Zucchini

Someone was having a hard time remembering to stay seated in the grocery cart this afternoon, so when I was checking out, I sat Hamish down in the cart so I could load my groceries on the conveyor belt.

When everything was on the belt, I realized that she was stubbornly holding on to a zucchini. I pried it out of her hands so the cashier could weigh it (and charge me for it). I gave it back to her and then loaded my bags into the cart. 

Our our way out the door, she was taking a taste. 

In her car seat she was really going to town. 

When we got home we sat her in her high chair and let her do her thing. She made pretty good work for a whole, raw zucchini. All those little teeth work! 

Kraut

There has been a fair amount of fermentation in our household of late.

As Alli alluded to, we had a simple dinner a couple nights back of homemade bread with storebought cheese and salami- and another specialty homemade goodie- sauerkraut.  yum.  First, another closer photo, then the details:

details: sauerkraut is one of the easiest things you can possibly make.  I'd seen an article online talking about making it a couple years back, but was put off by the fact that you had to wait a few weeks to enjoy.  I actually seem to recall the recipe suggesting on the order of months, and I wasn't up to waiting that long without some proof of worth.  Then, a more recent article on lifehacker made it sound even easier. When I finally decided to do it, I just searched online, found a few recipes which all say basically the same thing, and roughly winged it.

so ahh, here is my very scientific recollection of the events.

1 head cabbage (we just got the white stuff, you can use whichever you like)
salt - I think 1.5 Tbs was the end gameplan I went with

wash, then chop up your cabbage.  pack your cabbage in something, and kind of mush it down a little bit with your fist.  add some salt to it roughly each "layer".  keep adding, pounding, mushing, salting, until your cabbage is all in.  The yogurt container above is what I used, but many recipes recommend your crock pot (I don't have one of those over here).  At the end just mush it down as tight as you can basically, and finally you want to cover it and try to create a rather airtight seal- since the bacteria that are going to ferment your cabbage like to do it sans oxygen.  Some people use a plate or something that fits well in your crock pot- but others recommend using a plastic bag filled with water (a good, food-grade plastic bag that will not leak the water or do anything else weird to your food).

I started with a zip-loc freezer bag full of water on top.. it wasn't forming a great seal, but seemed okay.  Then Alli pointed out how well the yogurt containers nest, so after a few days we just put an empty yogurt container in, mushed it down, and added the water weight to that container instead.

It did initially foam up a bit and spill-- not a ton, but I left it sitting on a kitchen towel for the first few days because of this, and used a paper towel to sop at the edges, as I was afraid that's where something random might start growing and then infuse the rest.

Many recipes mention that you should check in on your fermentation each few days, as most likely in the event that oxygen is getting in, you can get a bloom of something random growing in there, which you don't want.  However, they all concur that what will grow is not dangerous, and you just scoop it off and let the good guys keep growing.  I never got any of these blooms, surprisingly.

I think ideal temperature for these guys is just above what you Americans would consider room temperature-- so we kept it in our bedroom where it would at least get air-con at night.

So that's it, cabbage, salt, wait.  The recipes I found generally agreed on about 4 weeks, some longer.  So at 3 weeks I opened her up and had to take a try.  By the way, it did smell, but only if you stuck your nose in it mostly, our whole bedroom did not smell like kraut.

I was fairly amazed at that first forkful, and decided the mission was a success.  I stirred it up, and made it part of the dinner shown below.

This dinner brought to you courtesy of salt (and microorganisms)

It is still very fresh, crisp, and quite a good taste.  The only thing I will change when I repeat this is to try to cut back on the salt a little.  It's pretty agreed that more salt means more preservative, it will keep longer and stay crunchier- but I feel it's just a little bit towards the pickle side of things right now.  Possibly, just more time would have released more lactic acid and that would also balance the salt.  But then, less salt wouldn't be such a terrible thing anyway, right?

