When I travel — which happens far too infrequently for my taste — I focus on the food. That’s probably not surprising. The problem with falling in love with the food of a place that, due to a lack of funds or time I won’t be visiting again in the near future, is the cravings. Sometimes after barely a week has passed I’m already desperate to be back where I was eating those foods I just can’t get in Minnesota. My coping mechanism is cooking: when the appetites first awakened by travel arise again instead of buying a plane ticket I head to my kitchen and do my best to recreate those foreign flavors at home.

It’s been a year since Martha and I traveled to Colombia and discovered the magic of Empanadas de Pipián. I’ve eaten plenty of empanadas in my life, many in restaurants in in Minnesota, but none like these. Empanadas de pipián have two distinguishing characteristics: first, the texture of their shell. Nobody would ever compare empanadas de pipián to Cornish (or Upper Peninsular) pasties; empanadas de pipián have a crisp, crunchy shell, reminiscent of a hard taco but slightly more yielding. The other unique characteristic of empanadas de pipián is their flavor: peanuts. While some empanadas may feature meat, or olives, or a medley of any number of ingredients, empanadas de pipián taste like peanuts. In a good way. A uniquely Colombian treat.

When a Colombian food jones strikes, the first reference I consult is the brown notebook I transcribed during afternoons and evenings spent in Martha’s Aunt Stella’s kitchen in Cali, Colombia as she prepared the family’s meal and put up with my persistent questions about her technique and ingredients. Stella is my sage for many Colombian foods.

As a resident of Cali, however, Aunt Stella has easy access to the nationally-renowned empanadas fried up at El Zaguán de San Antonio. Being able to drive 15 minutes to eat some of the best empanadas in town (in the whole world, in fact), she didn’t have much reason to make them at home while we were there. So the brown notebook had no recipe for me.

Where the brown notebook fails, the the two volume Nuevo Gran Libro de la Cocina Colombiana (originally published by Círculo de Lectores in 1983 and reissued by Intermedio in 2008) that I bought in Cali usually has some guidance. This cookbook covers a great variety of Colombian dishes, from soups to desserts, and does a good job of treating the regions of Colombia, even in its brief form. The photos are beautiful. But while it contains several recipes for empanadas, El Gran Libro was silent on the subject of those of pipián.

With first-hand experience coming up blank and my published reference of no help either, I had to turn to my absolute last resort when it comes to cooking: the Internet. That might sound odd coming from a food blogger, but my experience of Internet recipes largely mirrors that of grumbling old-media editors: there’s a lot of crap to sift through (all the recipes I post on marthaandtom.com are perfect, of course). There are a few websites whose recipes I will trust outright, but for the most part searching the web for recipes requires sifting through several versions on various websites and then applying a little common sense and experience to try to get something workable. A search turned up several recipes which I used as to develop a recipe for my empanadas (there was a spreadsheet involved, but I’ll spare you).

Empanadas de Pipián

You’ll need:

• 624 g (eh, call it a pound) potatoes, cut into a small dice

Note on potatoes: In Colombia, potatoes are a science unto themselves; there were more varieties of potatoes in the supermarket than I could even begin to wrap my head around. Small potatoes, large potatoes, red potatoes, blue potatoes, purple potatoes; there were even unwashed potatoes with the dirt still on (to be washed at home — some people like them that way). Taking a survey of the entire country would yield even more variety. And all of these potatoes have their specified uses; without a doubt there is some canonical potato for pipián. In the United States though, potatoes is more or less potatoes and we’ve got to take what we can get. I used white potatoes from the Midtown Farmers Market.

• 212 g (~3/4 c) hogao

Hogao is an ingredient in many, many Colombian dishes. In its simplest form — this is how Stella taught me to make it — it is a mixture of chopped onions and tomatoes, cooked to a puree-like consistency. More complicated versions exist; I personally couldn’t resist throwing in some garlic. I took 356 g roughly chopped tomatoes, mixed them with 156 g roughly chopped onion and 12 g (2 cloves) minced garlic and cooked it to the right consistency: maybe ten minutes over medium heat.

• 78 g peanut butter, melted

This probably leaves authenticity purists even more disturbed than the potatoes, but all the recipes call for roasted and ground peanuts (peanuts being the defining characteristic of Pipián); peanut butter saves several steps. I’m not talking about Jif here — our jar of Salt-Free Eastwind Peanut Butter’s ingredient list reads as follows: “Roasted Peanuts.” But Jif would probably be fine too.

