Autumn Adventures

Audrey (and Peanut!), Andrew, and Catherine picking pumpkins in Montgomery County.

Fall is absolutely, no contest, my favorite time of year. Christmas carols, spring flowers, and a summer swim cannot compete with the crispy leaves underfoot and the lovely cool nights. While I am not in New England to experience the true essence of fall, DC's sunny weather and changing leaves have inspired me to think about my autumn food adventures. As my previous post indicated, I have wavered from my local food commitment at the moment, but I still found time to go apple and pumpkin picking this year (and to eat apple cider donuts, of course).

Apple picking with Anne in Massachusetts.

With all the apples coming from our WFCF apple share and Andrew living on his own, I found 7 full bags of apples waiting for me during my last visit home. These were a wide selection of popular and heirloom varieties, and I simply combined them all to make luscious apple sauce. Because of my food strainer, I am able to quarter the apples, add a small amount of water, sprinkle in some cinnamon, and let them boil 'til soft. Because these apples had been sitting in the fridge for some time, they were full of natural sugars (reminiscent of honey, in my opinion) and I made enough to freeze for the whole winter. We can eat this on its own, with homemade cookies, or even blend it with roasted squash to make our favorite soup.

Wait, what?

Confessions

Photo courtesy of http://www.thehappyrock.com

Well, here we are, 6 weeks after I moved to DC and started my post-doc. Many of you have asked me how the local eating is going, and I must confess: it's not going. While Andrew is whipping up batches of "kitchen sink" soup from fresh farm vegetables and roasting succulent Massachusetts meats, I am indulging in boxed macaroni and cheese, bubbly water with lemon slices, and vegetables from goodness-knows-where. These sinful purchases can be explained by my long work hours...and my desire to indulge myself! I must admit that I feel very little guilt and it's pretty nice to wander in to the grocery store in downtown Bethesda and buy whatever I want to. However, in all honesty, my food is less nutritious and certainly doesn't taste as good as it used to...so, maybe once the dust settles on this fabulous job of mine, I'll return to the patterns of old. For now, though, I'm going to savor those lemon slices and maybe even try a banana or two.

Freezer and Kitchen Sink (Soup)

We finally broke down and bought a chest freezer.  With the meat share coming every month and Catherine in DC, some of the quantities have been overwhelming and the small freezer on top of the refrigerators has not been sufficient.  My family has a long tradition of large chest freezers full to the brim (see Mother and Grandmother), so I was initially reluctant to follow suit.  However, Catherine convinced me that we could just get a small one that would fit in our kitchen and that it would alleviate the avalanches cascading from our other freezer due to the delicate balancing act of over-packing.

We bought the freezer at Sears (with the help of Tim Jones), which was super easy (and on sale) and just rolled in next to the refrigerator (yes, it has wheels) and plugged it in!  It's about 5 cu. feet, which seems like plenty of space for now (however, I am worried that my genes are programmed for bigger and better models). I immediately transferred MANY things from our other freezer including the muffins of pesto (pesto frozen in muffin tins) that we recently made from the last basil of the year from our farm.

New freezer all set up (basket and all)!

With Catherine in DC and our visits being less frequent over the last month, I have been having trouble getting through all of the veggies from Waltham Fields.  Some keep for a long time, but others need to be eaten immediately.  Last weekend after Susan, Tim and I went to the farm, I decided it was time to use some veggies.  I saved the squash for Catherine (not my favorite) and decided to make a soup I called Kitchen Sink Soup.  Basically, my plan was to use everything that needed to be used up (sans the cabbage, which I made a delicious coleslaw using mustard - yum-MEE).

Some of the veggies to be used for Kitchen Sink Soup

So I started with some leeks, and onions, got them nice and cooked and then added our home made chicken stock and a little water.  I then added a bunch of potatoes, an onion, a ton of carrots, a couple heads of cauliflower, some kale, some diced hot peppers, black and white pepper and salt.  I let it simmer for several hours and voila!  Only thing left to do was use the hand blender to get it all silky smooth.  It's thick, a little spicy, and delicious (think potato-leek soup taken up a notch) - and made with everything but the kitchen sink!

Kitchen Sink Soup all ready to go into the new freezer - after I had a bowl of course.