Also pictured is my latest beer- a pecan nut brown ale.  It's pretty rad.  Not pictured is the yogurt we made immediately after this dinner-- this time a well controlled experiment where we varied by using either milk powder, regular milk, or regular milk with gelatin added to try and boost thickness.  The result is that they are almost identical.. the milk powder one tastes different, but I wouldn't say worse, just slightly different.  The gelatin didn't really do much to thicken.  Straining makes it real nice, but is a bit of work, so we're still trying to figure out how to make good thick yogurt on the first go.

So collectively, that is 4 things we can now ferment and eat or drink later.  The next goal is to get this all happening concurrently and regularly.  I'll definitely get another batch of kraut going within the week.

Oh.  One more thing: Alli doesn't like suaerkraut.  Crazy, right?  It's like pickles practically and she *loves* pickles.  Mainly I mention this just for the record, so a couple of years from now when she can be quoted as saying "do you remember when I used to not like sauerkraut?" - I can point to this post and say yes, I do recall that sad time in your life.  Did you know she used to not like tomatoes?  Baby steps.

Gazpacho

I came home after South Carolina and Kyle headed to LA for work. We passed each other in the middle of the night as he returned and I left for China. But now we're both back. At the same time. In the same country! Hooray!

While I was home alone I had a gazpacho craving and realized that we've never blogged about gazpacho. Shameful. (Only because this is our online cookbook and I had to look elsewhere for my recipe if it wasn't here.) So I'm rectifying that.

Gazpacho is all about chopping (unless you have a food processor). It's a vegetable soup served cold and I think it's extremely wonderful and worth all the knife work.

My recipe calls for peeled tomatoes, which I used to do by hand with a paring knife, which is foolish. I wondered if the internets had a better idea this time and they did! Boil some water. Drop your tomato in for 20-30 seconds. Peeling done!!

It just slides right off! Brilliant.

So besides tomatoes, here's the pile of stuff to chop and mix.

2 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons lime juice
1.5 tablespoons lemon juice
1 liter tomato juice
1 teaspoon tarragon
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon honey
dash of hot pepper sauce
1/4 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper

I chop everything finely (I don't have a food processor), but I like my gazpacho chunky. You can even blend it if you want and serve it smooth. Whatever you prefer. Once you've mixed everything together let it chill for at least 2 hours.

Perfect for summer with crusty warm bread.

Look What We Got

It's not a farm share per se, but it's farm-fresh veggies delivered to my door! Of course, I don't know what half of this stuff is (the green half, the colors I feel fairly good about), but that's the thrill of the farm share!

Yong Tau Foo

One of my new favorite dishes is Yong Tau Foo, apparently literally meaning 'stuffed bean curd'.

But in reality, the name applies to food stalls that look almost like salad bars, with some 20 different bowls and plates of "toppings." It's intimidating at first, since you'll notice that most stalls have various fishy bits among greens and other things you can't identify, and there aren't always clear indicators of what and how you are supposed to order. But once you figure it out, it's very simple and a pretty safe bet most places.

You grab a bowl, and then you pick out a number of items, usually priced at about 50 cents each, with a minimum requirement of 7 or 8, and put them in your bowl. These include various leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, okra, mushrooms, bean sprouts, various tofu shapes, fried dumplings, what appear to be egg rolls, and then a few of those fishier options--crab sticks, fish balls--little glutinous balls with a mild but pleasant fish flavor, squid, etc.

Once you've chosen your ingredients you hand off the bowl with instructions for addition of noodles, they will briefly cook the ingredients in a rich, clear broth, and hand it back to you. You can eat it as a soup or with the liquid on the side, "dry". Then as is the case with most hawker center stalls, there is a small array of doctoring condiments, such as sesame seeds, sweet hoisin sauce, and of course, chili sauce. Choosing from the vegetable options, it feels like a pretty healthy meal, and look how pretty it is:

Thanksgiving

We had quite a spread at our Small Group Thanksgiving dinner thanks to some really awesome cooks. Now, of course, since it was three weeks ago I'm not going to remember everything, but we had engineer-cooked turkey, butternut squash risotto, salad, stuffing, fresh green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie with ginger whipped cream, and probably more that I've forgotten! Nothing was run of the mill, and I wish I could remember all the specifics. Every dish was gourmet!