• 1 T achiote

To make the Pipián, place the diced potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Add plenty of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer until the potatoes are just tender; it won’t take long if you’ve diced them small enough. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them well, then mix with the other three ingredients until everything is evenly distributed.

With the filling under control, the next step is to make the wrapper. Empanadas de pipián feature a yellow-corn based masa, for which I used the bag of P.A.N. Harina de Maiz Amarilla Precocida that we brought with us from Colombia. At the time we thought it would be impossible to get in the States and that we’d be out of luck if we needed our empanada fix. Happily, I’ve noticed this product available in many Latin American markets and even Latin American sections of supermarkets, so there is no obstacle between you and perfectly crunchy empanadas.

I followed the instructions on the package, adding a bit of salt to a cup of water, then stirring in a cup of corn flour. It is important to let the dough rest 15-30 minutes to hydrate fully; the dough will be too wet when it’s first mixed; the water hasn’t been fully absorbed by the corn.

When the dough is sufficiently hydrated, it should be divided into balls. I pinched off a ball I thought looked to be the right size and measured it at 34 g; in retrospect these were probably a little too big. But the bigger you make them the fewer empanadas you’ll have to fold together, so it’s worth considering. Anyway, there’s no agreed upon size for empanadas de pipián; in Colombia we sampled some that were little more than folded over tortilla chips, and others that were much more substantial.

Once you’ve completed your ball size deliberations, you’re ready to form the empanadas. The easiest way to do this is with two sheets of plastic — a zipper-lock bag torn asunder, say. Place one ball between the sheets of plastic, flatten it slightly, then roll it out into an even circle using a rolling pin. Remove the top plastic sheet, place a tablespoon or so of filling in the middle of the dough circle, then fold the bottom plastic sheet over itself to close the empanada, pressing the edges to seal them. Carefully peel back the plastic and flip the empanada onto a cornmealed, floured, cornstarched, or otherwise nonstickified sheet. Continue until you run out of dough, filling, or patience.

Heat deep frying oil to 350ºF (you’ll have to use your own judgment on how much oil to use; in my pan 2 quarts made sense). Fry the empanadas in batches of 4 or 5. They are done when they start to develop dark brown spots, which should occur just as your oil recovers to 350ºF, ready for the next batch.

Let the empanadas cool a little (OR THEY WILL BURN YOUR MOUTH) but not too long — they are best fresh. Serve with ají de maní, preferably applied to each bite from a red squeeze bottle.

Ají de Maní

To be honest I wasn’t totally happy with the way this sauce came out; the addition of cilantro (an idea I got from that darn Internet) didn’t do much for the sauce. The basic idea here is a spicy sauce tasting of peanuts with a thin consistency.

• 96 g peanut butter
• 156 g hogao (should probably use much less, but I wanted to use up what I made for the pipián)
• 10 g (1 small) hot pepper
• 10 g (2 cloves) garlic
• 6 g (largish handful) cilantro
• 162 g water
• a pinch of freshly-ground cumin

Process all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but I haven’t been posting much lately. This is mostly for positive reasons: fun and interesting social engagements, steadily progressing training runs in anticipation of a marathon in October, excellent meals eaten outside the home, all working together to spare you of my culinary musings.

Related to the aforementioned activities or not, I’ve also been feeling a little blah about cooking lately. I’m still putting food on the table most nights, but it has mostly seemed pretty automatic — nothing quite interesting or delicious enough to share. I was uninspired.

Inspiration, happily and frustratingly, comes at unexpected times. So it was this afternoon, in a moment of distraction from the tasks at hand, I allowed my RSS reader to direct me over to the latest post on our friend Brett’s blog Trout Caviar: Grilling the Market. Whether it was the picture of a beautifully charred carrot or Brett’s call for simplicity in summer preparations, something about his post got my wheels spinning again.

My mind jumped immediately to dinner, where suddenly a pasta with some kind of onion, summer squash and cream sauce — most definitely blah food — started to take on a more interesting character. For one thing, pasta was out: no need for imported starch when a bowlful of market new potatoes sat underutilized on the counter.

The summer’s first squash could still be used, accompanied by some of its first carrots. Given our current urban living situation, grilling was not a possibility; luckily, roasting can also develop those deeply browned surfaces I was after. A quick dressing with olive oil, vinegar, market parsley and garlic, and plenty of salt and pepper was all that was needed to showcase the best of the season.

