), we did not experience any eerie diving attacks.

Beet Down at DIA Root Down

The Mister is in charge of fruit and vegetable orders through Bountiful Baskets and frequently orders something beyond the regular fruit and vegetable basket.  Two weeks ago we received a case of cauliflower.  We had thirteen heads of cauliflower and I am pleased to report that, prior to picking up today's baskets, we were down to one head.  Having eaten twelve heads of cauliflower in fourteen days for the first time in my life, I can now authoritatively say that I love cauliflower, particularly the way the Mister fixes it with Indian spices, and I am actually happy to have picked up two more heads today.  It's the four bunches of celery and the fourteen prickly pear fruits for which I don't have a plan.  Suggestions?

Here's a picture of a Beet Down, by the way.

No, there is no point or theme here in this post.  School is underway; I am already behind; youth soccer may or may not start next week; my son's are in grades 0 and -2 according to the official paperwork; the Mister, Dianthus and Aster are in Kansas attending a rodeo tomorrow while I organize documents documenting how well I profess (and pick up vegetables).

One of my students reported that watermelon is her favorite vegetable.  She can do this because watermelon is the official state vegetable of Oklahoma.  Really.  This bothers me far more than it should.

Pickled Daikon

I took these photos last February, at the end of acid year, and apparently never posted them.    Last year when I made matchstick daikon pickles, I followed the Sweet Daikon Pickle recipe from Roots closely. This year I couldn't find that recipe, so I used the (very similar) recipe for Spicy Thai Pickled Carrots for my recent two jars.  Both preparations are easy and the results are tasty.
The shocking thing is that my sons gobble up pickled daikon.
It's weird.
I clearly need to make some more.

Daikon, by the way, is a true root,  It's a mild variety of radish and a member of the mustard family (Brassicaceae).
The daikon kim chi I made recently is texturally not as good as cabbage kim chi, but it is also tasty, and definitely tastes fermented.

Rainbow carrots in caramel sauce

It's Mardi Gras, one has made scrumptious homemade dark chocolate sauce and homemade caramel sauce with one's toddlers, one has already eaten a sundae and doesn't need any more food, but one can't use the leftover sauces once Lent starts tomorrow.  What does one do?
Dip carrots in the caramel sauce, of course.
If you have good caramel*, and I do, it is really good.  Better, even, then dipping the caramel in the dark chocolate sauce.  But, to be fair, dipping little pretzels in the caramel and then in the chocolate is better still.

*I made two batches of butterscotch/caramel for the sundae parties and managed to screw both up (although they were still tasty).  This was partially redemption just to remind myself that I can burn sugar properly.

Parsnips and Carrots

Parsnips and carrots deserves to be among my "converter recipe". Friends who eat it leave liking parsnips. I can't count these friends as a true converts, however, because so few of them had previously eaten parsnips to think they disliked them. Among my friends, as I imagine is true among most Americans, parsnips are either a nonentity or mistakenly lumped in with turnips.

The Mister had no idea if he liked parsnips when I first met him. I served him parsnips and carrots one winter night early in our relationship and he ate three large helpings, ruining my leftover stash for the week but endearing him to me forever.*

Parsnip and Carrots

parsnips
carrots
olive oil
butter

Julienne equal quantities of parsnips and carrots. The Mister bought me a special attachment for our food processor just for this, but grating does work, as does hand chopping. Toss the carrots and parsnips into a saute pan, with a little olive oil if it is not non-stick. Cover and cook for a while, adding a little (1/4 cup or less) juice or port if you want a little added flavor, water otherwise. When your other food items are nearing ready, take the lid off add some butter and brown the vegetables a bit.

While this recipe is very very tasty if you are constantly adding butter (making, in essence buttery parsnip and carrot hash browns). The vegetables can do most of their cooking by steaming and only need a small quantity of butter at the end for a few nice browned bits. The dish is, in fact, still quite tasty without any butter.

*Among many many other things.

Butternut Squash Season

Winter squash season has arrived here in West Virginia. To one member of our household, this is an event of great joy, as it means, among other tasty things, squash soups and stews. To the other member of our household, winter squash season is a non-event.

As the former, I invite you all to celebrate autumn with a big pot of squash soup. In the past, I considered my curried squash stew to be a converter recipe: one of my recipes, like carrots and parsnips or sweet potato chips or roasted brussel sprouts which convinced anyone who ate it that they didn't really hate the vegetable in question after all. My former roommate Tuscon Trekker, in fact, thinks that my recipe for curried squash stew alone was worth all the hassles of living with me (that I put up with, and actually liked, her smelly cat was just a bonus). The Mister, however, is not a fan and I've actually forgotten how to make the wonderful concoction since living with him.

