Heavenly Divine Squash Pie

Delicata squash

It was a big decision to name this pie. It was to be either heavenly or divine. Or both. The filling is fluffy-light compared to the much loved traditional pumpkin pie. It seems to be "spiked" (even tho the alcohol bakes away). As it bakes it warms the house with a wonderfully spicy aroma that feels perfect on  a crispy, chilly autumn day.

Although any squash or pumpkin can be used, a creamy squash such as Delicata adds to the dreamy texture. If you DO use a stringy type, please puree it in a blender first. 

If you'd prefer to do without the pie crust, bake the filling in custard dishes to make dreamy little puddings.

Makes one nine inch pie.

Make whole wheat pie crust for a single crust pie. Recipe here. Roll out the dough and fit it into a 9" pie plate. Trim the edge of the crust to 1/2" beyond the pie plate. Fold the edge under and crimp.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Two large eggs: crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl and whisk. Add the following ingredients one at a time and whisk after each:

1-1/2 c. sour cream

2 c. squash, cooked and peeled

3/4 c. maple syrup

1/8 c. rum

Stir in:

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp salt

Pour the filling into the dough-lined pie plate up to 1/2" of the top of the crust. If there is extra filling, pour into a custard dish and bake (for less time) beside the pie. Bake the pie for 35-45 minutes, until the filling is set; custards for much less time. Cool. Serve plain or with whipped cream. -jmm

What's Happening Now

The closet is so full of squash we’ve had to move our shoes out of there. Potatoes and newspapers are layered in brown paper bags on the floor of the root cellar. The freezer is filled to capacity with green beans, beef, cranberries, beets, beef, peas, greens, more beef, tomato sauce, strawberries and rhubarb. And beef.

So, you might think the gardening is over, right? Au contraire! The gardening is still a plethora in the happening (editors note- please accept that sentence as some kind of plethoretic poetry. If you happen to know my husband, feel free to ask. -jmm)

It's fall planting time. Yes, it's fall, and yes, I said planting. This is the time to plant garlic and to spread seeds into the cold frames. Eating from the garden year round means fall is both harvest and planting time.

Two kinds of kale

Garlic is essential to our cooking; we use it in almost everything. It needs at least a two-month cold spell for the individual cloves to grow and multiply, and here in Maine we can pretty much count on at least a few chilly months. Last weekend we planted 50 cloves that will be ready to harvest next July. After the ground freezes we'll cover the garlic row with straw. 

Our kale row is looking terrific. Kale is a very hardy green that is perfectly fine left in the garden all winter.  After a frost it develops a wonderfully sweet flavor. We brush off the winter snow and pick it to use in stir fries or soups, or steam it as a side dish. Its a favorite winter veggie for us.

Theres a whole lot going on with the cold frames right now. They've been set up for our winter veggies. We've blogged about our cold frames before; they're an integral part of our gardening experience. Click on "Cold Frame" in the side column to read those posts.

Lettuce planted in August has been used up. More lettuce was planted in September and it should be ready in December. Claytonia is now tender sprouts and will be ready to eat in December. Mache was planted in August and will be ready to eat in a couple of weeks. Beet greens and spinach are growing and will be used in salads and as cooked greens through winter. And spinach planted this month will over-winter and be ready to eat in spring.

As we pick these veggies spaces in the cold frames open up. We'll fill them in with more mache, spinach and arugula. These will be ready in early spring when seeds for the summer garden are being put into peat pots. Fall is a great time to be outdoors. Tending the cold frames is no chore at all considering the joys of being able to eat fresh-picked greens all winter long. -G.H.

A Keyhole Salad Garden

Why did we not think of it earlier? Salad! How many places in the yard do we go to in order to gather one? To the garden over to the west of house, then way over to the garden to the east of the house, and a cold frame or two or three in between!

Have you ever mentally kicked yourself for not thinking of something sooner? Kinda what I did when I thought, “ok, theres all these garden spaces but no coherent spot for gathering the one food group we eat every day.”

First of all, theres nothing ordinary about any of our salads. Each one starts with a mix of greens and some onion, and then it’s whatever else is available. Right now nasturtiums are looking beautiful- they’ve vined themselves all over some heather and some lavender plants and it’s all really pretty. And we think the leaves and flowers are pretty in salads too. They add such nice peppery zip.

Making a garden just for salad was a sudden brainstorm. If only there was a handy spot near to the house! And there was! If only a few flowers were moved out first. Very do-able!

The new salad keyhole garden

A close-following brainstorm turned the design into a keyhole. I wrote about the keyhole earlier, here and here. The shape is ideal for a salad garden. You can walk down a center path and pick stuff along three sides of it. Fill up the salad basket and, voila, you’re done!

A great idea being too good to waste, I got busy last weekend and repurposed rows of flowers into a single-path horseshoe shape. The area is about 20 feet long x 15 feet wide and is nestled in between roses and a stone wall. After some very sweaty raking and shoveling- the weather being oddly warm for this time of year- I worked in some manure to get things off to a good start, and then started moving plants.