We contributed homemade dinner rolls (fine, but I'm not sure they were worth the ridiculously long time they took to make); and a smooth pumpkin soup with brandy-soaked cranberries. The soup was good, and made a good first course.

And we recorded a glimpse of the table thanks to the iPhone and the glory that is jailbroken freedom allowing such profound technological developments as video which went unpursued by the forward-thinking engineers at apple. (Be wary if you're prone to sea sickness.)

Butternut Tortilla Soup

The last butternut squash has been used. I had so many great suggestions, and yet I made soup. I know. But I was in a soup mood; it was rainy all weekend. Plus I wanted to make something easy to freeze and thaw for Miss Lily's family.

This is once again a New England Soup Factory recipe made with butternut squash, tortillas, green chilies, cilantro, cheese, and chicken stock. It's a pureed soup, and Kyle and I loaded our bowls up with extra cheese, chips, and cilantro. Very, very good.

I have TWO more squash left. A round one from week 18 (the green globe in the top of the picture) and smallest of the crazy looking ones from week 17.

The big one is actually already chopped up, prepared for our Sunday Thanksgiving dinner with friends. I'm excited about this recipe, and I'll give you a hint. It might be soup again.

Meat Loaf

I'm still boycotting the grocery (which is going to have to change this weekend since we've had cheese and crackers for dinner two nights this week) and I wanted a good dinner using ground beef from the farm share that I had thawed, but I really didn't want burgers. So I made meatloaf on Tuesday night.


I blended together a couple of recipes for this one to make use of what I had and what I thought sounded cool. I do that more and more these days, which may be the biggest thing I've learned during the farm share experiment. I really have come a long way since the end of the first month.

Kyle said this was the best meatloaf he's ever had. Well, thank you.

Meatloaf with Carrots & Sake & Oatmeal (of course)
1 egg
1/2 cup sake (Japanese rice liquor, it's our standard "cooking wine")
1/2 cup finely chopped bell pepper (frozen from earlier in the farm share season)
1 to 1.5 cups of grated carrot (I used 1 large and 4 small ones to try to make a dent in our supply)
1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup uncooked steel cut oats
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon "Italian seasoning" from the spice rack (an oregano, basil, etc. mix that I should use up)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup pasta sauce (I didn't have tomato sauce, so I used Classico jarred pasta sauce from the fridge)
several generous shakes of red pepper flakes
salt & pepper to taste

I beat my egg well in the bowl first and then dumped everything else in there. I mixed it well using a fork and my hands and put it in a bread loaf pan. I baked at 350 for about an hour, until the center measured about 150 degrees.

We ate it with another 1/4 cup or so of Classico on top.

Last night, Kyle made his butternut squash, which are always good, and sauteed our last head of cabbage. He went with Asian flavors this time--soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice vinegar--and it was a good change from the normal cooked cabbage.

Now I'm trying again on bread and dreading the grocery.

Butternut & Sage Pasta

On my last butternut squash recipe, I made a call for suggestions and got a good one for butternut squash lasagna and another one for butternut squash chili.

I still have 2 squash to dedicate to those recipes, but I went for something I thought would be more simple for Saturday night after Kyle got home from a day of work. Plus, I had all the ingredients on hand for this pasta with butternut squash and sage from The Kitchn. And we all know how I feel about the grocery.

I started by oven roasting diced butternut squash, onion, garlic (3 cloves) and sage leaves. That stayed in the oven for about 40 minutes until it was nice and soft and brown.

Then I added it to cooked pasta with more sage, toasted pine nuts, and grated Parmesan. The goal was for the pasta to be a tiny bit crispy and to have a rich, pan-fried flavor. I actually expected more from the squash and onion, but Kyle says it was very good.

We did think it was a better with a little more olive oil on it. The "pan fried" was a little too dry and crisp for us.

Steak & Potatoes

I've made a couple of steaks in the past week. If I recall correctly, this first picture was of a sirloin, a nice thick cut of meat. I did my usual addition of garlic, olive oil, salt, and grilling.

