Pumpkins...and Pumpkin Recipes.

Howdy howdy,

Well I just got back from the Durham Farmers Market with Will from
Ever Laughter Farm, where I was helping him run the stand. It's a nice
market. You should check it out sometime after the CSA ends,
Wednesdays 3:30-6:30 and Saturdays 8-12. We had some leftover burgundy
okra, which you'll get to try tomorrow actually. I bought it off of
him at a generous discount to add to your bags, because I thought it'd
just be nice for you guys to try the red, almost purple okra. It's
pretty striking. Tastes about the same, but it just looks so pretty.
It'll be mixed in with our regular green okra. There'll be a little
more than usual, since you'll be getting my whole harvest plus the red
stuff. I would suggest okra and tomatoes, with onion, salt, and pepper
in the southern fashion. Or fried--Susannah is reported to be the
expert among us on frying okra. Maybe ask her how she does it...

The recipe this week comes from my mom, and uses a lovely New England
pie pumpkin (the name comes from the variety, not where it was grown
of course--it was grown by me right here in NC). It's real tasty, and
it's great to have a savory idea for pumpkin, since it's really too
early for pumpkin pie, right? Here it is:

South American Pumpkin Casserole
1 small pumpkin
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
1 T olive oil
1 t cumin seeds (or ground cumin)
1 t ground coriander
1 cup chopped bell pepper
a few hot chili peppers, roasted (optional) or 1 t cayenne pepper and
1 t chili powder
3/4 t salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro or parsley (optional)
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa (sold in bulk bin at Weaver St Market)
1 1/2 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen (thawed)
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar or mexican blend cheese

Cut pumpkin in half lengthwise. Scoop out seeds and their surrounding
pulp into a sink of cold water. Allow to soak to help separate seeds
from pulp. Bake pumpkin halves at 350 degrees on an oiled baking sheet
for 45-50 minutes or until very soft.
While pumpkin is baking, roast a handful of hot chili peppers, if
using. Wearing gloves (try not to touch the inside of the peppers with
your fingers), cut off stems, slice open peppers, remove seeds, and
toss onto an oiled baking sheet. Coat pepper flesh with oil and place
skin side up. Roast under the broiler for 5-10 minutes, until skin
blisters and begins to blacken, watching constantly, as this happens
fast. Remove from oven and allow to cool a bit. Scoop peppers into a
plastic zip-lock bag and close. This can be done ahead and stored in
fridge.
Saute onion, garlic and spices in olive oil until onion is
translucent. Add bell peppers and salt, stir, cover and leave on low
heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in roasted chili
peppers.
Allow cooked pumpkin to cool, scrape from shell and mash well.
Beat eggs and mix into mashed pumpkin, followed by cooked quinoa. Add
corn, sauteed onions and peppers, cilantro or parsley, and grated
cheese. Stir to mix well.
Bake in an oiled dish at 350 degrees for 20 minutes covered, then an
additional 20-30 minutes uncovered.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
While baking prepare pumpkin seeds for roasting. Spread seeds onto an
oiled baking sheet, toss to coat with oil, then sprinkle with salt.
When casserole comes out of the oven, turn heat down to 325 degrees.
Roast seeds for about 25 minutes until toasted golden brown and
crispy, stirring every 10 minutes.

---

UPDATE:

So I have been throwing around the idea of taking a week off since the
harvests are getting thin and I'm waiting for radishes, among other
things, to mature. I didn't think the sweet potatoes would be ready
until late September, but it turns out that some of them can be
harvested now. I'll harvest some tomorrow, cure them for a week in the
house so that they will store better, and bring them to you next week.
Same thing the week aftert that. We'll harvest a little at a time
until they're gone. As is stands, tomorrow will be the 16th week of
produce distribution for the year. That means that September 23rd will
be the 20th week, and the last day of our 2010 CSA.

As concerns what we're going to do once the market ends to get
everybody their shares. I've decided I'll deliver everybody's shares
next Thursday (9-2-10) between 6 and 7, and if that works well, we'll
keep doing that until the end of the season. Tomorrow I'll ask
everybody for their exact addresses to make sure I have them right,
and we'll see how that works the following week. TOMORROW IS NORMAL
PICK-UP AT THE MARKET, unless you're a Carrboro person whom I normally
deliver to. Great!

Recapping the harvest:

Okra (red and green)
Tomatoes
Thai basil
Peppers
Pumpkin

See ya tomorrow then!

Ben

Okra,..and My Mom's Pesto!

Heya good people,

I'm very excited about two things this week. One is okra, which I love
to eat raw, snapped right off the plant. We'll pick it fresh tomorrow
to try to recreate that experience as best as we can, and later we'll
explore ways to cook okra together. It makes a great pickled garnish
on a bloody mary...anyways...more on that later...maybe.

The other is pesto. I grew up eating a lot of pesto that my mom and
dad made our garden's basil and froze for the winter. They always
added the cheese later, freshly grated, never frozen. That was one tip
I got from them. The other was about growing basil plants in the first
place. They showed me how to pick the tops of the plants aggressively
at first to encourage them to bush out and produce more leaves. A tip
which helped me grow a lot of basil this year.

