For the love of Produce...

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I (foolishly) planted multiple zucchini plants and have the happiest veggie garden I have ever had this year! I'm inundated! Good thing I'm inventive, and love zucchini!

I also have an enormous amount of Tomatillos growing, I think I'm going to be canning a lot of salsa verde!!

Oooo, lucky you (more like clever, industrious you)!

Visions of chilaquiles dance in my head, with tomatillo salsa, roasted sweet corn, black beans and other goodies in the mix. But that's probably not calorie-efficient, is it?

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@SafariGalNYC, I haven't seen that squash around here yet, but I love Winter squash. If you feel inclined, could you let us know how you like that one after you try it, maybe a mini-review?

Still my all-time favorite so far is an heirloom called Georgia Candy Roaster, banana-shaped, pale orange skin (sometimes with a bit of tan), huge - like 18" long or so, maybe 10 cups-ish once roasted and smashed. It's not (despite the name) crazy sweet, but very meaty, moist but not excess juice when roasted, rich flavor, with especially large seeds that are great for roasting.

It's not a long keeper, but I try to buy several in Fall to roast and freeze, usually around 25 2-cup freezer bowls. I've mostly only seen it in farmers markets, rarely in a few small stores that buy produce locally. I blew it this Fall because other parts of life got seriously complicated.



That's a normal good-sized kitchen cleaver in there in front of the back (uncut) squash, for scale.

Happy Thanksgiving all! 🍁

Re @AnnPT77 - that Georgia candy squash looks awesome!! I have to look for those!

My MFP produce review- 🤓
The Koginut squash has become one of my favs! When I first opened it, the fragrance was like a cross between a watermelon and papaya.

So I baked the koginut squash for 45 min at 400 - the texture is more velvety than butternut. It carmelized a bit more than the butternut I also had roasting. Perhaps it has more sugar?

Butternut I find has a very mild taste, I thought the Koginut was more complex and slightly fruity. Really nice. A keeper at our house!

@SafariGalNYC, thank you for the detailed review (with photos, even)! The Koginut squash sounds really intriguing, different from the pack: I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for it here, so I can try it. Looks/sounds yum!

@FeatheredEmpress . . . oooo! Squash envy!

I'm glad you enjoyed your squash after all that work.

As you might guess from their size, the seeds take longer - usually much longer - to roast than what generic recipes on the web suggest. I like to roast them with some popcorn salt and a good-tasting chili powder, but plain would be good, too. I don't remember how long I actually did roast the last batch . . . I'm afraid I have a poor memory for numbers. I usually just start a little longer than the standard recipes, then taste-test periodically (making sure they're not too hot going into my mouth!) until they're the way I like.

I've only roasted in the oven, haven't tried air fryer or any other method. (I don't have an air fryer. )

FeatheredEmpress wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@FeatheredEmpress . . . oooo! Squash envy!

I'm glad you enjoyed your squash after all that work.

As you might guess from their size, the seeds take longer - usually much longer - to roast than what generic recipes on the web suggest. I like to roast them with some popcorn salt and a good-tasting chili powder, but plain would be good, too. I don't remember how long I actually did roast the last batch . . . I'm afraid I have a poor memory for numbers. I usually just start a little longer than the standard recipes, then taste-test periodically (making sure they're not too hot going into my mouth!) until they're the way I like.

I've only roasted in the oven, haven't tried air fryer or any other method. (I don't have an air fryer. )

Do you lower the temperature or just increase the time? I'm worried about burning the outside and not having the inside crispy. I'll be trying them in my Instant Pot air fryer as I begrudge turning the oven on just to roast a handful of seeds.

In the oven, I just increase the time.

I hear you about the oven and small batches. If I had an air fryer I'd probably experiment. Since with those squash I'm usually roasting 2 at a time - all I can fit in my oven - I usually have at least one full cookie sheet of seeds anyway.

I roast the seeds in a single layer for best results, which may not be necessary in the air fryer - I dunno. There may be air fryer recipes on the web for it that would give hints. I still think they'd need more roasting than the standard seeds, because they're so big and plump.

They're annoying to fully separate from the residual pulp, but IMO worth the effort.

Alatariel75 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@Alaterial, I have seasonal produce envy: It's full Winter here, snow on the ground and temps this past week down to around 10 F/-18 C. Local farmers - or truly dedicated home gardeners - may still have some of the hardier greens like kale holding steady in hoop houses or similar, and possibly some root crops like parsnips still in-ground under a heavy layer of straw or other mulch. But mostly, what you're harvesting so wonderfully now was July/August joy here, and now it's time for eating what we canned/froze, sprouting some seeds, bring out the keeper varieties of some things from the root cellar kind of storage.

Enjoy those yummy goodies that are in-season!