Pureed squash soups are more to The Mister's liking, or at least tolerance, and this one is almost as good as my famous stew.

1 butternut squash

1 onion

some oil
some chili peppers

ginger

some Indian spices

some wine

chicken broth and water

plain non-fat yogurt

Split the squash, remove the seeds and bake (skin side up in a little water) until cooked, about an hour*. Saute the onion in the oil. Add the chili peppers, ginger, turmeric and whatever other Indian spices sound good at the moment. Unlike some squash soups, this one is in no way trying to emulate pumpkin pie, so make sure you spice it so that it is spicy, not just cinnamon-y.

After you have forgotten about everything and the onions and spices have started sticking to the bottom of the pot, deglaze the pan with a bit of wine (cheap port works very well). Scoop out the squash flesh from the skin (which comes easily if you have baked it long enough, but don't scald yourself with the steam) and add the squash to the soup. Add some chicken broth or water or both and let it cook until your house smells wonderful.

Pour the soup into a food processor and puree until smooth. Add some plain yogurt to the quantity you are going to eat right now (yogurt doesn't ruin the leftovers, but leftovers with yogurt need to be watched while re-heated) and puree some more.

Enjoy.

*This is the way to roast butternut squash as a straight side dish as well. You can bake a bunch at once and use them at different points throughout the week. Allegedly the soup process is faster if you just stick the squash raw in the soup, but then you need to peel it, which is a real pain, and the roasting really does bring out the flavor. Bake at the temperature of whatever else you have in the oven. I bake squash and apples or pears at the same time, usually at 350, but hotter certainly wouldn't hurt.

That Local Diet That Everyone's Doing

Dirtdog, my dear friend of 21 years (ack! We're getting old. People born on the day I first saw Dirtdog walking into my freshman physical science class and thought "Please don't sit with me, nerdy boy with the strange hat," can now legally buy alcohol in all 50 states.) mentioned something about that "local diet that everyone seems to be doing" as we were drinking New Glarus, WI beer, grilling Waunakee, WI brats with Waunakee, WI mustard sitting in on a deck in Waunakee, WI. Certainly there are signs that locavore lifestyles are proliferating among people of my acquaintance. One sibling's family belongs to a CSA, the other buys wondrous arsenal cheeses from an organic farmer's market. Then mention the 100 mile diet website in on-line conversations. Both sets of parents grow vegetables, although this is nothing new. The Mister is finding sources of WV pasture raised lamb. Slow Food and Heritage Food articles are reaching the Salina, KS newspaper. The Gorgeous Biologist Knitters left in Lawrence run into each other at the farmer's market every week, and those removed from Lawrence moan about the lack of a new local equivalent. People may be starting to take where their food comes from seriously.

If I thought this was entirely true, I wouldn't promote Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable Miracle about a year of eating locally, so heartily. My experience, however, is that my friends and family are a pretty non-random sample of the American population (I believe the most recent studies suggest that the median number of books read last year was 1 and the mean 4 for adult Americans. This is not true of my friends and family). Beyond that, people of my acquaintance may talk about eating locally but I'm not sure how much we do it. The Mister and I, for instance, have bagged spinach from California in our refrigerator, bananas on the counter and coffee in the pot as we speak. So, while Barbara and I may be preaching to the choir, the choir still needs the message, not just to hear their voices.

As previously mentioned, like every other biologist wanna-be novelist I know, I want to be Barbara Kingsolver. I could do without the failed marriage and horrible insomnia that led to her earlier novels, but still I want to be her. So this is not an objective review, but I suppose it says something that after writing my book, (food, family and environment being my domain [Barbara can have single motherhood, Arizona and African missionaries in the '60s]) I still want to be her, because she wrote my book as well as I would have, perhaps better, because I don't think that there is anyway I'd venture into turkey sex.

Whether Barbara, myself, or many other authors write it*, the case for eating locally is strong. I was planning on expounding on the many benefits, but I find that my blogging time is well-past used up, and I am interfering with far too much of my entomology learning time as I write. So I will limit myself to two points. One: there are compelling environmental, social, and taste benefits from eating locally in season. If you cannot think of them, I would be happy to expound in conversation (or would direct you to the 100 mile diet web site if you don't want to read Barbara's book). Two: I know that vegetables at the farmers market cost more (at least sometimes), that most of us don't live near any source of chocolate, coffee, or tea and might not make it without them, that your local grocery store is hideous (couldn't be much worse than ours as far as local produce goes), that you don't have space for a garden, that convenience foods are convenient . . . I know and I'm not asking you to become an exclusive locavore.