We also made a couple of delmonico steaks. This time I did the pan-searing method. You may recall from my pan-seared tuna recipe post that this method is great for flavor and bad for smoke detectors. We thought about this and decided the olive oil is largely to blame. It has a low smoke point. Well, we happen to also have some safflower oil, so I gave that a run this time. The smoking was definitely kept to a lower level, so it will certainly help there. However, safflower oil is definitely a different taste. It's certainly not bad, but I think the olive oil flavor is somewhat preferable. So my advice is to have a really good range hood and stick with the olive oil I guess. I said those are 2 steaks, but just so you know, I cooked them, took them out of the pan, let them rest, cut them open, and decided the centers were still cold. It was probably the best steak I've ever made, but we applied some fresh oil and tossed back in the halves until they were cooked to a more respectable medium.


Finally I made another starchy everything, this time with a single red turnip, a single sweet potato, and a couple regular russetts. I went with a very basic finish -- mashed (but not too much), salt, pepper, butter, milk, and fresh diced garlic. I could eat this on a regular basis.

In other news, I made some chicken piccata but failed to take any photos. We've also thrown out a couple of things- the last eggplant just sat in the fridge until we tossed it, along with a few aging carrots and peppers, and finally, 3 of the turnips-- they got really soft rather quickly. We didn't find a use for the cilantro (which makes me very sad), and I just attempted something with the now fairly wilted radicchio-- a quick pan-wilting (redundant, I know)-- the result was too bitter to eat. Only 2 apples left though, we're doing a good job on those. The cabbage is keeping well, and the squash and sweet potatoes would last for approximately forever I think, so we're not in a hurry on them. The crisper is starting to clear out.

Not Done Yet

We aren't done with the blog just because we got our last delivery of veggies. For starters, we have to use up what we have and I know you are all waiting with bated breath to see how that works out. Secondly, we hope to one day write more about travel than just recounting our misadventures in the Atlanta airport.

But back to food. Last week I had the cold to end all colds, which did not lend itself to really creative meal planning. After returning from Charleston on Monday night, Kyle treated me to Thai takeout on Tuesday in hopes that all of that chili and ginger and chili would beat the congestion into submission. I think it helped some, and was delicious regardless.

On Wednesday, I made a crock pot roast to make a dent in the root vegetables. I used 5 large carrots, a bulb of garlic, an onion, and 3 hefty potatoes along with a meat share roast.

I thought it turned out sort of bland, but Kyle promised it was good. It needed a lot more salt than I used, and I should have added cornstarch or arrowroot to thicken the gravy. It was certainly hearty and filling and easy, though, and it served me well in my convalescence.

On Thursday (I think, days spent lying on the couch and coughing out your tonsils run together), I made another squash and leek risotto, this time with butternut squash and 3 leeks. Our friend Ruthie suggested an oven risotto with butternut squash and pancetta that looks fantastic, but I was feeling sick and lazy and wanted to do something I had done before. No worries though, I still have three butternut and 2 other mystery squash to use, so I am still very much open to winter squash recipe ideas.

So far I've heard of a butternut squash and ginger soup and of using diced butternut squash in lieu of beans in chili. Both sound good, but let me know if you have any other ideas!

Week 20

This is it, folks. The end of the farm share. We got:


carrots
apples
3 bulbs of garlic
cilantro
eggplant
cabbage
sweet potatoes
4 red turnips
1 butternut squash
radicchio

Kyle took this picture on Friday while I packed and then we dumped everything in the fridge and took off to Charleston for a wedding and to see friends. Of COURSE got stuck in Atlanta and spent the night there, because that's the way we work. We did spring for a hotel this time though.

Veggie Party

Our friends Charles and Lauren were with Red Fire Farms last year, but switched to a closer one this year so they could visit the farm more often-- Waltham Fields Community Farm. Anyway, it's been interesting comparing what we've gotten and what we've done with it over the past few months. Since the beginning we talked about getting together and having a veggie party. Well, we finally got around to it Sunday. A little unfortunately we've moved beyond the bulk of variety and outdoor grilling options that would have been the highlight earlier in the season. We still had a nice time and some great food.

I made us some more butternut squash in the simple walnut and butter method, since we had 5 to work with (still have 3 left).

