Great Pumpkin Seeds

The giant pumpkin weighing contests are over, as are most of the festivals - but not the corn mazes, or the displays of future jack 0'lanterns in stores and roadside produce stands.

I don't know if I'll decorate my little pie pumpkins, or just leave them on the front porch until the day after Halloween (Dia de los Muertos). Then I will surely gut them, chop them up and roast both their insides and their flesh.

Roasted pumpkin seeds are one of my favorite healthy snacks. The pie will follow closely behind.

Fresh Bread: Gluten-free Glory

Well, the simple blood test let me rest assured that I don't have celiac disease - but it didn't tell me why I feel so much better keeping 90% of wheat and related glutens out of my body.  Or what we should do about the carbs we love the best: bread and pasta.

Both of us grew up with the rare pleasure of home-baked bread; but the bread machine had been tucked away in storage for years.  Since baking (even with a machine) is not my forte, I do helpful sous-chef tasks like picking the rosemary, getting three eggs out to warm up, stirring the sourdough starter, and of course, expressing gratitude.  Basha does the rest, with the help of three guides:  memories from her grandmother's kitchen; a gluten-free baking pamphlet a friend copied in the days before many books on the topic were available; and a copy of Bread Machine Magic.

Each loaf comes out a little different, but delicious every time.  The warm yeasty aroma fills the house while we putter at weekend chores; and cutting a hot slice (as soon as the loaf is cool enough to cut) is irresistible.  Eggy yet light and moist and chewy, with a lovely golden crust, this bread in no way resembles the gluten-free doorstops sold in groceries.  With a little restraint, a loaf lasts us a week.  

Turkey Day on the Horizon

Looking through the materials I picked up at West Coast Green a few weeks ago reminds me - I better think about ordering a turkey. If you want one that is organic, kosher, or heritage, a little extra planning is called for. In my case, the most important factor is that the big bird led a decent life, preferably outdoors, pecking in the grass and procreating naturally.

Unfortunately, as I learned from reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, less than 1% of the 400 million turkeys eaten in America each year are the bird we imagine a turkey to be. The single breed raised by industrial-style 'agribusiness" have had flying, foraging, and mating bred out of them. They live their lives in big sheds (if you open a door at one end, the USDA lets you label them "free range"), existing strictly to become meat.

At the conference's tradeshow, I ran into Jason Diestel staffing a booth for Lyngso Garden Materials. He had buckets of mulch and compost on display, including some made with manure from his family's turkeys. Diestel Turkey Ranch calls their birds "range grown" because they spend their days outdoors in the Sierra Nevada foothills, coming in from the pasture to sleep safely in their turkey houses. Unless I can find as happy a bird raised closer to home, I'll be roasting a Diestel this year.

Laurie Colwin

A friend gave me a gently-loved paperback copy of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, now several years ago. I tried it on for size, but didn't absorb it well on the first go; and so I shelved it for another day.

In the meantime, I started writing regularly about food, and also reading a variety of food blogs. And my food focus shifted, from anything interesting or yummy to a richer diet of slow food topics - local eating, seasonal harvests, organics produces, pastured meat and dairy, fair trade. Less quantity, more quality.

When I picked the book up again, I found it delightful and engaging. I kept turning it over to glean from the back cover profile something about the woman behind the words. The list of novels all sounded promising; but my mind kept getting stuck on the last sentence, "She died in 1992."

So finally I did what this marvelous writer could not do during her pre-internet lifespan - I Googled her. And not too surprisingly, her works remain well-read and her loyal following continues to grow. I won't repeat the regrets of various commenters in blogs and print articles, but will add one: I wish she were still with us, and blogging. It would be such a treat to read a short bit from her every so often, enjoying a peak into her treasured domesticity. It is hard to fathom that her body and mind are gone from our world, when her voice continues on so clearly.

Ah! Rain

We heard the oddest sound last night -  tick tick tick, tap tap tap.  Stepping outside, that inimitable ozone smell struck my nostrils - rain!  Has it been 5 months?  6? Longer?  

Much as I love our long dry season for all its other benefits, I know the plants adore water from the sky.  It may carry with it some trace air pollutants; but at least it has no chloramine (our local version of chlorine).  

This important difference made me look closely at the rainwater catchment systems being demo'd at West Coast Green last weekend.  One system includes a filtration cover for your roof gutters, to eliminate some pollutants from the rain itself, or your roofing materials, before capture in a fairly standard rain barrel.  Surprisingly, not many of the wide variety of commercially available rain barrels were on display.  The most popular this year, displayed at the green building conference's showhouse, is called the Rainwater Hog.  Unlike most cylindrical models, it looks more like a giant brick in shape, holds 50 gallons, and can be oriented one of three directions, stacked with additional units, or chained together (one barrel's overflow runs to the next).  Having ruled out a rain barrel in the past for my current home, I am now very likely to rule rainwater catchment back in. 

Autumn Harvest

Even though farmer's markets here have an unusually long season for produce I think of a summer-only (strawberries, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes), I find myself drawn now to the bounty of autumn.

Maybe the shortening days are sending my body a signal - "grab some yams for breakfast - you need the beta-carotene" and "spaghetti squash - there's a great gluten-free way to put something healthy under that lycopene-rich red sauce you love." So I listened. One tomato for a late-season plate of caprese (with the home-made mozzarella and the dwindling fresh basil). One red pepper for my black bean - corn - red pepper salad. A couple ears of corn - to cut the kernels off the cob and freeze for winter use. And the rest? All the comfort veggies of autumn - yams, sweet potatoes, baking potatoes, and a surprising array of squash types.

Soon the pumpkins will be ready, and again this year I'll try roasting the seeds and using the flesh for pie (sounds spooky enough for me).