The chive hedge now lines the new central pathway. Lovage is transplanted to one back corner, and perennial onions to the other. These should colonize and form thick patches.

Reseeding annuals populate one side of the horseshoe. Most of them were stuck in the ground casually, because it is their seeds that will make new plants next year. They are upland cress, cilantro, and giant red mustard. Love those reseeders!

The other side of the horseshoe is left unplanted. This is for non-hardy annuals. In spring we will seed lettuces, arugula, several types of basil, and nasturtium. What's a late-summer salad without nasturtium! Wow, I feel good about this garden! -jmm

Storing Winter Squash

Winter squash has been a garden mainstay for us for many years. Each year we store three or more varieties. Because of this the ins and outs of storing it have become clear.

Squash cleaned and ready to be put in storage

First, in order to store a squash it must have developed a hard shell, or, in other words, to have become entirely ripe. Some varieties will develop a corky-looking stem. The color of the squash should be fully developed- Butternut, for instance looks yellowy or greenish as it grows, and becomes a dull buff color when mature. Blue Hubbard develops a bluish color. But the ultimate test is, before picking, to tap it with a fingernail. If your nail leaves an indent the squash is not ready to harvest.

We’ve heard advice saying when harvesting a squash to keep at least two inches of stem attached. The method of harvesting is to cut through the stem using a hand pruners. We try to do this but sometimes the stem breaks off. We haven’t noticed that this presents a problem in storage.   

Another piece of advice we’ve seen is this: after harvesting, always handle a squash as carefully as if it were an egg. We’re not sure about this either. It seems like good advice and we try to follow it. But squashes are made of odd shapes and sometimes one takes a tumble. 

We clean them, washing off any dirt using cold water, and, if needed, a veggie brush. If there are spots, lesions, or bite marks from some animal with Dracula-like teeth (some squashes had these this year), they are not likely to keep. Cook them right away and eat or freeze. The side of the squash that laid on the ground is paler than the rest, and that is not a problem.

Squash in the closet

Advice also says to cure them by keeping them dry and at room temperature for about ten days. Not sure of the importance of this, except to make really sure that they are completely dry for storage. We dry them off after washing and lay them out on newspapers for a few days, then assign the most energetic one of the two of us to lug them upstairs to the closet.

What we do know for sure is that winter squash need a dry environment for successful keeping. We place them on newspapers on the floor of an unheated closet. Even in a dry, cool place they must be checked at least weekly for newly developed spots or other signs of deterioration. If anything like this shows up, the squash is still good- cook it right away and eat or freeze. 

The fridge is no place to keep squash, even for a short time. There is too much humidity and they will spoil quickly. Advice has told us to put them in the basement elevated above the floor. The one and only time we tried this they all failed at the same time- right at the end of December, and then we had to cook all of them. The dry, unheated closet on the other hand, has allowed us to store squash way into March. A great food and so easy to store! (For more info on winter squash, see our blog post of Sept. 6, 2010). -jmm

A Day at the Common Ground Fair

Imagine going to a fair where all of your major life topics are represented! The Green Party, women’s issues, solar and wind power, electric cars, low impact forestry, gardening, timber framing, farmers markets and food vendors selling organic, fresh and local, and more. Much, much more. And with lectures going on every hour making it hard to decide which ones to go to.

This year we picked four lectures to attend. The first was about using leaves to provide a resource of nutrients for the garden, followed by one on harvesting edible wild mushrooms, then an intro to beekeeping, and finally how to choose a fleece.

The first of these was both interesting and baffling. The lecturer had experimented with using leaves that he collects in large quantity, runs through a chipper and then piles in a covered bin to use as a garden fertilizer. He had also tried using them for nutrients in a pasture. He placed small piles of leaves throughout the pasture and found that this tended to boost the growth of surrounding plants, altho the leaves mulched out plants underneath. He is not using his pasture except to collect cut grass out of it to make vegan compost. Marsha kept wondering whether it would be easier to put a grass eating animal on the pasture to keep the grass trimmed and then use the manure for fertilizer.  

The mushroom speaker talked about several edible mushrooms commonly found in Maine and showed examples. Now we have a better idea of what to look for in our woods where we see a great many types. He stressed the importance of taking a knowledgeable person along or to use a good reference book.

The beekeeper gave us a good overview of raising bees, as much info as could be covered in an hour. Theres more to learn! We were interested in his take on beehive collapse disorder. He attributes this to monoculture, with the explanation that bees require enzymes from a number of plants, and gathering nectar from only one plant provides incomplete nutrition for them. It was an excellent talk and he will be a valuable resource when we are ready to set up a hive.

