Pumpkin Harvest

The market is abuzz with sights and smells of fall. The colder, wetter weather has nipped a few crops in the bud, so to speak, but it brings a new group of crops. Beets, potatoes, gourds, onions, carrots… storage crops that will last you as long as you want, provided you don’t eat them first. The rain hasn’t seemed to slow the pace of the market. Rather, it rewards loyal customers with short lines while proving to surprised shoppers that fresh, tasty produce is worth a pair of wet jeans.

Something I’ve noticed more of at the market this year are pumpkins. Not just the big, beautiful carving kind, but their smaller, sweeter counterparts. Growing up, I had no idea there was even a difference between pumpkins. We certainly didn’t cook with it. Now, I feel like the options are there for some incredible pumpkin dishes (not to mention an increase in the varieties of pumpkin beer available). I’ve been making the softest cookies I’ve ever had this year (pumpkin chocolate chip), but it’s the recipe for Pumpkin “Fauxsage” I found on the food blog Have Cake, Will Travel that has particularly roused my interest. I’ve made it for company who are amazed that it even exists. Vital wheat gluten? Certainly not for the gluten intolerant (sorry), but it makes for quite a unique experience. I also add ground flax seeds for consistency and nutrients.

(P.S. Don’t forget to roast the seeds! I make mine with salt, pepper, and rosemary. If there’s anyone else around, they last for about 10 minutes, so it’s worth getting multiple pumpkins if not just for the seeds.)

Vegan Pumpkin Sausage (Fauxsage) from Have Cake, Will Travel

Pumpkin Fauxsage1 1/2 cups (216 g) vital wheat gluten

Preheat oven to 325°F (170°C, or gas mark 3).

Whisk together first 10 ingredients (including sugar) in a large bowl.

Whisk together remaining ingredients in a medium bowl.

Pour wet into dry ingredients, combine, and start kneading for a couple of minutes.

Shape into an 8-inch (20-cm) log. Tightly wrap in foil.

Bake for 90 minutes. Unwrap, let cool on a rack.

Yield: 1 big sausage

It even has quotes from Tom Vilsack, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, from an organization that has a lot of power to help farmers markets and local food and is finally starting to use it. And those are big words from someone who used to be the governor of Iowa and who “has been criticized for being too friendly with big agribusinesses like Monsanto.”

In other news, Tuesday markets (10 am – 3 pm) are still going on until the end of October, so get down there while you still can. I’m already missing having the Thursday option.

If you are interested in entering a public comment, follow this link. The deadline to enter comments is November 13th.

(Thanks to Mark Bittman of the Bitten food blog on nytimes.com).

A reader asked the following question several weeks ago, and I finally found some answers:

“I’ve looked everywhere without avail, and thought I’d email you and see if you may have an answer. There are many, many web sites on garlic but none of them address my question. My question is; garlic flower and the seeds they produce, can they be planted and will they grow into bulbs? I didn’t use the scapes and I didn’t cut them off, now I have the seedpods at the top of the garlic stock and I hate to just through them away. The garlic itself is large and I will replant some of the cloves for next years crop, but what the heck do you do with all those little seeds?”

I did a little web snooping and came up with a few answers for what to do with garlic seeds.

1) Grow ‘em! – Traditionally, garlic is planted from cloves and turns into more garlic. But Garlic Central says that this leads to clones of each crop, so there is little genetic variation. This usually isn’t a problem, but if there is a weakness in the crop, this will be perpetuated throughout time. So if you have garlic seeds, try it out. If anything, it saves you from having to use up some of your precious crop to plant for the next year.

Here’s a hint I found from a question posted on Yahoo Answers on how to plant it. The post was from late September, so it should still be applicable now.

“Plant them now, fairly close together. In the spring, they will have formed sets like onions (lots of little garlic plants in a clump). Wait until the soil is warm then dig up the sets, separate them and replant them. The only drawback with growing garlic from seed is that you can never be really sure what you’ll get. Commercial garlic is a hybrid and you may finish up with something quite different to the original plant.”

2) Eat ‘em! – We all know that garlic scapes are delicious, but who knew that garlic seeds apparently are tasty as well? According to food blog Habeus Brulee, garlic seeds are just like sunflower seeds. And pickling them is even better. Here’s their recipe.  

In other garlic news, I tried a recipe I found last week in  a book called Everything Tastes Better with Garlic. It was for a potato leek soup with extra garlic, but the trick was whipping cream on top infused with even more garlic. Wow. We refrigerated the cream for too long and it turned into frosting, but it was delightful anyway. 

So what should you bring? Start with checking out the farmer’s market. Even if what you bring isn’t that exciting (like a plate of raw veggies that are available right now like carrots, cucumbers, peppers, etc), you at least show that you care by buying local and maybe even organic. The market can give you ideas if you don’t have any. Corn on the cob is simple to throw on a grill (just soak in water for 20 minutes before), and everyone likes it.

People always love a good dessert, and there’s still time to get some of the end of season berries or start with the peaches and apples that are coming on.

I find that, at least in the circles I run in, people tend to bring store-bought veggie burgers and call it good. That gets old after a little while. So here’s a recipe that I found recently from the Moosewood Cookbook for veggie burgers that blew me away and they are especially good on the grill. You can pick up the onion and carrots at the market now, and you can even pick up a loaf of bread at the farmers market instead of store-bought buns. The recipe made 8 burgers for me:

Chili Burgers (can be made more or less spicy, depending on your preference)

1 cup chopped onions

4 cloves garlic

2 t olive oil

1/2 c grated carrots

1 1/2 t chili powder

1 t ground cumin

2 15 oz. cans pinto beans (you can use dried beans if you soak them properly)

2 T soy sauce

2 T ketchup (or grind a tomato from the market, add a little brown sugar and vinegar, and play around a little)

1 1/2 c rolled oats

Salt and pepper

1) Saute onions and garlic in the olive oil for 5 minutes. Add carrots, chili powder, and cumin and cook on low heat for 5 more minutes. Set aside. The next time I make them, I plan on adding some jalapenos that I found at the market to add a little more spice since mine weren’t spicy enough.

