Sweet potato chips

For the longest time last season, every CSA basket, every week was flush with sweet potatoes.  I admit I am a big fan of sweet potatoes, but I am also not from the USsouth & my repertoire was limited.   Fortunately, along with sweet potatoes, they included new recipes for sweet potatoes.  New to me anyhow.

This was my new favorite for most of last winter:

- Take a sweet potato, take three, as many as you might eat in one sitting.  The longer, skinnier ones are better for this, which is a lucky break because the bigger fatter ones are better for almost everything else.  Wash them & peel them, or don't peel them.  Wash them for sure, though.

- Slice the sweet potatoes as thin as you can without them having any too-thin pieces.  Hmm, how about as thin as you can keeping the thickness consistent, is that better?

- In a bowl that will be large enough for all the slices of sweet potatoes, mix olive oil & salt&pepper to taste.  Add the slices of sweet potatoes.  If you do this just a few slices at a time, it is much easier to get them all covered.  Because they need to be all covered.

-  On a cookie sheet, spread out the slices.  I used parchment paper underneath, instead of the usual foil & I think this helped the thinner slices not to burn. Pre-heat the oven to 400F (yea, I should have said that before, Sorry!) & sprinkle the sweet potatoes with finely chopped herbs of your choosing (I chose basil & thyme, mostly).

-  Cook for 20/25 minutes or so.  How thin you sliced them (& whether or not you used tin foil) will play a role here.  Let them cool some or that hot oil will burn your mouth!  & serve right away or later.  Right away is better.

Die you pumpkin bastard

Last week I picked up our first CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription basket & in it was the sweetest little seminole pumpkin.  I looked at that pumpkin all week long, thinking how I was going to stuff it a la vegan thanksgivings past & how wonderful it was going to be.

I got sidetracked, naturally.  First I needed to deal with the more perishable produce in same basket.  Also, I have had a bad cold so... 1) cough cough cough , which just sucks the motivation out of me & 2) I have not-much sense of smell & no sense of taste, which sucks the inspiration right out of me.

But Friday night I decapitated the little monster & Oh. My. G*d. that was the thickest rind I have ever seen in my life. I cut & scraped & gouged.  It was like mixing cement in a teeny-tiny bucket with a very narrow opening.

Then I made the stuffing (pumpkin & onions & carrots & some spices & cornbread), stuffed the pumpkin & cooked for 45 minutes.  Then cooked for another 45 minutes.  Because I forgot one of the fundamentals of stuffed pumpkin:  the thicker the rind, the more water it is holding.  We ate much later than usual & then had nachos.  For dessert.

Once it had cooled a bit, I scooped the goo into a fridge-container & will re-cook it tonight, outside the pumpkin, to go with baked chicken.  Saturday morning I took what was still a very sturdy pumpkin shell to the henhouse & dropped it on the  ground where it split & the ladies gorged themselves on it.  I went in the house to get the camera to take a picture of the colorful birds eating that orange orange squash & when I got back out it was GONE.  Just the littlest bit of a stain was left.

When I make it again, I will lop off quite a bit more from the top, cook uncovered & make a few other recipe changes (no need to add vegetable stock, maybe saute the onions in white wine, add some apples, you know: CHANGES).  First though I will need to grow some.  Which is why I saved the seeds.

Think globally, eat locally

Every few years, my mother will recommend a Barbara Kingsolver book to me. I never manage to finish them. They are just too much. Then I learned she (Barbara Kingsolver, not my mother) had made the list of 100 people who are ruining this country. Naturally, I found the first Kingsolver book I could & read it. I have since wondered if Goldberg's publisher steered authors from their own catalog to this list. Kingsolver's publisher is Harper Perrenial; Goldberg's HarperCollins, but I digress.

I have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle & would recommend it. You can even take it out of the library (like I did) & not support this silly marketing loop. I rather get the feeling Kingsolver would not mind. I am tempted to try the eating locally thing (the local community college is actually offering a workshop on 'how to' called Locavore 101), but we all know I would lose interest in about a month & refuse to admit it until A was fed up with having the exact same vegetable for dinner for however long that took (he is more patient than you would think).

I have instead decided to grow something we can eat sometimes. This is harder than you think. Chickens get into everything. They completely molested my sunflowers last year & I know I am going to have sunflowers popping up in all the worst places come spring. Still, I have been cruising the seed catalogs (I do not have to buy the seeds locally, too, do I? Oh d*mn, that just occurred to me) & I have settled on the radiator charlie tomato, but I think I want a melon to go with it. Yes, I DO plan to serve them at the same meal.

Maybe I should think about that class. Oh & happy birthday Mom!