A Homegrown Pumpkin and Beans Feast

Menu:

Mashed Roasted Pumpkin

Bean & Kale Soup

Home Fries

Steamed Brussels Sprouts

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Homegrown (sustainable, organic, local, ethical):  Pumpkin. Beans. Onion. Leek. Celery. Potatoes. Garlic. Tomatoes. Parsley.  Savory. Thyme. Kale. Brussels Sprouts. Chicken broth.

Not local/storebought: Butter, Salt, Pepper, Tamari, Brewer’s yeast.

No wrapping, plastic, or garbage to the landfill from this meal.

Beautiful beans grown in the back yard. This meal requires some planning ahead; the beans started soaking the day before. I have lost track of what kind of beans these are. They started out as a rogue sport coming out of "Snowcap". I just keep saving and planting the seed.

One of this year's gorgeous pumpkins from the backyard. I had a lot of old seed and just planted it all together into a big pumpkin patch....sooo....I'm not sure who this is. I think it may be a Galeux d'Eysines that did not finish developing its corky warts on the outside. It was delicious enough to be. And a few bits of corkiness were developing here and there on the rind.

Cutting open the pumpkin. A bit of work and a good knife

Got the pumkin split open, now to dig out the seeds and clean them. This pumpkin had a ton of well-developed seeds. They got rinsed clean, dried in a colander over the woodstove, and then spread on a cookie sheet and toasted in a low oven. When nearing done, they are sprinkled with tamari, brewer's yeast, and a tiny bit of hot red pepper, and roasted until dry.

Pumpkin cleaning complete. A wonderful yield of pumpkin seeds for toasting, and pumpkin halves are ready to go cut side down in pans in the oven to cook slowly. Pumpkin refuse goes to the chickens. Not shown: During the pumpkin prep, the soaked beans were also rinsed and started on a boil. Turned down, the beans simmered while the pumpkin baked, and we went outside to cut wood.

Pumpkin half cooked and ready for scooping. This pumpkin was so smooth and delicious that we just mashed up some of it with butter and salt and pepper and ate it for supper. We were still left with a huge bowlful of mashed pumpkin. It lasted throughout the week to make us 2 double batches of pumpkin bread, and a big pot of mashed-together pumpkin-and-potatoes - leftovers of which furnished 3 meals. One good pumpkin = base for lots of food.

Fast forward to the finished meal: The soup was a simple combination of chopped leeks, onions, garlic, and celery, sauteed. Pour in chicken broth and a jar of our canned tomatoes. Add the beans. Simmer together and season with salt, pepper, oregano, savory, and parsley. Shortly before serving, add chopped kale and cook until wilted.

Cooking the Chops

Week 3 Menu:

• Smashed Potatoes-n-Parsnips
• Pan-seared Lamb Chops
• Steamed Brussels Sprouts
• Roasted Delicata Squash

“Dark” Days is right.  Each day feels so brief.  It’s dark when we get up in the morning, it’s dark by the time we’re home from work.  Soon it will be swinging back to longer days, but now each day feels so cave-like and hunkered down.

Potatoes-n-Parsnips

Our potatoes are holding out very well.  We are so fortunate that they produced so well.  They are often a carb staple, allowing us to reduce the amount of processed grain we purchase/eat.  We can leave the skins on, increasing the nutritional value, because they haven’t been sprayed with all kinds of things, and they aren’t greened up from sitting in the light in a supermarket.

For this recipe, I simply scrub potatoes, cut them into ~2 inch chunks, do the same with a couple big parsnips, and boil them together in a pot of water until they are soft.  Drain the water, add butter, milk, salt, pepper, maybe some dried parsley, and mash it up with a masher. Simple, delicious.  Potatoes, parsnips, and parsley grew in the back yard.  Butter and milk are locally sourced. Salt and pepper are not. The potatoes are served with a dollop of homemade yogurt from local raw milk.

Pan-Seared Lamb

The lamb is from a farm a few miles away.  It is entirely grass-fed, without any contact with chemicals or antibiotics.  It is simply, quickly cooked in cast iron, with a smidge of olive oil in the pan, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and ground rosemary.  Not local:  olive oil, salt, pepper.

The Finished Meal

Steamed Brussels Sprouts

The brussels sprouts grew in our backyard.  We have a great supply of them, and they are holding out well in storage.  They continue to be a staple, filling the space for greens/salad, although I am starting to seriously miss salads.  They get a light steaming, then a quick turn through a hot pan with some butter (local) and balsamic vinegar (not local).

Roasted Delicata Squash

I am not a squash lover.  This year, with our homegrown Delicata squashes, is, without a doubt, the first time ever in my life that I have craved squash.

