Fall type stuff

OK, it’s November. We’ve had some days with a high of 35° and other days like today where the high was 66°.

One of the really cold days was last Tuesday, Halloween. I already posted a bunch of pics of our pumpkins but here they are lit on Halloween night.

We got hardly any trick or treaters, but no fear, we’ve eaten all the Halloween candy ourselves, except for a bag of snickers in Mark’s fridge.

Last Thursday, I picked up my CSA extension share, a box in between the last regular season boxes and the “Thanksgiving box” storage shares that we’ll get in about two weeks. My farmer, Beth, called it the Squash & Sweets share, 10 pounds of sweet potatoes and 16 pounds of squash. Beth also posted this lovely shot of dusk on their farm.

The first thing I made from the box was sweet potato fries to go with our open face toasted cheese sandwiches that we ate before going to see DakhaBrakha. I made two kinds: deli turkey with cheddar and thousand island dressing and tomatoes, and Swiss cheese with zucchini pickles I made last summer.  I bought some Whole Foods in-house roasted organic deli turkey breast because I thought Pia might eat it, she’s just been taking Cliff bars for lunch, and thought she might like to make sandwiches, and I thought maybe Jasper might like it (he didn’t – he dropped the turkey on the floor and opened his mouth wide for another bite of yogurt & applesauce). The turkey was really dry and crumbly, and definitely low sodium. So anyways, I used up as much as possible in these sandwiches, I ate some of it – with a ton of mayo – and the rest went in the compost on Saturday night.  The fries came out pretty good – I tossed the cut sweet potato sticks with a little flour and smoked paprika and olive oil, and spread them out on a preheated, oiled, baking sheet. I didn’t get any pics Thursday, but when I get the recipe perfected I will post it here.

And DakhaBrakha, man they were amazing. Bob Queen and Nancy Kathman who organize & fund the Sessions at McPike Park in the summer underwrote the concert so most of the proceeds could benefit Ukraine. For me the projected visuals were the best part, but I wasn’t careful enough about taking a pic of the credits at the end of the show. I might have to fast forward one of their recent concert videos to the end credits to get the artist info.

On Friday I steamed two of the butternuts and got enough puree to make a batch of pumpkin butter. With some leftover for a TBD pumpkin something. I’ve been flirting with pumpkin bread or muffins, maybe mini muffins, or maybe pumpkin pancakes, or maybe pumpkin pasta. We shall see. Pia is off on her State Dept. sponsored trip to DC most of this week, so it’s just me & Mark for dinner.

In house construction progress, I think I told you everything’s all built, and we’re at the painting phase. Which also involves lots of scraping and window trim repair and caulking and screen repair. Last week when it was really cold preventing painting, the painters told us that they were making a big push to get everything primered for winter and then if they ran out of good weather, we’d be their first job in the spring. This week I realized they were doing the maitre d thing – telling us it’d be an hour wait for our table so we’d be happy when they seat us after 45 minutes.

Wednesday, one of the cold days, was Jasper’s first time coming here for granny daycare. It was always the plan that as he got bigger he’d come here because there’re more things to walk to than out at Al & Emma’s on the far west side. He only took one nap, but otherwise, I think we had a good day.

Saturday I started the day selling DCFM cookbooks, but then spent a chunk of late morning to early afternoon at the hair salon, waiting while we tried to get Pia’s hair dyed back to its original color. I guess it didn’t come out quite right because she gets to go back for a free touch up on the 15th. Things started off OK. I walked over to the co-op and had some breakfast and coffee and did a little shopping. I actually bought a bit too much for how far I had to walk to get back to the car & the salon, but I kept switching shoulders with my bag and made it. But then it just dragged on as they tried to get the color right. Mark and I had appointments to get our flu shots and Covid boosters and we just made it. Today I have a big red patch where the vaccines went in, and it’s itchy. I also think I’m kind of extra tired, I assume from the shots.

The Farmers Market is feeling very Fall-y, squash and apples and potatoes. I made leek confit with a last big leek I got in one of my CSA boxes, and on Sunday morning I made leek and mushroom tart. I’d been planning to make a more standard quiche with an egg custard, half & half was one of the too-heavy items I bought at the co-op on Saturday, but I saw this Nigel Slater recipe and decided to make something a bit more like that. I made the filling from sauteed mushrooms, most of the leek confit, and grated Swiss and sour cream, and an egg yolk. Nigel’s is a nicer color because it’s only leeks. The mushrooms made my tart grey. We ate it with fried potatoes and salad.

And oh yea, Saturday night I made chili, and sort of like the tart, I used up bits and ends. I had half a pound of ground turkey and another half pound of bulk chorizo in the freezer, so I thawed those out and cooked a half bag of I think cranberry beans from Rancho Gordo because the label said they were good in chili. I added onions and bell peppers and one jalapeno, and there was a plum tomato from last week getting spotty in the fruit bowl, and part of a carton of veggie broth that I thawed out for something else, and I threw it all in with chili powder and tomato paste and it was really good chili. I think I’ll have to make some nachos with some of it and freeze the rest.

I used the last of my retirement gift gift certificates to get some better glass storage containers at Orange Tree on Sunday. It was the staff person who denied me my instructor discount another time when I was in and even though one of the other staffers who knows me better was there, I just didn’t ask this time. The staff person said I only get the discount when I am actually teaching but that hardly works because even though I give my students a break to go shop on class day, I never have time. Oh well. Anyways that’s what the chili is in, but like I said I think I’ll make some nachos with some of it and freeze the rest in plastic so as not to have my nice new container in the freezer for an unknown time period.

Other cooking adventures have been less successful – I made Maida Heatter’s apple kuchen for our Sunday dessert, and it’s as good as ever but I think I should’ve left out the walnuts – or used less.

I also tried a highly recommended America’s Test Kitchen apple crisp because it used 4 pounds of apples, and we had a ton because Pia and a friend had gone apple picking and brought a huge bag back. It was not too sweet as promised. It had chopped almonds in the crumble topping that just got annoying and hard after it cooled off. I ended up dumping it with only a few small servings gone. One way to use up all the apples I guess, but not exactly a good way.

I made some purple cabbage slaw that is staying nicely crunchy, but Mark has stopped eating it so I guess it’s up to me to finish what I can and compost the rest. It won’t be too much; probably only about a cup. Oh, and I made the slaw to go with some pork chops with a mushroom gravy that we had for dinner Saturday. I didn’t like the gravy at all – it was too thin. Yesterday I made barbecue sauce and heated the leftover chops in the sauce. I rinsed the gravy off the mushrooms and put them into the barbecue with the chops and that was a lot tastier than the gravy.

Hope springs eternal though – I started the day today making chocolate chip muffins, to use up some vanilla yogurt. I tried a new kind and it’s lumpy. The muffins look very nice.

And I’m in round two of steaming squash to make puree so I better go and finish up there, and head out for a walk. And I had some purple coleslaw for breakfast so maybe I won’t have to resort to compost.