Marsha was very interested in learning about some of the common Maine sheep breeds. This included sticking our hands into bags of luxurious fibers, and comparing them for cleanliness, openness, the knitting value of sunburnt tips, excess lanolin, staple length, dual fibers, and what might be a good price. Marsha could not get out of there without two bags of Romney fleece in tow. While Marsha was exploring fleece, Gil dropped in on a lecture given by the Maine Farmland Trust about protecting farmland through easements. This is a topic that we have been researching. He also stopped into the Social & Political Action tent to visit the Green Party table and sign a petition for a cause we support.

Between lectures we caught part of a Border Collie demo in which the collies herded sheep, goats, and ducks. The dogs were very impressive. Went through some  crafts booths, wandered amongst apple trees full of apples, studied how well some living fences were growing, sampled Maine cheeses, looked at a rock garden full of dye plants and some other experimental gardens, lunched on organic lamb sausage with salsa topping, yum. It was a wonderful time and we’re already looking forward to next year’s fair. -jmm and G.H.

Using a Steam Canner

A pantry filled with colorful jars of delicious, homegrown foods is a gratifying finish to a summer of tending the garden. In the past I’ve made bread & butter pickles, jams, zucchini relish, basil beans, piccalilli, peach or plum chutney, and various tomato concoctions. They add zip and zing to sandwiches and dinners through long winters when I miss being out in the garden.

Jars are in the canner and waiting to be sterilized.

But as much as I love the results, putting up jars of food is not one of my favorite things to do. And I might not do it at all, except for having a steam canner. The hot water bath method was my first canning experience, consisting of babysitting a gigantic pot of water as it took a half hour to come to a boil not just once but twice for each batch of jars.

Then, about ten or so years ago I noticed a steam canner offered through gardening catalogs. The catalog entry implied it would be a more efficient method of canning. Intrigued, I put in my order, and haven’t looked back.

The first time I used the steam canner I was in love with the idea. It holds only a couple quarts of water, in comparison to four gallons used for hot water bath, so it comes to a boil quickly, getting the whole job done much, much quicker.

The jars have been filled with catsup
and are waiting for processing.

Except for water amounts, the two canning methods are basically the same. Either method can be used to process fruits, tomatoes, and pickled foods. Neither method, however, is for canning vegetables and meats. For those you need a pressure canner.

There are three parts to a steam canner. A pan at the bottom that is about three inches deep, a rack that fits in the pan, and a tall lid that fits over the pan. There are a couple of holes in the lid to vent steam. Seven quart jars, or eight pint jars will fit on the rack. Fewer jars work too, and if you have only one jar to process, that is fine too. This means that steam canning is adaptable to smaller harvests-  and with less water to boil, less energy is wasted.

I found on Wikipedia that steam is actually a gas, and it works by carrying the energy of the boiling water. I thought, too, about the cog train that runs on steam and full of passengers climbs Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the northeast. Steam cooks vegetables, heats New York, and powers trains. If it can do all of that, then it seems unquestionable that steam can seal jars of food.

This year I had a yen for a childhood favorite, Grandma’s chow chow, a corn relish. So I made some of that, and three batches of plum chutney since the plum tree did really well, and some tomato catsup. Yum. The pantry is looking well stocked, and winter will be delicious. -jmm

Plum Salsa

Stanley plums

We are having a great plum crop this year, the best our tree has ever done. The tree is about twelve years old, and in the past three or four years we’ve been getting enough plums to make a few things like cobblers, chutneys, and salsa. This year we’ve made plenty of those and even gave some plums to the neighbors. It always feels good to grow more than we can use. Our plums are Stanley, or prune plums, a little less sweet and much less watery than the bigger dessert types, making them ideal for using in recipes.  

Making plum salsa

Besides the abundance of plums, the colors of the garden inspired this salsa: deep purple plums, orange Habanero and bright red Cayenne peppers and green cilantro. This recipe is for a raw salsa. Because it is raw it’s not suitable for canning, but we’re going to try freezing some.  

Be sure to put on some latex or rubber gloves to chop up the peppers. Use a sharpened chef’s knife for the chopping. Fewer seeds go flying with a sharp knife, and a dull one tends to squish the peppers instead of cutting. Wash the knife and cutting board with hot water and soap when finished. 

Much of the heat of hot peppers is in the seeds and inner ribs. If you like serious heat leave them in. If not trim them out. If your taste buds are on the milder side, you can substitute sweet bell peppers.

Ingredients

4 cups of prune plums, pitted and diced (30 to 40 plums depending on size)

1 lime, juiced

2 avocados, peeled, pitted, and diced into 1/2” chunks

1 medium red onion, diced

1 Habanero or 2 Cayenne peppers, diced

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

Pinch of sea salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine the ingredients in the same order given, stirring in each before adding the next. Use a potato masher to lightly mash the mixture- this helps to blend the flavors. Serve the salsa  with corn chips or on tacos. It is also excellent as a side dish or a topping with fish or chicken. -G.H.