Farmers' Market Squash

Today it was finally time to cook the beautiful squash that has been adorning my countertop since I bought it at the farmers' market back in October. The grower described it as a French heirloom squash, but it also looks very much like one described as a Ukranian winter squash on this All About Winter Squash page. This was actually one of the smaller squashes of its type that was being sold at that stand that day, but I've included the yogurt cup next to it to help convey its considerable size.

It sliced open quite easily. I cut it into quarters, more or less. The web page I linked to above shows methods of cutting squash that include tapping a large knife with a rubber mallet, as well as use of a saw. My not-recently-sharpened chef's knife did the trick with no great effort required.

I oiled a baking sheet and arranged the quarters with one cut side down and baked them for about three quarters of an hour at 350 degrees. Last time I cooked squash I put large chunks into a covered glass dish with a little water and cooked it in the microwave for about 10 minutes. That worked nicely and was certainly very quick, but this time I thought I'd pursue the richer flavor and wonderful smell that come from oven-baking a squash. Here's how the pieces looked when they were done. They smelled heavenly.

And how did I use my squash? Well, two of the four quarters went right into my freezer for later use. I scraped the pulp off the skin of the other two pieces and cooked it with lots of diced carrots, onion, garlic, fresh ginger and water in a large saucepan until the carrots were tender, then blended it all up and added a little cinnamon, salt, pepper, and half-and-half. Yes, it's the same squash-carrot-ginger soup I made several weeks ago, since it became an instant favorite, but this time I made at least twice as much. I should have enough for several lunches this week, and another day I'll pull the rest of the cooked squash out of the freezer and use it for something else. That's a lot of eating for one squash.

Local Eating This Week

It's been another atypical week, particularly busy at work and not cooking at home because I've been dog-sitting at my ex's house (formerly our shared house) while he is in New York for the week. I've lived mainly on toast (local bread) and peanut butter, and the remnants of some Chinese food and a large "gourmet vegetarian" pizza ordered early in the week. Tonight, as freezing rain fell to glaze the snow that arrived earlier today, I was at home and made a simple supper of local eggs and home-fries (eggs from Owatonna, MN, and potatoes from Kenyon, MN, both from within 30 miles of here). Next week I hope to finally do something with the beautiful peachy-pink French heirloom squash I bought from the farmers' market back in October.

A Fairly Local Thanksgiving

My eldest daughter was home from college this week, and we ate out more than usual. Thanksgiving dinner was undoubtedly my most-local meal of the week. I did not order a special free-range organic turkey, but took advantage of the ".59/lb with a $25 purchase" offer on an Our Family turkey at Econofoods. Not the gourmet's choice, I'm sure, but it worked with my schedule and my budget. I'm certain it was a local turkey, however, since Our Family is the Nash Finch (based in Minneapolis) store brand and this is one of the biggest turkey-growing regions in the country. I really am shifting most of my limited meat purchases to local, small-scale producers, but I didn't manage that this time.

With the turkey we had garlic mashed potatoes (potatoes local, the garlic probably not, though the labeling was unclear in this instance), roasted local carrots, local Brussels sprouts, and Sno Pac local frozen organic sweet corn, and there was a local onion, diced and sauteed, in the stuffing (I feel apologetic that the stuffing was of the commercial bagged sort, albeit improved by the addition of the onion and some non-local but organic celery and browned pecans). And there was some other not-so local stuff as well. My vegetarian sister-in-law cooked a Tofurkey, which she said was really quite good, and my mother-in-law supplied a couple of Baker's Square pies. I'm no longer married to their brother and son, but they are my family too, after 25 years' history together. And I was grateful for that, and for them, and for having all the kids with us this Thanksgiving.

Local Eating This Week

I have a new blender and took advantage of it this week, making smoothies with fabulous Cultural Revolution organic yogurt (from Iowa) and Sno-Pac frozen organic blueberries and strawberries (from southeastern Minnesota). Oh, okay, there were some decidedly nonlocal (but fair trade) bananas in there too, bought for the first time in ages, as I try to think of ways of expanding my eight-year-old son's very limited repertoire of acceptable foods (he who lives mainly on grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, and chicken patties, making pizza sauce and organic ketchup about his only "vegetables." Thank goodness for Flintstones vitamins.).

My official local meal of the week, however, was this evening's squash, carrot and ginger soup, which also made good use of the blender. The idea of a squash soup with ginger has been simmering for the last couple of weeks, ever since it was suggested by Laura of Urban Hennery, who is running the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. I searched online and found a recipe that sounded good and didn't call for orange juice or much else in the way of long-distance ingredients.

Going with what I had on hand, I used more squash (a whole delicata squash bought last month at the farmers' market) and fewer carrots (the last of my farmers' market carrots, along with a local onion from the co-op) than called for in the recipe, but either way the Vitamin A content is wonderful. I had fresh ginger left over from last week's curry, and that and the other seasonings were the only non-local ingredients. We ate it with fresh, organic multi-grain bread (made by Brick Oven for Just Food Co-op), cheddar cheese from Wisconsin, and golden, organic, grass-based Pastureland butter from southeast Minnesota -- the best tasting butter I've ever encountered. A simple but delicious supper, made even better by being shared with two dear friends.

