A Guest Post Poem from Fellow Reveler S. Myers (of Broken Bats fame)

Pumkins slumped
Western Wall snooze
Jack O lantern Winter within.

So unfair. But I’m happy for those who could! Those who can, grow pumpkins. Those who can’t, take pictures!

At the CSA this week, the guy behind me declined to take all of his three allotted daikon (radishes). He said he wasn’t crazy about them. I was aghast. Not that I knew what they tasted like but, with prices as they are (and since we all already paid at the beginning of the summer for our shares), I thought it’d be worth the effort to find a way to make them so you like them. Of course once I got home, I had to figure that way out. These pleasant radish family vegetables that look like overgrown white carrots were one of many slightly unusual pieces of produce I’ve gotten from my CSA. (Two huge fennel herbs – bulb, stalks, 16 inch leaves and all were the other slightly odd picks this past week). I realize they’re either encouraging us to stretch our culinary repertoire or they’re unloading the stuff they won’t at market. Either way, what to do with my daikon was a dilemma I could afford. One and a half ended up in a vegetable broth that I made (and did not toss the used veggies but put them in the freezer instead for future cooking), and the other one and a half got pickled with some Foodtown (org.) carrots. Maybe I’ll try my hand at banh mi next weekend. Until then, these add a lil splash of color to my kitchen. That’s good bc this was the first week w/out flowers from the CSA.

Thank you, CSA for my carrot fennel purée!

I mean, hit.

Making the most of the now mostly meager CSA offerings. Had to add some cabbage to the little bit of kale they had this week. Started with some sautéed onions & garlic (courtesy of Fiodtown), black mustard seeds, white wine, touch of soy sauce and honey, S & P, coupla apple slices (Garden of Eve/CSA) added at the end. Slowly sauteed. Voila.

Working on my doro wat for the week, recipe calls for a dried red chili. I think, “Well, I can do better than that with that mysterious green chili the Bangladeshi grocer told me is from the Dominican Republic.”. I went to my makeshift greenhouse (a/k/a my dining room), but it was not there. All I can say, dear little mystery chili, I so sawry!!!!

And here they are snickering…

My zinnias are like, WTF?!?

I got home from grocery shopping (yes, putting recently discussed prepper/shopping principles to work), just in time to see the product of my summer efforts getting trounced by new-fallen snow. And the jack o’lanterns are still freshly carved.

I still have on my running to-do list to transplant to bigger containers certain items. They’re all in my dining room now, snickering and taking in the unusual smells of my Saturday kitchen as I engage in another means of keeping the grocery bill lean, and buying a little evening time in the weeknights. I dedicate at least half the day to prepping the week’s meals, and am working on perfecting a couple recipes that can use seasonal produce to further reduce expense. I’ll be putting this week’s CSA stash to work in a goulash (that it sounded ghoully apropos this week), and a doro wat. Results to follow…