In the words of the great Moose A. Moose…I feel like I’m falling for fall. (If you can identify the song…you have little people infesting your home too.)
I have finally learned to appreciate the bounty of autumn. I have mastered the art of the world’s easiest butternut soup, narcoleptic cat easy. You simply steam them in the nuker in pyrex until they are soft, mix them with stock, salt, pepper, and buttermilk. Puree the whole shabang up with an immersion blender, the coolest kitchen gadget EVER, and you have some tasty creamy healthy fall soup. (You can actually use any cucurbit you have rolling around.)
Still tripping over squash…nuke ‘em up like noted above and add them to your cheese sauce for a tasty quasi-nutritious mac & cheese. Create your reg. light roux…fat&flour browned for a minute. (I like butter and a little King Arthur’s white but any fat and flour will do.) Add a little mustard, either fresh or powdered. Add your milk and bring to a slight boil. Toss in shredded cheese. Then add your pureed steamed squash. (Puree the squash before adding because pureeing with the cheese makes for a weird texture.) Pour over whatever noodle you have on hand, or even rice and bake the bad boy until crispy on top.
A taste of summer…coleslaw made with fall cabbage, dicon radish, and apples. Shred it all up, add salt, and pepper,a little mayo, and a little white vinegar. Beyond tasty.
Leftover apples and pears…although they go pretty fast in the land of baby chimps. Cook them down into tasty apple/pear sauce to put with pancakes or even to bake with. (Applesauce can replace veggie oil in many quick bread recipes. Another way to localfy your ingredients.) Or use Green Bean’s fantastic rhubarb tart recipe and just replace the rhubarb with whatever fall fruits you have on hand.
Besides being nutritious, local, seasonal, and delicious…I am also finding these dishes are quite budget friendly. If you haven’t joined a CSA keep it in mind for the next season. Not only will you be supporting sustainable agriculture in your neighborhood, but you will be forcing yourself to learn about food and seasons and, perhaps, saving yourself a little green.
Isn’t it funny how watching one’s retirement plan go from escaping to a small remote tropical island to living in a small trailer on Long Island makes one appreciate a cheap meal? Maybe it’s just me.
Retirement Vision Before Stock Market Crash
Retirement Vision After Stock Market Crash
I currently posses a pumpkin, a giant butternut squash, 2 acorn squashes, a sunshine squash, and what appears to be a confused pumpkin. I do not posses, however, even one measly idea as to what to do with them all. This is a cucurbit crisis people!!!!! 
(OK…I totally just wanted to show off my years of botany study. That 2 seconds of impressing the pants of you cost me tens of thousands of dollars. Fake your awe if you must.)
I haven’t done a CSA update for awhile. Honestly the past few weeks have been rough because I have had to heavily supplement my share with the markets. Lots of fruit…not a whole lotta greens. So I haven’t been feeling the inspiration. One thing, beside bushels of zucchini which apparently has the world’s longest growing season, we have been getting by the butt load is eggplant. Yup…eggplant. Not a fan of eggplant? Me neither. Now I don’t mind an eggplant parm now and again, but for the sake of not being shaped like an eggplant, I keep that at the scarce end of diet frequency. I made two huge batches of ratatouille for the freezer which is okay…but labor intensive for an okay kind of meal. I made babaganoosh and it got tossed after a week of everyone pretending they couldn’t see it in the fridge. So what am I to do with nature’s unappreciated bounty? Are you ready….drum roll please….I hide it. Well…it is a little more involved than that. I slice the babies in half, slather them in olive oil, add a touch of salt and pop them in the toaster oven under the broiler. I spend the next 30 minutes thinking about how cool my hair would look feathered with a snazzy sparkly bow accent. I then simple pop the bad boys into the stew pot with the rest of the basic tomato sauce gang…tomatoes, garlic, onions, & basil. Puree the whole gang with my immersion blender. Not only does it hide the eggplants, but it actually gives a nice body to the sauce. I can leave the sauce a little on the fresher side, spend less time cooking, and still get a good rich sauce. You can simply send your fan mail to Organicneedle.com.
