CSA Box

Today is the last day of the 2009 summer CSA.

Tom has loaded us down with winter squash in time for Thanksgiving. And a good thing, because the nation is facing a shortage of canned pumpkin. Not that I use canned pumpkin; I usually roast Sugar Pie pumpkins and blend the flesh with eggs and sweetened condensed milk for my Thanksgiving pie. But canned pumpkin is really butternut squash (something that the Veggielution staff found very disturbing when I dropped that particular bomb at a meeting on Monday) so roasted squash it will be.

Anyway. Aside from the plethora of squash at the upper left, we have, continuing clockwise: turnips(!), beets, a tiny head of lettuce, collards, dill, cilantro, cabbage, radicchio (I took another orphan today, leaving behind some ruffled kale,) carrots and apples. There is also another bag in the middle, which has four small heads of garlic, but they’re lost in the glare of the flash.

I bought some celery today (since we never got any all summer) and made another huge lot of mirepoix with these carrots, and the parsley from the past couple weeks. The turnips I may mash, just so I can make “neeps hackit with balmagowry” in honor of Patrick O’Brian, although two neeps will make a small dish. I could go heavy on the balmagowry, as long as I don’t spill it in my car again. And maybe dill would go with that, too.