I kind of feel bad posting my bounty when I know so many people are snowed under haha! I admit, I do love living somewhere where even in winter my garden produces, just different things!

This year I planted something I'd never had before, tromboncino squash! It's amazing, I've never seen it in stores, but when it's young and green it's like zucchini, and if you leave it on the vine it turns orangy brown and becomes like butternut squash. I had some baked yesterday and it really does taste like a mix between the two, delicious!!

They grown huge, too - Here's yesterday's harvest, with one of my regular zucchinis for comparison:

@Alatariel75 - ooooh those look great! I’d love to have a little greenhouse one day.

Some more new to me produce:

Found these Badger Flame Beets. Supposedly not as earthy as other beets.

I was reading about it their origin here:

https://www.warf.org/commercialize/technologies/warf-advances-uw-madison-technology/badger-flame/#:~:text=The Badger Flame series of,the beet varieties now grown.

—which I thought was interesting. Anyone ever try them?

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I'm planning my Autumn garden at the moment, and I have decided that I'm going to focus on 2 categories, being vegetables I eat a LOT of, and vegetables I can't get in the grocery store.

So far I'm planting golden beets, Romanesco broccoli, mini cauliflowers (I love them for making single serve whole roasted cauli!), and rainbow chard.

That sounds wonderful! I admit, I'm lazy, we have great farmers markets, and it's flippin' full bore Winter here besides (daytime temp 14F/-10C right now, with full snow cover on the ground ).

As an aside, I think you and I differ on the cauli front: To me, the regular size IS a single serving.

Locally, since even the good farmers have trouble growing nice cauli, I think that's one I'd still buy, but it may work out better where you live - I hope so.

Here's my latest adventure with trying something I've never had before, though it may be old hat to some of you. Because it's new to me, I'll share several photos:

It's about 8.5 by 3 inches, so 21.5 by 7.5 centimeters. Here, intact:



Cut open:



. . . and with a chunk scooped out and inverted on top:



If you, like me, don't know what it is, it's a cacao pod. I saw it in the local produce market, looked it up, saw that it was safe to eat the fruit, and probably the unfermented seeds, too, though some people apparently get digestive distress from the raw seeds, maybe because they're high fiber.

This is probably not the best time for me to try a new fruit, because I have anosmia (lost sense of smell) due to my recent head injury, so things taste flatter than usual. But it had a taste. I was brave, ate some of both pulp and seeds.

The fruit part is soft and tropical-ish tasting, mildly sweet. From what I read online, the seeds can be bitter and astringent, which I should be able to taste just from receptors on the palate (those still work), but to me the few seeds I tasted seemed mild and rather neutral. The online stuff also suggested a strong chocolate flavor from the seeds, and I didn't taste that either, but the anosmia could contribute to that.

Do I have any idea how to log this? Nope. Sometimes you just gotta take one for the experience, eh?

I just ate it, so not sure yet about the potential for digestive distress. If it's just from fiber, I shouldn't have a problem, since - produce mad person that I am - I'm used to eating a lot of fiber.

This cost several dollars, so probably not a thing I'd eat regularly even if I could find them more often . . . but worth doing, at well less than the cost of a movie ticket, just for the experience, in my world.

Here's an odd one.

I made a nice green salad last night. I cut open a delicious orange bell along with some other veggies. I usually cut around the top and pop it out. That way all the seeds come right out, I can break them off, and then I can slice the chile any way I want. I was going to make julienne out of this one.

So I kind of squished up my face in confusion when I opened this sweet bell up. Instead of the normal seeds, there was another bell inside. This one was yellowish green; just not ripe yet. Very odd. The bell tested normal. I didn't open the inner chile. I might.

Anyone else run into this oddity?

As an aside, today I made a soup I've been planning for a while; butternut squash in the pressure cooker. I found a recipe in a library book last year, and I made it several times. I stray FAR from the recipe, and this batch is really good. The recipe doesn't call for celery, but soup needs celery. The recipe doesn't call for carrots, but I had four multi-color carrots left to use before I start using the fresh ones. The recipe doesn't call for bay leaves, but I have a tree outside the house. The recipe doesn't call for adding a can of salmon, but I do that AFTER I remove the bay leaves and puree the rest with an immersion blender. So tasty and surprisingly few calories for how rich it tastes.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@mtaratoot, I've had the occasional bell pepper with part of another pepper that had started forming inside, but never a whole one. With the partials, the seed distribution inside the main bell is sometimes a little distorted. I wonder if your full extra internal bell has normal seed distribution inside it? If you cut it open, maybe let us know?

@SafariGalNYC, I finally saw a koginut squash in the store here, and bought it. I haven't cooked it yet, but wanted to thank you again for posting about that and raising my squash-loving curiosity.

@AnnPT77 let us know how you like it!! 😉