2) Mash the beans in a large bowl with the back of a spoon. Add soy sauce, ketchup/tomato experiment, and the onion and garlic mixture. Mix in the oats, salt, and pepper.

3) Form burgers into patties. I froze mine and cooked them without defrosting them and they still came out well. They squish down a bit when you cook them, so make sure your buns are big enough.

Books

There’s some obvious books I need to list first. If you haven’t read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I’d recommend you start there. Many conversations about food reference this book, and it’s a real easy read (and poignant). It’s one of the few books that actually lives up to the hype around it. Pollan unfortunately followed it up with In Defense of Food, a well-intentioned book that didn’t seem like it tried hard enough. I’d recommend skipping that one if you are pressed on time and interest.

There’s also Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, where the well-known author lives off the land in her home in rural Virginia. Another easy read with really exceptional recipes (I make Eggs in a Nest and Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies regularly), I’ve heard some hardcore foodies gripe about the book, but I think it’s entertaining and helpful.

Jane Goodall  has an incredibly well-written book called Harvest for Hope that I found I couldn’t put down (I found myself reading it at a restaurant alone on a trip to Colorado and losing track of time. I was eating a buffalo burger, and I happened upon a story about a Native American telling an old tale about a father and son killing a buffalo. It blew my mind.). Other great reads include Food Politics by Marion Nestle and Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe (and the sequel, Hope’s Edge, by her and her daughter, Anna Lappe).

I am not well-versed in fiction relating to food, though I’ve heard of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle about the meatpacking industry. Any recommendations?

Films

We now have films about food? Besides the campy, theatrical releases (Soylent Green really is people!), there’s a new documentary out called Food, Inc. about industrial agriculture. It’s going to be playing at the Bijou in Eugene starting this weekend. There’s also a documentary called King Korn about how corn is in everything, and how could we forget Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock’s month-long McDonald’s binge? I had a chance to see him talk after watching the movie, and I was pleased to see that he had lost is greasy sheen and french fry odor.

Other Media Sources

It seems like you could pick up any newspaper in the country and find an article about food and agriculture. My sisters’ boyfriend’s sister (repeat that 10 times fast) was even in a USA Today article on July 13 about the recent wave of young farmers to come into agriculture from other fields.

I’ve only just started to delve in to the world of food blogs, but I found a great one called Wasted Food. It’s unique and funny.

Respond to this post with other sources of info on food. I fear that we are reaching a saturation level in society with cares about local and sustainable food, quite like we always do with other things (remember when all anyone talked about was the Atkins Diet?). My hope is that once the hype is over, the food system comes out for the better.

There are lots of ways to cook them. Some people chop them up like garlic and use them to season stir fries and the like. However, their flavor is milder than garlic. I’ve taken to cutting them up in larger segments and adding them to some onions and broccoli in a hot, oiled pan. They’ve got a unique texture similar to asparagus but it holds up better to heat (read: just the right amount of crunch).

I even whipped up a few batches of pesto with them the other day. We are just entering basil season, and there’s nothing more summery than basil pesto. Here’s my recipe (it’s vegan, but you can add all the parmesan cheese you want):

Basil Pesto with Garlic Whistles

2 cups basil (but more can’t hurt)

1/3 cup nuts (I use almonds or walnuts when pine nuts are too expensive… just make sure to grind the almonds fine enough)

4 or so garlic whistles (use the whole stalk)

Salt to taste

Dash of lemon juice

1/3 cup olive oil

Blend all of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth and creamy. Add more or less oil if needed.

I also came across a large amount of free kale the other day that did not look good enough to sell. I took it home and did the same thing as the basil pesto. The flavor is not nearly as strong, but it adds a wonderful earthiness to pasta or sandwiches. I apologized to friends who were eating it the other day (thinking that they were expecting basil pesto), and they said that the pesto name was a misnomer. What should I call it then?

“Umm, delicious?”

Here’s some other examples of what you can do with garlic whistles:

Beautiful photos

Pizza with garlic whistles

Good Local Event: Meet local food growers and producers at a special dinner hosted by the Culinary Arts Program at Lane Community College.

The 100 Mile Meal: Eating Close to Home

When: May 28, 2009 ~ 6:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m

What: This casual, buffet-style dinner will showcase local food growers and producers, with an emphasis on organics and sustainability.  The Culinary Arts students are working with local farms to produce a myriad of dishes made from fresh, local products.  The Hospitality Management students are working to create a minimal waste, minimal impact event.

Cost: $30 per person or $225 per table of 8

Register Now : www.lanecc.edu/cml/upcoming.htm

On Friday, March 27, there will be a presentation at the Eugene City Club on the local food movement.  Guest speakers include:  Lynne Fessenden, Director of Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, David Turner, Director of Lane County Farmers Market, and Douglas Frazier, of Eugene Local Foods.

At the Downtown Athletic Club, 3rd floor, 11:50 am.  Visitors welcomed for the presentation.

The presentation will be broadcast on KLCC, 89.7 FM, the following Monday at 6:30 pm.