I read fifty to one hundred food-related blog posts in any given day; most of them are discarded with the spin of a scroll wheel. Sometimes though a post comes along like Brett’s that changes what I’m doing in the kitchen — and even my outlook on this blog. It’s enough to inspire someone to write a post.

Roasted Summer Vegetable Salad

• 1# golf-ball sized potatoes
• 5 or 6 small summer squash
• 10-12 small carrots
• 3 small onions, sliced
• 2 T butter
• 1/2# flavorful sausage, cooked and sliced
• 4 oz goat cheese

Dressing

• 1/3 c olive oil
• 2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup parsley leaves, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450ºF.

Cut the potatoes in half and place in large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 8 minutes, until starting to become tender. Toss potatoes — careful, they’re hot! — in ample quantities of olive oil, salt and pepper. Don’t wash the bowl just yet. Arrange the potatoes on a sheet pan, cut-side down. Roast 20-30 minutes, until cut-sides are deep brown, just about to burn.

Meanwhile, cut the squash into 1″ chunks and place them in the bowl you tossed the potatoes in. If your carrots are pencil thin like mine were, you won’t need to peel or cut them; thicker carrots can be quartered. Toss carrots and squash in bowl, adding more olive oil, salt and pepper as necessary to make everything good and moist and seasoned. Turn the contents of the bowl out onto a sheet pan and roast in the oven 3o minutes, until the surfaces start to brown. It’s probably a good idea to flip these veggies around about halfway through the cooking so both sides get brown.

Heat the butter over medium-low heat in a small skillet and add the onions. Cook until greatly reduced and deep brown.

While the vegetables are roasting prepare the dressing by combining all the ingredients. Salt and pepper should be added to taste; given the quantity of vegetables, you may need more salt than expected. Add in the sausage (I used the beef, bleu cheese, and Surly Bender sausage from Clancey’s Meats & Fish).

As the vegetables are done roasting/caramelizing, add them to the bowl with the dressing. When all is ready, toss the vegetables well. Top with crumbled goat cheese and serve.

There’s been a lot of talk about asparagus and the lack thereof on our part this spring. With Monday marking the first day of summer, we’re officially past the peak season. Last year we were fortunate to discover asparagus at Midtown in only week four of the market season. We were hopeful for similar this year, but asparagus stalks never came. So hungry we were for this spring treat, we visited the St. Paul Farmers Market as Tom revealed in his prayerful post to the green goddess. As you can see, we found a little more than just (perfect) asparagus that Sunday after a light shopping day at Midtown the day before:

On another occasion, we resorted to buying our asparagus at the Wedge, which Tom was careful to note here. Now, on the verge of July, we’ve officially called off the search. As we learned from a fellow market-goer, the frosts that followed the unusual warm weather we were treated with in early spring dashed any hopes Midtown Farmers Market had for an asparagus vendor.

We did, however, miss sharing with you what we brought home from the market’s fifth Saturday. Thanks to a new crop of t-shirts from new-to-Minneapolis vendors PlantWorn, Tom took home the Asparagus Clump t-shirt at left below:

PlantWorn’s asparagus t-shirt is part of a series the duo is developing around vegetables. Kohlrabi preceded the asparagus and continues to be a part of the many designs PlantWorn brings along to Saturday markets in Midtown and Northeast Minneapolis.

I’m curious to see if the series continues and what market produce might inspire future designs. In the mean time, we’re enjoying our asparagus—and wearing it too.

Midtown Farmers Market continues to provide. Carrots were a welcome new addition this week, bringing fresh color and sweet, early season flavor to the table. I’m looking forward to how this crop will inspire Tom’s cooking in the coming days.

I’m fully aware of how empty my early farmers market boosterism sounds: “Really, even though you’ll only be able to buy a pint of strawberries and a head of lettuce, it’s totally worth making the trip to the market! Just think what you might find!” Okay, Tom. Whatever.

Well I’m happy to say those weeks are definitively over! As of last weekend, the first Saturday market in June, the market has finally hit its full stride. I could barely contain myself as I went from stall to stall, seizing on the fresh — and small in a cute way — vegetables: Chard! Snap peas! Garlic! New potatoes! Kale! Friseé! Basil! Leeks! Rhubarb! Strawberries! Finally, the makings of a feast.