I am asking that you

1. buy (or grow) more locally in season


2. "put away" some local produce for the winter. Among people I know this ranges from drying apples to canning tomato sauce. Like many of you, I am not up for canning, but I am going to buy a bushel of chili peppers at the market next week and freeze most of them (sticking them in the freezer whole because the mister and I are too lazy to prep them). I am going out this afternoon to pick basil to make pesto to freeze and I hope to dry some tomatoes.


3. If you live anywhere where you can purchase a large box of good Colorado peaches, do it now. Eat them, two a day and think of me. Or make a cobbler or a pie. Or freeze some.


4. find local apples this fall. I have been shocked to find WV apples are as much better than grocery stores (WA and New Zealand) apples as garden tomatoes are from store tomatoes. Scrumptious.

Thanks

*One criticism I've heard of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is that the idea is not novel. This is definitely true. Ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan writes regularly on the subject, most notably with his 2001 Coming Home to Eat chronicling a year of eating locally (moderately recommended; good points, tiresome reading). His involvement with RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions) helps ensure that Slow Food USA is an ecological as well as gastronomic movement, and I can support his Buffalo Nation treatise because it cites two of my local eating mentors, Kelly Kindscher and Alma Hogan Snell. Without at any point telling readers they should eat locally, Michael Pollan does an excellent job of explaining where our food does (and can) come from in Omnivore's Dilemma (very highly recommended). Jay Weinstein takes the opposite approach: little explanation, many directives, in The Ethical Gourmet (mildly recommended, a bit too much "Tell your cook not to buy bottled water" and "here's how to source coffee at high end stores in Manhattan" for my budget or location, but very clear priority lists for eating ethically). Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry and to a lesser extent Wes Jackson have all written about the social and economic consequences of different agricultural systems. I haven't read the 100-Mile Diet (Plenty is the American title) yet. I will someday, but when I picked it up in Toronto, I was a bit displeased with the commentary on the back stating that Smith and McKinnon were introducing us to the idea of a food shed. It's petty on my part, since the authors themselves didn't make this claim, but as I have been reading and discussing foodsheds since my fabulous 2000 Geography of American Foodways class (and then it wasn't a new concept, just new to me), I was annoyed at anyone so disrespecting the vast foodshed literature : - )

Alternatives to prairie turnips

A bitter cold spell and currently falling snow (along with a trip to the nursery that sells local produce) remind me that even if winter is mostly done with us, the edible rewards of spring are still a ways off. For tribes on the Northern Plains, early spring was the starving time. April and May after a bad-hunting winter were the times to rely on old dry roots, primarily the previous year's prairie turnips (self-promotional segue-- I know a great dissertation in which you can read all about the importance of prairie turnips to people on the Northern Plains).

I can't recommend eating prairie turnips, but in my efforts to suggest seasonal vegetables, I offer two very different recipes that rely on stored vegetables.

Fabulous Baked Sweet Potato Slices

Sweet potatoes
Olive oil
Salt

Cut sweet potatoes into thin slices. Pour some olive oil on a cookie sheet. Run sweet potato slices through olive oil and flip (to get both sides coated with a very thin film of oil, alternatively you can lay the slices out and drizzle over the oil but they won't cook quite as evenly). Sprinkle with salt. Bake at 380 or whatever temperature you are baking something else at. Flip if you want. Take out after about 35 minutes.

The mister and I have several "converter" recipes: those recipes that convince dinner guests that they don't really dislike a vegetable they think they do. This is one of them. It's incredibly easy and incredibly good and super healthy, and pretty much nothing like mushy, super-sweet candied yams served with marshmallows at Thanksgiving.

Sweet potatoes grow well in many parts of the country, and this recipe is best with fresh out the ground fall sweet potatoes, from one's own garden or farmers' market. However sweet potatoes don't lose much in cold storage and April potatoes work just fine. Different parts of the country sell different types of sweet pototoes (and while sometimes labeled as "yams", none of them are true yams, which are a completely different African plant). While this recipe works with any of the types, the orangest ones contain the most of the anti-oxidants that keep sweet potatoes popping up on "super-foods" lists. Baked whole sweet potatoes are also highly recommended, but take well over an hour (they need to be over-baked to be good) and are not as good of gateway to the vegetable.

