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Nov. 17th, 2008 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaAs we head distinctly into late-fall/early-winter (yeah, I know, it's technically not till a month from now, but still), it's getting harder to cook from the produce box. Not impossible by any means, but harder.
That isn't a shock: when you have fresh tomatoes, green beans, sweetcorn, peaches, and so on, it's really not hard to make things tasty. There's also enough variety in spring and summer foods that you can eat only in-season without reapeating too often. Not so much the case now. Right now, the local options are essentially winter squash (pumpkin and butternut and delicata and sugarloaf and acorn), root vegetables (onions and carrots and potatoes and parsnips), winter greens, cabbage, apples and pears. It's actually a fair number of options, but all in the same categories, so it takes a lot more invention to keep it interesting. Squash with butter and brown sugar! With butter and sage! With olive oil and cilantro and minced chipotle peppers! In creamy soup! In chunky vegetable soup! In curry! In chili! Stuffed with meat and rice! And one looks forward so eagerly to the first snap peas and asparagus of spring.
Tonight: lamb chops with mint sauce, parsnips and carrots roasted with sesame and honey, cabbage slaw, sourdough rye bread. (The bread came from the farmer's market, not me, though.) The bread was really good dipped in the oil the chops were broiled in.
That isn't a shock: when you have fresh tomatoes, green beans, sweetcorn, peaches, and so on, it's really not hard to make things tasty. There's also enough variety in spring and summer foods that you can eat only in-season without reapeating too often. Not so much the case now. Right now, the local options are essentially winter squash (pumpkin and butternut and delicata and sugarloaf and acorn), root vegetables (onions and carrots and potatoes and parsnips), winter greens, cabbage, apples and pears. It's actually a fair number of options, but all in the same categories, so it takes a lot more invention to keep it interesting. Squash with butter and brown sugar! With butter and sage! With olive oil and cilantro and minced chipotle peppers! In creamy soup! In chunky vegetable soup! In curry! In chili! Stuffed with meat and rice! And one looks forward so eagerly to the first snap peas and asparagus of spring.
Tonight: lamb chops with mint sauce, parsnips and carrots roasted with sesame and honey, cabbage slaw, sourdough rye bread. (The bread came from the farmer's market, not me, though.) The bread was really good dipped in the oil the chops were broiled in.