Markets like these — rife with fresh and tender vegetables — allow me to make my favorite post-farmers market lunch: produce, steamed or blanched, with homemade mayonnaise, hummus, or any other sauce you like to dip them in. I did cheat and supplement the Midtown new potatoes and snap peas with asparagus from The Wedge (but hey, they’re my year round farmers market).

All that and I barely made a dent in the week’s haul. There will be plenty more meals this week derived almost entirely from market produce. The fun is just beginning.

Saint Albert was almost not a saint at all, thanks to the discovery during his beatification process of extensive studies of the occult: black magic. Among his writings on the subject was found a recipe for a depilatory potion that required burning a large frog whole and mixing the ashes with water then spreading the mixture on the to-be-hairless area. In the end though, Albert did earn his sainthood and luckily for us the Catholic parish in Seward bearing his name hasn’t taken any cooking cues from their patron; instead of burning it they prepare some of the finest fried and baked fish available for Lent, served for your convenience in two fast-moving lines. It’s the church fish-fry of the season and after the great time we had last year, Martha and I were not going to miss it.

Last year, we came on the last Friday of the Fish Fry’s operation, and it was crowded: line-wrapping-all-the-way-around-the-room crowded. This year we were a little more on the ball and showed up the second Friday of Lent. The room was certainly still full, but the line was not nearly as long and we were able to purchase our tickets ($10 for adults) and get our fish and sides in short order. So my advice to anyone thinking of visiting the great Saint Albert’s but intent on skipping the line is to get there sooner than later, before people realize Lent is almost over. Then again, waiting in line can be pretty fun; there are lots of interesting people to talk to.

The Catholic church sometimes gets a bad rep for being conservative, reactionary, even regressive. But it’s also rarely fair to judge individual parishes by the policy of the church as a whole, and without intending to direct any specific critcisms of St. Albert’s I’d like to commend them for their very environmentally-friendly reusable ticket system. I’d like to think I got the same ticket as last year!

There are a lot of reasons to make it down to Saint Albert’s for the fish fry: the always friendly volunteers who do everything from serving your food to clearing your plate, the irrepressible wit and humor of Fr. Joe Gillespie who works the crowd for the evening, microphone in hand, the bingo. But ultimately a fish fry is about the food. Given how much I enjoyed it last year, I was glad to see that the menu was unchanged from last year: in order there was: cheesy mashed potatoes, fried Alaskan Pollack, baked Alaskan Pollack, meatless spaghetti, cole slaw, rolls and of course tartar sauce and lemon wedges. Immediately after the savory line there’s a whole table of desserts to tempt you, but I’d recommend maintaining one free hand to pick up a glass of lemonade on your way to find a seat. You can always go back for dessert. And more fish.

The food prompted no complaints from me: who can object to lemon spritzed fried fish with tartar sauce? As with last year, though, the standouts were the sides; particularly, the meatless spaghetti which from its appearance you would expect to be as saccharine as any jar of Ragú but is actually somehow meaty and deeply flavored. I don’t know if this sauce is some secret church recipe or if it just comes out of a different can than I was expecting. Maybe it’s black magic. Frankly I don’t want to know. I just know I like it.

With two years under our belts at Saint Albert the Great’s, we’re starting to feel like regulars (though I can tell we’d need quite a few more years to meet others’ expectations for that title). Given how little time we spent in line this year, we might just be back before Easter. We’ll definitely be back next year, when I’m hoping for the addition of St. Albert’s famous blackened frogs’ legs to the food on offer. Does frog count as meat?

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. This was the second year in a row in which I was cooking in isolation from my extended family in Michigan since relocating to Minnesota. I miss having my whole family together and all their different contributions to the meal. On the other hand, cooking in Minneapolis for a small crowd, I have complete control over the meal. This satisfies the control-freak in me, and also allows a bit of flexibility about how I cook the bird.

The bird in question arrived from Clancey’s Meats & Fish last Monday. I was wide-grinningly excited when our turkey — which had never seen the inside of a freezer — showed up under Martha’s arm; I immediately set about dismembering it. Originally, my plan was to cook the bird whole, in search of that classic Norman Rockwell moment. But after reading Kenji Lopez Alt’s enlightening “Turkey Stuffed Turkey” article I could not resist taking my turkey apart. It just makes so much sense: the legs and the breasts are two different kinds of meat that demand different treatments — they are done at different temperatures — and, best of all, if you cut the legs and breasts off, you have the whole carcass to make turkey stock in advance, to be held at the ready for all your stuffing/dressing and gravy needs.

