Juddmansee.com

For most of the summer we’ve been enjoying our farm share, and rarely venturing out of the realm of known foods.  Sure, we generally don’t buy swiss chard or kale or chinese cabbage as often as we get it at the farm, but we’ve had plenty of those foods before.  It’s more of a case of having these foods right in front of us to use – so we are good kids and eat our leafy greens.

As fall has arrived, we are taking the opportunity to venture from our comfort zone.  I don’t recall cooking blue potatoes before, but I made chips last night.  Turns out they have a white and purple bullseye pattern to them when sliced, and when cooked they looked much lighter than the dark purple skinned lumps on the counter.

We chose a delicata as our squash today, mostly because I’d heard of them but never had one.  I think we’ll try it baked, to get a sense of the flavor.

I’m cooking romano  beans in the crock pot tonight – I’m less interested in the natural flavor of a large bean (which I worry will be stringy or beany), especially after many weeks of green beans of varying colors and sizes.  Thus, these beans  are cooking with a ham bone and some sausage and leeks (also from the farm share) for added flavor.

We also picked up our first  cranberry shell beans, the striking beans on the cover of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, a major inspiration for our farm share and local eating over the past couple years. (Yes, they are the red and white beans being held in the cupped hands at the top of the web page!).  I’m tentatively planning an antipasto with those – cooked and served room temperature with some olive oil.

In addition to our new ventures, we’re also increasing our appreciation of some foods.  I’ve been an eggplant fan for many years, but Brian’s generally shied away from them in the past.  By cooking them sufficiently and with generous use of fresh herbs, we’ve eaten three eggplant this year and enjoyed every bite.  We have also been enjoying the longer, lighter green peppers.  We both grew up with bell peppers, which are darker green and a blocky shape. We enjoyed some of those earlier stuffed with ground beef and tomato, sort of like chili.  Our farm share peppers seem to be sweeter and have a thinner skin than the bell-shaped variety, which makes them perfect for putting in a tomato sauce, hash, beans and rice, or just eating on a salad.  (They’ve not lasted long enough to roast yet, but maybe with the cranberry shell beans.)

It’s fun being a guinea pig for our own new cooking, and we never seem to ask “what should we cook” – rather it’s “oh my, we have a counter and fridge full of vegetables, what do we need to eat next?”