When Absurdity Gives You A Squash, Make Cake

 The local Arboretum, where I manage photography education, employs a couple who've been growing an absurd variety of squash. In fall, it's quite a spectacular display. Some of these end up for sale and I happened to show up on two for one day, and that's how I ended up with two ridiculously giant "butternut" squash. I cooked one in the oven to eat as a side, but found it too fibrous and moist to enjoy the way we might delicata or acorn, or even ordinary-sized butternut squash. What to do?

 

 

 

Out of the oven, into the fridge until...

 

A cake was born. It had to be sugar-free, since that's the new way, here. Sweet is allowed, as long as it comes from fibrous sources like dates. If you google pumpkin bread, you'll get millions of hits. If you search for sugar-free pumpkin bread, you'll get a bunch of keto, vegan, gluten free, paleo wonk, but few, if any pages dedicated to the refined sugar-free. So, one must adapt, and adapt I did. Recipe follows:

 

Refined Sugar Free Squash Bread (Cake)

 

• 1 cup of unbleached flour, all-purpose works
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, all the healthier -right?
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp all-spice, what a catch all name
• 1 tsp cinnamon 
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg, ground of course
• Zest of an orange, although, when in a pandemic, I pass up going to the grocery for one orange
• 1-1/4 to 1-3/4 cups (more moist, less moist) of pureed (or vigorously stirred), cooked squash 
• 1/3 cup oil (or 1 stick of softened butter in my case)
• 2 eggs, preferably from your neighbor's chickens
• 1/2 tsp vanilla (glad to get that jug of it from Costco, pandemic baking and all)
• 2 cups whole, dried dates (thanks again Costco), one chopped and the other soaked in warm water and then pureed. 
• Chopped walnuts, as much as you like, or none if you wish
• Sugar-free Lily chocolate chips if you're into that (chocolate is one place the alcohol sugars hold up well)
  

On To It

Preheat oven to 350 F

Butter up a loaf pan, average size, maybe 9x4x3 inches

Warm 1 cup of water in the microwave or stove-top and place 1 cup of dates into it to soften. Once softened, mix manually or with a machine to puree (doesn't need to be perfect). In a medium-large bowl, combine both flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. In another bowl, place the pureed dates, oil or butter, squash puree, and orange zest (if you went to the store to get one orange) and mix well. Add the two eggs to this mixture, then the vanilla and mix it up. Add this bowl to the flour bowl and now you're cooking. 

Fold the ingredients together into a smooth consistency (well, as smooth as it can get, don't go crazy). At this time you can add the chopped dates, the nuts, and chips (if those are part of your diet), and fold it all together. Get that mixture into the buttered baking pan and it into the oven for, hard to say, 45-55 minutes. Check on it. Do the toothpick into the center test. When done, take it out and let cool for twenty minutes before turning it upside down for removal. Then enjoy. You can freeze it or refrigerate it, or eat it all in one sitting. 

Post Script: For a guy who teaches photography, those images up there are real orange, absurdly orange, like the times.

The Hallow

The leaves have largely left the trees yet there hasn't been much of a freeze. A few weeks ago I wouldn't have thought this to be, after that first bitter morning gave us the shiv. My projects continue, in fact some have come to flower, not a moment too early, like the sage, better late than not at all. Things have turned around through early mid November.

Broccoli laid out last April, still in bed, dreaming up florets. It's both in flower and production, an odd duck in brassica land.

Whereas summer planted broccoli is beginning to form heads that should never set flower.

October came with a few freeze warnings but has chosen a different path. Just once did a clear night after a warm day provide a frosting for the garden.

Eggplant is an impressive plant -it takes long to establish but is one of the last to go. Its tolerance of light frost is likely due to the insulation provided by its pubescent leaves.

Starbursts of fennel, they did not produce meaty bottoms or seed.

_________________

Halloween is the Christmas of autumn (see that the box store has both decorations on display simultaneously). It was named Hallowmas long ago (Shakespeare: "like a beggar at Hallowmas"), and stems from Hallow evening (Hallow e'ening). All Hallow's Eve, the 31st of October (it used to be in May), the evening preface to All Saints Day on November the first. On November the second we have All Souls Day because you cannot mix the especially good with the rest of us. We speculate that the Church ordained these holy (hallow) rites on these autumnal dates to commingle with the rites of the pagans. Remembering the martyrs and saints and even the common dead must have had a very different tone in the warm growth of spring.

The emotions and attitude of growing darkness, chilling air, graying, stormier days, and the browning of plant life despite plentiful harvests could lead a mind to superstition and omen. Superstition leads us to an awareness of sin, that our darkening days in the face of so much good fortune must be accounted for, and that we account for it by accusing ourselves of the darkness that we confront at the cold edge of autumn. What else could have been offered, holy or pagan, to salve the confrontation with the portent of one's death from cold, disease, or starvation? Think of the dead -the saints and the rest as you enjoy today's plenty in the sweet of a soul cake.