After dismantling the turkey, I salted the legs and thighs and refrigerated them overnight. The next day, they were ready to confit in a crockpot with plenty of olive oil, bay leaves, thyme, orange zest, peppercorns and juniper berries. Before removing the breasts, I carefully took the majority of the turkey’s skin off in one piece — I think Hannibal Lecter would have been proud. The breasts and skin were reserved for Thanksgiving day. Meanwhile, I roasted the rest of the carcass and boiled it down into stock. The copious amount of bones made available by cutting the turkey apart meant that I got a thick, gelatinous stock.

For reference, a ten pound free range turkey produces about 2 ½# of white meat. I felt like a mad scientist rolling the two breasts together and wrapping them in their own skin per Lopez Alt’s instructions. The technique worked out really well; the meat cooked very evenly and the skin even managed to adhere to the meat, no Activa required. Go figure.

My quest to use all parts of the turkey resulted in the surprise best dish of the evening, a turkey liver pâté. After soaking the turkey’s liver in milk for two hours to leech out some supposed metallic flavors, I sauteed it in butter along with some shallots. This I ground to a paste in my food processor along with thyme, turkey meat left over from the stock, salt, lots of black pepper, some juniper berries and a bit of heavy cream. After baking this mixture in a water-bath in a 300°F oven for an hour I cooled it and refrigerated it overnight. The result was amazing. I have been dabbling in terrines, pâtés and other potted meats for well over a year now. The results, while always pretty good — how can you go wrong with potted meat? — were always missing something, or featuring too much. Either I have learned enough or the stars were just aligning right for this Thanksgiving: the pâté was creamy, rich, slightly gamy and very peppery. Great with mustard, pickled green beans and olives. Not how I’ve usually started off Thanksgiving, but possibly a new tradition!

One can hardly have Thanksgiving appetizers without Thanksgiving cocktails. Martha found the recipe we used on Apartment Therapy: 1½ oz rye whiskey (Wild Turkey, of course), ½ oz triple sec (substituted for clear curaçao), 2 oz apple cider, 1 tsp simple syrup and a couple of cranberries for garnish. Changing every “oz” to “cup” we successfully octupled the recipe with enough for everyone to enjoy two.

As for the rest of the meal, it was more or less what you would expect. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, fresh cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans with lemon, roasted parnsips, carrots and brussels sprouts, roasted turkey breast and turkey leg confit and plenty of gravy to cover it all.

In some ways Thanksgiving is a stupid meal: nobody can make all these dishes perfectly at the same time. We’d be better off focusing on just a couple and having a really great meal. But it’s Thanksgiving, it happens only once a year, and frankly, nobody expects it to be perfect. That’s why there’s gravy.

It’s a cruel irony that heat of the late summer sun that produces perfect tomatoes and fragrant basil also makes our homes so hot that the thought of even turning on the oven — let alone cranking it up all the way for perfect pizzas margherita — is unbearable.  By the time I’m willing to endure the 500 degrees blasting away for over an hour necessary for decent pizza crust, the tomatoes are long rotten on the vine and the basil withered or brought indoors. Of course there are always canned tomatoes and greenhouse basil, but if you want to eat more in-season, you have to get a little more creative with your toppings (and loose with your definition of “pizza”).

Potato-Leek Pizza. This classic soup combination works reasonably well for pizza. The potatoes present a bit of a problem since the pizza only spends ten minutes in the oven; they need to be parcooked or sliced extremely thin. I opted for the latter and utilized a mandoline to make slices so thin that the skin of each slice could be seen through the flesh of the potato slice layered above it. A generous shower of olive oil combined with the blazing temperature of the oven slightly fries the potato slices. A sprinkling of leeks and a few cubes of feta completed a pizza of which Martha claimed, “tastes like soup.” In a good way, I think.

Butternut squash-gorgonzola-walnut Pizza. After a well deserved period of squash abstinence, I decided to get back into it by combining one of my least favorite foods — said squash — with one of my favorites: pizza. After sauteeing cubes of butternut squash until tender, I mashed them with butter and enough milk to make the mixture spread easily, then aggressively salted and peppered the mix. To offset the bland sweetness of squash, I used musty, tangy gorgonzola cheese. Both butternut squash and gorgonzola are well complemented by nuts, so I sprinkled on toasted walnuts after baking the pie.