I also whipped up some everything starchy mashed goodness-- consisting of red and russet potatoes, rutabagas, parsnips, and even 1 pear (for curiosity's sake). Alli found me this recipe which sounded pretty cool, and I loosely followed it-- the caramelized onion topping is a great touch. Of course the pear was my own addition. I also forgot to use any garlic, and added a few slices of cheddar as the mixture was going into a casserole dish. It was a hit I think, quite tasty.

Alli came through with a braised chicken and celeriac recipe she found. It was also quite good, especially the celeriac. We used 2 chicken breasts from our meat share, which are relatively thick and thus don't really flavor through all the way. Oh and yes, this was a veggie "party fowl" (Charles' joke), but we're not really sticklers.

Alli also made us a new apple pie. Delicious as always, though slightly different this time, chiefly, I believe, due to the different variety of apples. These were Rome apples, the really pretty red ones-- less tart than what we had prior.

Alli has gotten quite adept at her pie-making skills. So adept, in fact, that she hardly even has to pay attention any more. Well, there were a few leftover apples that would not fit in the pie this time. Alli had one, and was surprised to find it was not nearly as good before as after baking. Several minutes later, as we were walking out the door, I also had one, and concurred. This is when it occurred to Alli that she had forgotten a rather crucial ingredient-- sugar. Off came the masterfully crafted top crust, out came the filling, sugar was added to appropriate degree, back into the pie, and the crust was reformatted. No harm done. This only worked because we were running late and chose to actually bake the pie at C+L's. We could keep this information to ourselves, but where would the fun be in that?

Oh and I also brought some lambic to share. Charles was definitely a fan.

C+L came through with roasted turnips and kohlrabi. Unpeeled, just cut into french fry shapes, oiled, salted, and peppered, I believe. Good and easy.

They also committed their own party fowl by making turkey-loaf muffins. I'd never considered making a meat loaf into a meat muffin, but it works out pretty well. Don't know any details on the recipe there, but they were topped with something spicy that was nice.

Beefy Cabbage Bake and Brussels Sprouts

We finally got around to using our week+ old cabbage a couple nights ago. We'd thawed some ground beef, and so I just searched for ground beef cabbage recipes and basically made the first thing I found. It isn't super complicated in flavor, but does take a while to make, so I finished it just after Alli went to bed for the evening. Anyway, it was pretty good-- the cabbage part especially, and it made enough to last for about 3 meals. Here's the cabbage all cut up and ready to go:
I also used the brussels sprouts we got this week, in a very simple manner. I washed them, tossed them in a bowl, splashed in some olive oil, kosher salt, and ground pepper, tossed, and baked in a single layer at 400 deg F for about 25 minutes. We decided we're fans of brussels sprouts. My only thought is I would probably take off one more layer of outer skin next time, it became a little too tough, but the mini-cabbage beneath was good. I don't remember the last time I had any brussels sprouts- I would describe it as something between cabbage and broccoli, and tasty.

Week 19

We got a lot of fall/winter vegetables this week including some some cool new stuff:
5 (five) butternut squash
1.5 lbs of carrots (orange)
1.5 lbs of parsnips (cream)
potatoes (both red and russet)
onions
apples
pears
Brussels sprouts (which are apparently very good when fresh)
rutabaga

Just to wrap up last week...
Thursday Kyle made pesto pasta (using pesto he made and froze from farm share basil earlier in the season) with sausage.
Friday: We snacked on various things: kohlrabi (peeled and chopped you can eat it raw and it's similar to broccoli), really good carnival squash roasted with salt, pepper, and butter...and round two of the pea tendrils. This time Kyle was very careful separating the edible from the non-edible and 98% of the tendrils were tender and sweet. I think we won this time.

Saturday was leftovers and date night at a Turkish restaurant (good, but not blown away) and tonight is a veggie party. Lots of vegetables, lots of interesting preparations, more to come!