"A soul! a soul! a soul-cake!
Please good Missis, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all.

 Down into the cellar,
And see what you can find,
If the barrels are not empty,
We hope you will prove kind.
We hope you will prove kind,
With your apples and strong beer,
And we'll come no more a-souling
Till this time next year."

By Christmas, as the larder dwindled from plenty to rations at the grim precipice of the full course of winter, the attitude of holy or pagan rites change to the spirit of hope, to the growing light as the earth begins its tilt toward the equinox, but also the superstition of redemptive suffering through the depths of winter. Why do I suffer? Because you are a sinner. Be mindful of this, suffer, and you will find redemption. The experience of spring is so wholly positive, so ineffably discordant with the experience of winter that our psyche again seeks superstition in the redemption rites of spring.

_________________

Several years ago a woman wearing a patterned skirt, equally of deep red and bright white, sat across from me on the subway. This color combination was visually captivating and I thought about why these two colors, put together, had such power. I considered things that come in red and white and two that came to my mind were Santa Claus and meat. Yes, fat marbled red meat. I thought about the promise of fatty red meat at the precipice of winter. I thought about venison at winter's solstice, its winter fat, but also of flying reindeer pulling Santa Claus in a red and white outfit. This fat, jolly piece of marbled meat or at the least sheathed in the colors of meat. What a gift to anyone trying to survive the winter, at its outset, when hope, hunting, the preservation of meat in freezing temperatures, and the ash-covered, fire-cooked meat (the irony that industrial era Santa comes down the chimney) are a bulwark against the longest season. Of course, I'm mixing histories and rites, but the psyche and the imagery so specific leads me to, at the least, wonder about such things.

Happy Halloween.

Hog Peanut

Amphicarpaea bracteata, the Hogpeanut, is common in our woods. It grows in sunny patches or where mature trees have fallen. By that measure, its habitat is expanding since so many trees have come down this year.




These flowers will produce small seeds in pods. The "peanut" of its name is a seed produced at or below ground by this plant's other self-fertile, closed flowers. These seeds are quite edible.

Hog peanut is a vine, although it does not have tendrils, and plays well with others outside of a garden. It scrambles along the ground in the woods, but arrives on the scene quite late, well after most ephemerals have retreated back under the soil. It also contributes as an uncommon, woodland nitrogen fixer.

When People Ask Where The Good Food Is

...I usually tell them its right outside.

Four heirloom tomato plants have produced more than most any I had ever planted at the beach farm.

I've been looking forward to the German Stripe, the latest to size up and ripen.

Japanese eggplant, 'Kyoto,' have been exceptionally prolific.

I put my green bean seeds in a little late, but still, they are producing now. 

Although my broccoli starts were a failure. Too late, as always.

But I was saved by this guy (sorry to say that I lost his name with a piece of paper) and Anderson Acres. You see the sign, to the left, that says start your fall garden. Yes! Getting starts together at the right time in summer is challenging given busy summer schedules and difficult weather. Hardly any garden business has starts available at this time of year, probably because there isn't much market for it. I'm so glad to have found them at the Minneapolis Farmers' Market in stall 311.

I bought a handful of these lettuce starts, broccoli, cilantro, parsley, and basil.

The fall lettuce.

Betsy's dill, the pickler that she is.

Our local hardware gave away (really, for free) many vegetable starts in July, most well past their prime. I focused on those sturdy sorts that do well in cooler weather -chard and kale. Small and weak when planted, they are now doing fantastic. We eat them every day.

A four pack of heirloom peppers from Shady Acres (whose stall Anderson Acres occupied at the farmers' market) has become quite a bounty of peppers. I've never had such luck. One plant has eight large peppers!

And they're beginning to turn red.

Of course, there are still tomatoes ripening.

These "cherry," or is it "grape," have been fantastic. The name I believe is 'Juliet' -a little sweet, little tart, and meaty -that is the key for me. I do not like watery small tomatoes that pop when you bite into them or crack after heavy rains. These I pick and eat right there in the garden.

With more to come.

The woods has not produced its usual bounty this year, except for the morels early on. Maybe we've missed them, having been so busy with work on the house and field. Of course, we'll keep looking.

Cooking Local

Allium tricoccum var. burdickii, prepped for cooking, common to our woods (99.5% are this variety) and delicious. They are milder and I think sweeter than the more common, larger-leafed, red stemmed ramp. I've made ramp pizza, pasta with ramps, stew with ramps, eaten them raw, put them in nearly everything. One of my favorite spring dinners is asparagus and eggs. Why not add ramps to the mix?

First, I made some polenta in our rice cooker.

Six organic eggs from our local farm park.

Fried some naturally cured bacon from the very same local farm park.

First layer asparagus and ramps, then eggs, and more ramps on top, cover and flip once.

Stack polenta, bacon, egg, asparagus and ramp mixture. Add grated Parmigiano reggiano and black pepper and I like to drizzle Arbequina olive oil over the top.