A word of caution to anyone attempting squash pizza: that squash can retain a whole lot of oven heat for a long time. Give yourself extra cooling time before taking a bite! When the pizza did cool down to a reasonable tasting temperature, my taste buds that had not been burned away told me that this was a winning combination, at least as far as anything involving squash can be. Although the gorgonzola tended to overpower the squash, I had applied it with a light hand, so the cheese was well balanced by zones of pure squash. The walnuts were the pepperoni of this pizza, providing spots of excitement amongst the more uniform cheese and crust.

I enjoyed both of these pizzas. They’re not about to replace pizza margherita in my heart, but as a way to use those last late-season farmers’ market veggies — and enjoy a sustained heatwave issuing forth from your oven in the chilly fall — they were pretty good.

It was with some sadness (and wistful thoughts of future Saturday mornings spent sleeping in) that Martha and I mounted our noble bicycles and set out on the ride to the last official Midtown Farmers’ Market of the 2009 season. The weather, while generally cloudy, was punctuated by bursts of sunlight and dominated by a steady autumn wind that elicited some speculation from vendors about how long they would last out there. But they are a hardy bunch and I’m sure they saw the market through to the end (I sure didn’t!).

As promised, I did a good job attacking the crisper drawer over the course of the last week such that we were left with only a bunch of celery and some lemongrass. Which meant it was time to stock up, all the more so since this was the last farmers market of the year before a long winter. Much of my buying took this long view into account by focusing on vegetables that store well: onions, three kinds of potatoes (russets, large red potatoes, and small red potatoes), carrots, parsnips and butternut squash. The real joy of the farmers’ market for me is the fresh, green food: brussels sprouts, broccoli and leeks. Those will be missed later in the year. And it wouldn’t be the fall farmers’ market in Minnesota without apples; I couldn’t resist a ¼ peck of Honeycrisps.

For her part, Martha couldn’t resist some letter press cards by regular market vendors Vandalia Street Press that make use of interesting figure-ground relationships. Nor could she resist including them in the photo of the market haul!

Although this was the last official farmers’ market at Midtown of the fall, there will be more opportunities to get delicious local produce. I will definitely be going to the Midtown Farmers’ Market fundraiser at the Minneapolis Eagles Club (2507 E 25th St) on November 14 where in addition to raffles and music and the usual fundraising hullabaloo there will be a farmers’ market set up in the parking lot. A pretty great way to support a worthy cause while selfishly stocking up on the best vegetables around! (And very conveniently situated before Thanksgiving.) But if planning ahead for Thanksgiving isn’t your thing, Brett of Real Bread informed me that there will also be a special market at the usual place on Wednesday, November 25 from 1–4 PM. Even though the official market season’s over, the Midtown Farmers’ Market won’t leave you out in the cold for great produce this winter.

In its penultimate week the Midtown Farmers’ Market is still loaded with fresh produce: squash, cabbage, peppers, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, more squash, leafy greens, onions, potatoes, herbs — even some tomatoes of dubious quality. If the above photo doesn’t quite reflect this variety it says more about me than the current state of the market: I was feeling a little burned out this Saturday morning. For one thing, the crisper drawer in our fridge was still full of produce from last week’s trip and other trips prior. We’re also in the midst of a season whose produce leaves me uninspired. So I consult my resources and wrack my brain to try to figure out some new, creative use for that last butternut squash. I hate to sound spoiled complaining in the face of all this beautiful fall produce, but I don’t feel the same about late October veggies as I do about the late August corn-tomatoes-peppers bonanza.

In spite of my whiny depression, we did manage to pick up a decent haul of produce from the market this Saturday: brussels sprouts, a delicata squash, cauliflower, celery, honey, fingerling potatoes, and a half peck of Haralson apples (pro tip: #2 apples are half price and look the same as #1s in a pie). Martha also picked up a nice crop of CFL light bulbs from the Minnesota Energy Challenge.

Next week is the last week of the farmers’ market. I am determined to not let this week’s malaise creep into the season finale; to that end I have formulated a strategy for almost entirely clearing the crisper drawer by week’s end. Hopefully an empty larder and the threat of winter will put me in the right mindset to BUY BUY BUY.