Local Meal of the Week: Beef & Potato Curry

I was a bit late getting to my official local meal of the week, though I'd had a supper of Thorn Crest Farm's eggs (wow, those dark golden yolks!) and Brick Oven toast a couple of days ago. Tonight I made an easy beef and potato curry, with ground grass-fed beef from Thousand Hills Cattle Co., farmers' market potatoes and onions, Sno-Pac frozen organic peas from Caledonia, MN, and the last of my little tomatoes from my own garden. With it we had some pita bread that I deemed local by virtue of the fact that it had been in my freezer quite a while! The only other non-local ingredients were the minced garlic from a jar, some fresh, grated ginger, curry powder, and a sprinkling of salt. Not the fanciest meal in the world, but it made the house smell good and warmed the stomach going down.

Local Meal of the Week: Butternut Tostadas

For this week's Dark Days Eat Local Challenge meal, I browsed through lots of squash recipes and settled on this simple, quick, delicious meal: butternut tostadas. I found it in The New Laurel's Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery & Nutrition, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders and Brian Ruppenthal. When I was being an at-home mom in the early to mid '90s, I loved this book for being so much more than just a book of recipes -- more like a trusted friend -- but I have less time to cook these days and haven't visited it much for quite a while. Silly me. It's still wonderful.

This recipe is credited, to my surprise, to the late artist Alan Gussow, whose wife, Joan, wrote a compelling book about their gardening lives that I have often quoted here: This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader.

Here's the recipe: You cut a butternut squash into quarters and scoop out the seeds. Put it with a little water into a covered glass dish and microwave for about 10 minutes, until flesh is soft (or steam in the conventional way for 20 minutes). Meanwhile, toast corn tortillas on a griddle until softly crisp. When the squash is tender, scrape the squash pulp off the skins and mash it. Heat a tablespoon of oil, add some chili powder, garlic and ground cumin, and stir-fry until the spices are fragrant. Add the squash and some oregano; stir and fry until the mixture is hot.

Spread some squash mixture onto a prepared tortilla; sprinkle with a little grated cheese; cover with shredded lettuce, and dot with salsa.

"Makes 4 rather unusual but very tasty tostadas," the book says. It certainly does! The combination of toasted corn/spiced squash/mellow cheese is a real winner.

My squash and lettuce were from the farmers' market; my tortillas are from down the road in Faribault (purchased at the co-op during the Eat Local Challenge in August, but tortillas seem to keep almost forever in the fridge or freezer); the cheese is from perhaps slightly more than 200 miles away (Crystal Farms is based in Lake Mills, WI), but I had it on hand; and the salsa was Minneapolis's own Salsa Lisa.

Addendum, 11/1: I should have noted above that Joan Dye Gussow is a noted local and organic food advocate and nutritionist; my description above doesn't do justice to her national stature.

Barney Frittata?

For my first deliberately local meal of the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge, I had thought maybe I'd use a butternut squash I bought a couple of weeks ago. However, my attention turned to the much more perishable vegetables I bought at the farmers market last Saturday -- in particular, a gorgeous purple cauliflower and some broccoli. Since I also had some locally grown potatoes and onions on hand, I thought I would recreate a favorite dish from Keys Cafe in Minneapolis and St. Paul: a skillet meal that (as I recall) starts with potatoes and onions, adds fairly finely chopped cauliflower, broccoli and mushrooms, and gets those all nicely browned before adding eggs and cheese. I had all those ingredients, including eggs, from local sources -- well, the cheese is from Wisconsin, but it's not a major ingredient by weight, and I used a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

Here's a shot of the skillet while the veggies were cooking:

Isn't it both startling and beautiful? I thought to myself, "Now, what familiar purple and green icon can I compare this to when I write my blog post?" Having three kids, the answer came immediately to mind: Barney, the dinosaur.

So that's my name for this skillet dinner: Barney Frittata. It was delicious.

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

In the local-food blogosphere, momentum is building for an Eat Local challenge for the harder part of the year. It's easy to fill up on local sweet corn, zucchini, tomatoes and berries in summer, but we Northern folk have to be a bit more intentional if we want to keep local foods in our winter diets. I posted a few days ago about eating locally in the wintertime. Joining the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge will give me some extra motivation to follow through on those possibilities. Here are the guidelines of the official challenge; you can read more at Urban Hennery.

1. Cook one meal a week with at least 90% local ingredients
2. Write about it - the triumphs and the challenges
3. Local means a 200 mile radius for raw ingredients. For processed foods the company must be within 200 miles and committed to local sources.
4. Keep it up through the end of the year, and then re-evaluate on New Year’s Day.

I'm pretty sure my first Dark Days local meal will involve the butternut squash that's been sitting on my counter for a couple of weeks now. I'll keep you posted. If anyone wants to join me and post your experiences either in comments here or at the Urban Hennery blog, please do!