Eggplant Parmesan

At our potluck dinner Monday night, Ruth made us eggplant parmesan which was fabulous. I was already thinking it was about time we made the grocery store trip to pick up mozzarella and pasta sauce and make this happen, but the excellence of Ruth's preparation really forced the issue.
The key element that makes this eggplant parmesan excellent, is, I think, the pre-frying of the eggplant. I don't know if we've said so with conviction just yet, but frying eggplant produces the tastiest stuff. Grilling ain't bad at all, but you can't touch a good fried product. You saw from our photo in week 18 how the eggplants of late are long thin creatures, as opposed to months back, here for example, when we were getting big fat varieties. The big fat ones would probably do you better for parmesan, but it was high time we tried this standard. I used all the eggplant we had, some now 5 days old, some 12 days old. The older stuff was getting pretty soft and mushy feeling, but in the end I can not differentiate, so old eggplant will work fine for this dish.
I peeled the eggplant, sliced it into perhaps 1/2 inch thick slices, salted it on just one side, let it sit 10 mins, sopped up the eluted liquid with paper towels, breaded with plain bread crumbs, and fried in 380 deg F vegetable oil, about a half to an inch deep in a skillet, about 2 minutes each. The oil was just deep enough that most of the slices did not need turning. I then removed these and used them to make the parmesan. Basically a layer of eggplant, a few small scoops of ricotta, spoon over pasta sauce, repeat. On the top layer I sprinkled mozzarella, and baked for about 30 minutes at 350 deg F. Voila. Very tasty!

More Frittata

A frittata is becoming a standby too. Sort of like farm share soup. It's so easy and filling.

Tuesday night we had a ground beef and pepper frittata with sauteed bok choy.


For the frittata (an omelet I don't have to flip), I browned my beef, drained it, and added chopped peppers and garlic and sauteed until it was all tender, then added a drained can of diced fire roasted tomatoes. I beat 6 eggs with pepper and then poured the eggs on top of everything. I pulled back the edges of my filling to let the egg flow under it and let it set. Then I grated parmesan on top and popped the whole thing in the oven for about 20 minutes.

It's quick and easy and served us both for dinner and lunch the next day. Plus I got rid of 4 of those peppers!

Wrapping Up Week 17

I left my camera at the last wedding, so I'm a little short on pictures. But just to wrap up the week:

Monday: Steak from the meat share cooked my Dad's way with sauteed bok choy. It was a "Delmonico steak" which, according to Wikipedia, can refer to 8+ cuts of steak. Helpful. Ours was good, but not quite as good for this preparation as tenderloin.

Tuesday: lamb chops and sauteed pea tendrils. Kyle really wanted to try the pea tendrils, but we weren't sure what to do with them. He read a recipe somewhere online for sauteed tendrils, and decided to go with this simple preparation. However, in the meantime we lost internet connectivity at home, (Augh! But Kyle fixed it. He is my hero.) so when he actually prepared the tendrils, he went from memory. His memory was that you just wash 'em, cut 'em up, and, well, saute them. He added some garlic and olive oil. When things weren't getting so tender so quickly, he added some water and a lid. 30-45 minutes later when things were still not tender he gave up. Some parts were good and some parts were way too tough (think tree branches), but I'm not 100% clear on where that line was. Pea tendrils have not been mastered.

Lunches/snacks: a salad with chopped apples and walnuts, leftover soup, more apples, etc.

Wednesday: Dinner out with friends, which was nice.

Thursday: another flight, so airport food again! Whoo hoo. Special thanks to Charles who will pick up our food tomorrow when we are several states away.

Week 17

In a miracle of self-motivation, Alli got our veggies all out of the fridge this morning so we could capture a famous table-shot of our distribution. She's also making me some special soup that I'm sure you'll hear about later.

Here's what we got:

5 or 6 run-of-the-mill plain-Jane potatoes

3 red onions

a peck of apples

a little over a pound of carrots

2 long thin purple eggplants

3 sweet peppers

1 head lettuce

1 bunch kale

1 head purple cabbage

4 baby bok choy

1 bunch pea tendrils (no idea what to do with these)

1 bunch dill

2 winter squash-- not sure if these are really acorn or some other variety. I think Alli and I have seen these in the store before and just thought they were decorative. Who would have thought these things make good eats?