Chole Saag Sorta

1 onions
great spices*
a little oil
1 box frozen spinach
1 can garbanzo beans (chick peas)

Saute the onion with the spices. Add the chick peas and spinach. Cook until warm through.

*We make two different versions of this, one with chana masala (labeled as "spicy blend for chick peas" which contains coriander, salt, dry mango, pomengranate seeds, chili, cumin, mush melon, black pepper, black salt, fenugreek leaves, cloves, mint, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, bay leaf, cardamom, caraway and mace), which comes as a powder and should be added with the onions, and one with pani puri, which comes as a paste and should be added later. Pani puri has about as many ingredients as chana masala, but is dominated by mint, cilantro, tamarind and a little chili. You can add your own spices, just add lots of them.

I have always been a fan of fresh spinach, and in recent years a fan of lightly cooked fresh spinach (those recipes to come in spinach season), but Indian dishes were the first place I loved gloppy cooked spinach. Frozen spinach can only be used in places where the texture and color of the final product is not a main consideration. Given the dearth of available vegetables in this town this winter (not just in-season vegetables, any vegetables), I was grateful to discover a tasty healthy preparation using frozen spinach.

I make no claims on the authenticity of this as a traditional Indian dish. While not the same as choles or saags I've had in restaurants chole means chick peas and saag is spinach. Our household name is "Spinachy Goodness" but that refers to many things around here.

Mom, I figured out the salad dressing

My mother and I have often spoken longingly about the ginger-soy salad dressing at several Japanese restaurants in Denver (strange as that sentence may read, my mother and I do often discuss food at length, and reminiscing over salad dressing is well within our conversational norms). I can now proudly announce that I've figured it out. Tahini is the secret. Except tahini makes it very different from what they serve at Japanese restaurants, but, somehow, I daresay it makes it better.

Better than Samauri Ginger-Soy Salad

Salad Fixin's
Salad greens*
Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds
Green onions
Carrot shavings

Salad Dressing
Tahini
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar
Grapefruit juice
Ginger (we buy the paste, but fresh would be preferred)
Mustard (preferably a little honey mustard)
Wasabi powder (optional)
Black pepper
*One reason for posting recipes is to encourage friends to eat locally grown produce in season. It is not salad season here in WV (and I admit to buying bulk organic salad greens from CA at Sam's Club), but I am hoping that it might be salad season soon here and possibly wherever you may be.

Cabbage

Spanish Sower (Janet, who is gardening in Ecuador these days, and who has a fabulous blog I should link to once I learn how to do that) asked for a cabbage recipe.
I'm a bit stumped. I love cabbage. Donna and I each have fond memories of staying up all night eating a whole head of raw cabbage in high school, and Sunflower Spinner and I giggle about an all cabbage meal we made not that long ago. Yet I don't have a single showcase recipe, at least not a recipe one could easily pull together in a small apartment in Los Bancos. Both of these are very different takes on steamed (or could be stir-fried) cabbage. In general, cooked cabbage should a) not boil (it can become stinky and all the nutrients go with the water) and b) be infused with tasty ingredients (say, onions and soy sauce or apples and caraway).

Sparkling Squirrel's Everyday Cabbage

1 head green cabbage
1 onion
soy sauce
oil
(seasame seeds or something else crunchy to sprinkle)

Chop onion and saute it in a little oil. Chop cabbage. Add cabbage to pot. Sprinkle with soy sauce, seasame oil if you have it and a little water. Cover and steam until cabbage is cooked. Sprinkle with seasame seeds if you have them. Add more soy sauce if you like it.

Red Cabbage

This is based on my mom's red cabbage, based on some Eastern European recipe she found somewhere. I don't know that it wouldn't work with green cabbage, but red cabbage has always gone better with sweet flavors to me.

1 head red cabbage
2 apples
some fruit juice
fruit jelly or brown sugar
vinegar (small amount)
caraway seeds (or cloves, cinnamon, etc.)

Chop apples and cabbage and place in pot with a little juice (water is fine) a little sweetner and some spices. Steam until cabbage is done. You can play with the color by playing with the pH with juice and vinegar (Don't over vinegar! But if you do, add more sweetener.) I prefer whole spices, in part because they impart a wonderful winter-y smell to the whole house, and in part because I've ruined this by sprinkling on too much ground cloves, cinnamon or caraway seeds before and the whole spices are better infusers and can be removed. Very different from most people's expectations of cabbage.

Asian Slaw is my favorite raw cabbage recipe. I'll save it for later unless Spanish Sower or someone else requests sooner.