Well this week it's one for pesto. Everybody's getting a big bag,
which should be about enough for this recipe which my mom was kind
enough to share with me. Me and all my farm mates can vouch for the
deliciousness of the lemon-parsley variation--wow! She brought us up a
bunch that she'd made with our basil. I wish I could do that with all
of our vegetables. Just send Mom home with a big box and pick up some
prepared food--heaven. Anyhow, here's yer recipe--thanks Mom:

"Pesto"

2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup olive oil (first cold-pressed extra virgin)
2 large garlic cloves
1/2 t. salt
1/3 cup pine nuts or chopped walnuts
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, or more to taste
In a food processor, puree olive oil, garlic, salt and nuts until
smooth. Add basil and process to your desired consistency. Scoop into
a bowl and mix in grated cheese by hand. If you want to freeze it, it
freezes best without the cheese added, which you can add before using,
after defrosting.
Pesto has many uses, such as pasta sauce, topping for fish or chicken,
or simply spread on crusty bread with a fresh slice of tomato.

Lemon-Parsley-Basil Pesto variation
To the above recipe substitute 1/2 cup fresh parsley for 1/2 cup of
the basil, and add the freshly-squeezed juice of one lemon. Very
tasty.

--Very tasty, indeed!

In other news, on Monday I planted turnips, radishes and Asian greens
for you guys (mid-September), the moles haven't gotten all the sweet
potatoes yet, and we're just gonna keep going as long as we can. If we
have to take a break and come back to it in September, we will, but
hey, that okra ain't gonna quit now that it's goin, I don't think! We
have a few squash plants that survived the heat as seedlings, and
hopefully more than a few beans each coming soon.

To summarize:

OKRA
TOMATOES
BASIL
HOT PEPPERS

We'll see ya on the morrow!

Ben

Thai basil...and Vimala's Curryblossom Cafe!

Howdy folks,

Ben here. Hope yall had a good week so far, and are gearing up for a
good weekend, soaking it up before school sucks everybody back in, you
know...I have. I've been making some transitions. The farm where I've
been living north of Hillsborough, Ever Laughter Farm, lost their
intern a little early this season, and finding themselves shorthanded,
asked me if I wanted to work for them for the rest of the season. I
said yes, and gave my notice to my friends at Neal's Deli, where I had
been working 35 hours a week since before I even started this CSA
project. Hard to say goodbye, but it was the right thing of course.
Now, just as before, I'll be doing a second practically full time job
in addition to growing veggies for you folks, but it's not easy to get
started from scratch, you know, with student loans, car payments,
health insurance, and bills that won't wait, so I've got to do it. But
at least now I'll be farming all the time, just about every day, I
guess. I think we'll keep our Thursdays, but as you may know, the
Southern Village market ends this month, so I may go to a shorter
pickup window or delivery outright. Let's think about it a little over
these next couple weeks and see what makes sense.

It's slim pickens out there, I hate to say. The tomatoes are dying
off, the peppers are slowing down, and the melons are all done. That's
just part of the hard lesson I'm learning this year in North Carolina.
I really had to have four plantings of tomatoes out there, with fresh
seedlings every month from April to July ready to set out. I wish I
had a farming coach who could have looked at my plan and said, "you're
gonna run out of stuff in August, what's your plan?" All those plants
that will just live the whole season up in Maine can't make it in this
heat. Too bad. I wish I had more to offer you. Some more squash and
cukes are coming on, okra too and there'll be sweet potatoes at the
end, but it may be neccessary at some point to take a break and wait
for things to grow before finishing it out with a bang, hopefully.

Nothin new this week. Thumb-length okra out there, so I can say,
safely I think, that you have that to look forward to next week, but
anyways. I'm going to highlight thai basil this week, and instead of
giving a recipe, acknowledge my ineptitude with Asian cooking, and
just give a shout out to Vimala and her crew at the Curryblossom Cafe,
recently opened in Chapel Hill. I brought her some leftover Thai basil
and chilis last week and she said she was going to use them in a
chicken dish the very next day. LaVonne and I ate dinner there and
loved it. Her community-oriented cooking and compassion are one of a
kind. Check out curryblossom.com or head down to the courtyard on
Franklin where Sandwhich used to be Tues-Sat 5-9. Deliciousness, and
real Farm-to-Fork philosophy put into practice.

So what's it gonna be?

Tomatoes, while they last
Thai basil
1`Ancho Poblano pepper
Some little Italian frying peppers--just a little hot, but I would try
frying em in hot oil, salt em pretty good and serving with toothpicks
as a snack with beer
And 1 more winter squash--either a butternut or a delicata

I'll see ya tomorrow then--
Ben

Delicatas. Fresh Tomato Sauce.

Hey yall--

Delicata. Nuff said. Nicest little hard squash there is. Cut in half,
scoop out the seeds, then slice little thin half moons, toss em in
dressing and maybe some chopped nuts.

Fresh Tomato Sauce, now that's a little bit of heaven that I hope all
yall have partaken in already with our tomatoes. But in case you
haven't, today you'll get a nice lot of paste tomatoes, San Marzanos
to be precise. What I do with the sauce is to saute garlic and onions
in olive oil, throw in a handful of chopped basil, and your peeled and
chopped tomatoes. (To peel, drop them in a pot of boiling water for a
hot minute, transfer to an ice bath to peel.) Or alternatively, you
can use "grated" tomato pulp. Cut the things in half and put them
through a cheese grater--just compost the skin that's left in your
hand. Or just do what makes you feel good. Now's the season.

So in addition to yer maters and the delicata squash, you'll get a sun
jewel melon, a bag of basil, and a couple of jalapeno peppers.

Thanks for being there for me. I'm trying for you and I'll see you tomorrow!

Ben