Edit: I'm going to call it carnival squash based on this page with info on various squashes.

Thursday Night Fridge Cleaning

As I'm sure you've gathered, our abilities to finish these veggies on time has just continued to wane. We get home from work without a dinner plan, survey our refrigerator, see eggplant, carrots, some lettuce, radishes, possibly turnips or beets. Check the fruit bowl-- apples, potatoes, squash. Oftentimes when you are hungry and ready to eat this assortment just doesn't excite you. Then you make potstickers, or ravioli, or you sit around with your bag of stacy's pita chips and a chunk of cheddar or brie, and you call it dinner.

Well, Thursday, Alli went to a rehearsal dinner for our friend Jenn (who's getting married today!) and I decided to try and clean our refrigerator and call it a meal.

I started by using up the leftover lettuce and a couple sliced radishes:

Okay, that was a good start, despite some of that lettuce being over a week old, it was all still nice and crunchy. A few radishes gave it a nice kick.

Next, I tackled the eggplant. Yep, we're getting a touch tired of these, but we've learned a lot about how best to cook these guys. Sauteing: no. Grilling: yes. Well, Thursday I decided to put the oven at one temperature and use it for everything I could basically. So I prepared the eggplant the same as I would to grill-- salting to draw out liquid, sopping this up, liberally coating with olive oil, and lightly peppering. Then I stuck em in the oven at 400 deg F for about 25 minutes, turning once. They didn't crisp as nicely as they would on the grill (perhaps putting them closer to the broiler I could have accomplished this), but they retained all their moisture, so they were creamy and tasty. Alli had leftovers for lunch Friday and felt it was one of our better eggplant attempts. We still haven't made eggplant parmesan for not having any mozzarella around and wanting to avoid the grocery store, but if the eggplant in that dish comes out like this eggplant did, I'd be happy with it. This photo is sub-optimal, but here it is anyway:

Next, sweet potato. I've never been a big fan of sweet potatoes. I think it's because people ruin them with brown sugar, marshmallows, maple syrup, and various other sweeteners. I've made a profound discovery recently, anything I'm going to eat in much quantity at all, should not be sweet. Way back at the beginning of this you may recall our glazed turnips, for instance. They were good- for about 2 bites. New rule: vegetables shouldn't be sweet. I think the same is true for other food groups too. Take for instance, chinese take out. Sometimes you want the orange chicken or another of those that are slathered with some sweet sauce. You sample it perhaps at the mall food court and think mmm, I'll have that. There again, about 5 bites in, you could really use something salty and not sweet. Dessert is one thing, but main courses shouldn't be sweet. Well, not too sweet anyway. And here's the kicker with sweet potatoes-- they're already sweet!!!

So this time, all I did was wash the potato, poke some holes with a fork, and stick it in that 400 deg F oven for about 1 hr. Then I sliced it open, dropped in some butter, and gave it a light salting. And now I've decided sweet potatoes aren't so bad at all. I mean really, in a face-off with your run-of-the-mill potato, they have to win. You could pretty much take a sweet potato, bake it, and eat it with no doctoring and be happy. The Idaho variety would be bland and boring in comparison.

Finally, butternut squash. This is the first time in my life I've ever done anything with a butternut squash. So of course I set out to the internet in search of recipes. You probably won't be surprised at what I found. Brown sugar. Maple syrup. No, and no. On one of these recipe pages, in the comments, I found wisdom. Some guy ranting about how people ruin good food by coating it with sugar. His advice: follow the recipe given, which says simply to cut the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seedy bits and score the flesh, but now, instead of brown sugar, crush some walnuts and drop them in the cavity, topped with a pat of butter. Salt and pepper a little bit, and bake at 400 deg F for 1 hr, 15 mins.

Now doesn't that look tasty? It was. It was fantastic. I think the butter helped to get the oils out of the walnuts and to allow them to soak into the squash flesh, really flavoring it. And once again, the squash itself is quite sweet enough. I'm so glad I didn't ruin this with sugar.

Oh, I also boiled a couple ears of corn, but that's not even worth photographing. The fridge now has space for new veggies, and I'm full and satisfied. success.