Organics to You November 2, 2009

Last week's cooking also saw another squash/bean/polenta casserole to serve to guests on Halloween, a delicious soup, a Saturday breakfast scramble and sweet & sour cabbage, kale cauliflower & tofu. I didn't make it through all the veggies, not even close!!

Some notes on the Halloween casserole. This variation on this casserole included 1 of the Schwartz Hubbard and 1 Delicata squash from our basement stash, roasted until they caramelized on the edges and mashed. The squash all went into the bottom of the 9 x 12, oiled pan and was topped with the white bean, leek, garlic, rosemary & olive oil combination. The beans were topped with dry-toasted pine nuts and a chiffonade of fresh basil & oregano (I am thinking a light sprinkle of shredded sage leaves would be more fitting to the autumn season). The polenta had once again been cooked in the pressure cooker, this time I'd darkened the garlic in the olive oil then fished it out so it was just the garlic infused oil. Then in went the polenta, sea salt, nutritional yeast, white miso, and a generous amount of pepper. The cooked polenta went on top again. Baked, the under the broiler to toast the polenta a little. Delicious!

I didn't touch the giant head of purple cabbage, the radishes (only I like these, Christie does not), the greens of the beets, the garlic (already had some), or the bok choy. The Halloween party helped use up some of the beets (served raw, sliced thin, most people hadn't seen Chioggia beets before, so fun to introduce folks), the carrots, some of the cauliflower and the rest of the broccoli. All of the produce, except perhaps the baby bok choy (which seemed a little beat up), was very tasty.

That we've started off this delivery experiment with several veggies in the fridge already along with pounds of apples, it isn't too bad. I managed to use up a lot of the veggies we had already and many of the ones delivered. I'm wondering how I can preserve some things we get too much of in a way we'd enjoy using it. Maybe a big pot of cabbage soup that can be frozen to serve for lunches? I also think I just need to chop up a bunch of stuff so it is easy for us to grab raw veggies to take to work, either to eat with hummus or steam.

This week's box has a much smaller head of white cabbage and some larger, nicer looking bok choy. 2 more good sized leeks, some more broccoli (a real winner last week), 6 very nice looking Russet potatoes, more garlic, 2 shallots & a yellow onion, celery, 3 small ears of corn, a bunch of collard greens, a head of Romanesco broccoli, 1 green bell pepper, and more kiwi berries.

I'm thinking we'll have either stuffed cabbage rolls or do this with the collard greens. Or perhaps some great raw wraps one day using the collard leaves. The corn must be the very last of the season - will just steam this in the husk and enjoy. We learned that we should eat the kiwi berries right away, by the time we were eating them Saturday many were over ripe. I'm also thinking I'm going to roast some of the extra heads of garlic, we now have 4, which is kind of a lot for us. Have a lot of yellow onions as well, which I may caramelize a lot of to serve later (perhaps I'll try my hand at Mjdara this week).