These little gems are so so delicious.  We cut them in half the long way, lay them in a pan, and bake/broil them, with a little butter and maple syrup in the hollow centers.  Nutmeg or cinnamon on them is nice too.  Or a little cream and sage.  For this meal, they got the butter and maple syrup, with a light sprinkling of non-local nutmeg and salt.  Squashes grew in our backyard garden.

Eating in front of the fire on a Dark Days Night

I haven’t been going into a lot of detail in these DD postings about “SOLE” - the premise of the challenge: I guess it would just feel redundant when it’s mostly our own produce that we’re eating. That fits the sustainable, organic, local, and ethical description, we hope.  We know we farm organically, although we can’t say that without certification, I suppose.

I wish there was one more component to SOLE.   Maybe it would be “U”, for Unpackaged.  “R” for “Reduced/Recycleable”?  “C” for “Compostable”?  I guess what I’m thinking is that to really do low-impact eating, we have to think about the packaging that food comes in as well, and the trash that we are generating with each meal.  With this meal, for example, the only obvious packaging we will send out into the world as trash was a layer of plastic wrap the lamb chops were packed in at the butcher, and the packaging the butter came in from the store. No other plastic or bags or paper were produced or used to buy, transport, wrap, cook, store or dispose of this meal. No food products went into garbage.  The milk comes in reuseable/recycleable glass. The chickens ate the trimmings from the brussels sprouts, and the squash rinds and seeds.  The outdoor cats got the lamb bones, and what was left after that went on the compost pile.  If you think about it - it adds up.  Grocery bags to bring food home.  Prewrapped/overpackaged foods, even the organic ones.  Single-use cartons and wrappings.  Foil and cooking bags used in food preparation; plastic wrap and bags and foil used in food storage of leftovers.  One single meal can rack up a pretty high cost in trash.   Part of my personal goal for these Dark Days meals preparations is going to be noting the elimination of trash associated with eating and meal production, as well as sustainable, organic, local, and ethical concerns.

………………..Second Week Of December……..A weekend brunch………………..

Fruit and Yogurt: Raspberries from about 40 miles away, we picked and froze; Pears from about 30 miles away we picked and I canned; Homemade yogurt made here from locally-sourced milk; our maple syrup.

Our homegrown brussels sprouts and radicchio, sliced and quartered for the saute...

Cooking in Cast Iron: Radicchio-Brussels Sprout Sautee, with shallots and onions - all ingredients except salt and pepper grown here, including a little chicken fat from our chickens to sautee in. Other pan: Egg Scramble, with onion, potato, and dried tomato chips - also all produced here in our backyard, except for the smidge of olive oil for the pan, and salt and pepper.

The Local Brunch Spread. Coffee not local; Milk and maple sweetener is local.

Brussels Sprouts and Radicchio: This is so wonderful it deserves a closeup! Delicious, colorful stuff.

Harvesting leeks for the potato dish

Thanksgiving here was a great way to kick off The Dark Days Challenge for us! We hosted a family local foods Thanksgiving Supper the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I didn’t get pictures of that particular spread altogether, but we put together meals from its leftovers, right into December.
The Thanksgiving Supper menu included:

Homemade pate - amazing!

Chicken Liver Pate on Homemade Toast

pastured bird

(livers from our chickens, homegrown herbs, local butter, homemade “sherry”, 6 non-local green olives for garnish. Bread flour from local source, );
Enormous homegrown 9.5 lb roasting chicken (seasoned with our sage);
Locally hunted Venison Roast (hunted, processed, and expertly - deliciously!- cooked by the contributor);

Dragonwood Rumbledethumps (Potatoes, Parsnips, and Leeks, all grown in our backyard, mashed together, with locally produced milk and butter);

"Long Pie" Pumkin, ready for pie-making

Baby winter greens mix

Quince-Cranberry Sauce (Quinces grew in our back yard, Apple elsewhere in Michigan, Cranberries were, sadly, not local);
Huge Fall Greens Salad picked from the backyard garden (Dressing of non-local olive oil and vinegar, plus our own maple syrup, garlic, and herbs);
Small Delicata Squash Halves, with our maple syrup and local butter (Delicatas from our garden);
Pumpkin Cheesecake (Long Pie Pumpkin grown a few miles away by the contributor who brought the dessert).

Why no better pictures of the finished food? I was on-call for my other life as a midwife, and got the call from a  laboring mom around the time the food was done and headed to the table!

But here’s our next day’s plate-up of the leftovers:  Salad of leftover greens, Roast chicken, & Jerusalem artichoke (dug same day in the garden); Pate on toast; The brilliant ruby Quince-Cranberry sauce….