Farmer's Market Bounty: Candied Squash Seeds

There have been so many squashes in our house over the last several weeks and I'm glad of it, since it means I got the excuse to try these candied pumpkin seeds. They taste delicious! However... I made some significant adjustments to the recipe since I had trouble with them being too chewy.

The first thing I did was boil the cleaned seeds in unsalted water for at least 10 minutes. Then I followed the recipe, cooking the spices together with the butter and sugar in a sauce pan and then adding the drained seeds. But for some reason the mixture was just all too runny. After letting them simmer for a long time in hopes that the candy sauce would cook down to a thicker consistency, I gave up, took them off the heat and then spread the gooey seeds onto a sheet of wax paper, in hopes that the mixture would dry out. No luck. So then I sprayed some non-stick spray onto a cookie sheet and roasted them in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes--after 5 minutes, I kept a very close eye. And that did the trick! They were clumped together in chip-sized bites. They were crunchy and not chewy. And they didn't last long, a sad detail considering how long it took me to get the seeds clean. If I could find an easy way to clean all the seeds we ultimately compost, I would make these all the time. Sadly, I think it will be awhile before I build up the endurance to make these again. Even if I don't make candied squash seed right away, I have to admit that my immediate response to the final product was that I wanted to candy everything in the house, in particular, I wanted to abscond with all of the nuts that Sean uses for his various healthy snacks (his homemade power bars, and his muesli cereal) and candy them all! Sadly, he didn't agree with this plan.

Farmer's Market Bounty: Broccoli Pesto

While not a terribly camera-friendly presentation here, I'm very happy with this result. Super easy, and well-timed. Last Monday was our final Farmer's Market and our favorite veggie and fruit farmer had a great deal on broccoli: buy 2 pounds and get 1 pound free. So I had tons of broccoli to use.

We're big fans of broccoli in our house. We regularly steam it up and spritz with "I Can't Believe it's not Butter" spray and salt, pepper, and garlic powder. (This is our very basic, quick and easy way of getting lots of veggies on our table.) My favorite method of cooking broccoli is Ellie Krieger's recipe for "dirty broccoli," which is basically cooked broccoli tossed with sauteed garlic and breadcrumbs. Awesome!




Anyway, for this broccoli pesto, I treated it just as I would regular pesto, just substituting broccoli for basil. I steamed up quite a bit of broccoli (about 3 small heads) and then put it in our food processor.








I put in 5 or so cloves of raw garlic, about 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, about 1/4 cup of pan-toasted pine nuts (just what I had on hand), and blended away. As I blended, I slowly added about 1/4 cup or so of olive oil, after which point I added some of the reserved water that I used to steam the broccoli to give it a bit thinner texture. (Of course, I could've just added more olive oil, but I was trying to keep the fat content under control.) Then I added salt and pepper to taste. It's still a smidge on the thick side. I've since portioned it out and frozen it in 1/2 cup servings to be used to mix with a box of cooked pasta down the road. It will likely need a touch of olive oil or pasta water to thin it back out when it's mixed with the pasta.

It went really well with large batch of pasta salad, which was inspired by our friend, Kathleen's, recipe. She cooked it for us after Auric was born and it was great to have on hand for dinners or cold lunches. I added some of the broccoli pesto to cooked pasta, then added steamed broccoli, chopped oven-dried tomatoes that I store in herbed olive oil, cooked chicken breasts, salt and pepper. Very tasty and Thora-friendly!

Container Garden 2009 Re-Cap

I cleared out the container garden a few weekends ago, snipping and yardwaste-binning the spent or unusable plants from this summer's garden. I'm very glad that I did the garden. In addition to the somewhat measely output, I'm glad for the memories that we shared around the garden.

Harvesting a single strawberry per night and splitting it three ways. Thora turning the bottom of her shirt into a harvesting basket to collect the snips of herbs or cherry tomatoes for our salads. Teaching Thora to gently pinch the herbs to release the aromatic oils of the plant and then smelling her fingers. Watching her explain to her dad which one is the rosemary, which one is the pepper, etc., and pointing out the budding fruit. Teaching her the patience that gardening demands.

I will do it again next year but with a few adjustments.

* One of the best performers were the yellow gooseberry tomatoes, despite the fact that the weather and blight combined to thwart the tomato production. And frustratingly, just as the sun was getting weaker and weaker as we moved through September, my gooseberry plant seemed to shift into overdrive. I had dozens of branches weighted heavy with a handfulls of large, green tomatoes. But they just couldn't ripen. That was a shame. But I'll definitely plant these again next year. The Brandywines were attacked by the blight, I think. I didn't get a single usable tomato from 4 plants. That was a disappointment.

* I only got a few peppers but will likely try those again. However, I doubt I will bother with eggplants or zuchinni, both of which failed to give me a single vegetable. Again, I'm not sure how much of this is due to the strange weather (a very rainy June and a short, hot, summer). As I get more experienced, I will happily take on more of our family's food production in the form of a garden. But while I improve my gardening skills, I'm happy to let the local farmers do the squash and large veggie growing for us.

* The herbs were far and away the easiest and most prolific plants that I grew. The basil just flourished and gave me a lot at the end to make a good amount of pesto. We've got dried rosemary, thyme, sage, and oregano coming out of our ears, which is a good thing. I'm very happy about my experience with the herbs and will add those to next year's garden.

* While the strawberries weren't abundant, they were fun. I'll likely get another strawberry plant again next year, especially since it was the most rewarding one to harvest for our toddler.

* Lastly, I'd like to do more to mix in flowers to the garden and incorporate plant stands for some of the plants in an effort to design a more visually-pleasing layout.

And we're back

I hate that it's been ages since my last post. Life got a little unexpectedly... well, life-like: vivid, breathless, chaotic, when this little guy, Auric, showed up almost 6 weeks early:

Here he is at 5 weeks.

He's 11+ weeks now and wonderful. With the sleepless nights hopefully becoming less so, and our toddler transitioning slowly to life with a little brother, I hope to begin to posting with more regularity.

Overall, life is hard but good. Our boy, seems to be the calm to his sister's storm... at least for now. He's smiley and coy-seeming, fascinated, and above all, so lovable.

Lots more to come.